The Misunderstood Era of Crack Cocaine
Notes from America with Kai Wright
WNYC Studios
4.4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A disastrous period in the 1980’s. Where we went wrong and what we keep doing wrong today.
What do you think of when you hear the term, “crack cocaine?” The drug is at the heart of an epidemic in the 1980’s that destroyed lives. But for writer Donovan X. Ramsey, a lot of our assumptions and understandings about this era are actually mistruths. So he wrote When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era.”
He tells Kai that the full truth reveals, “how deep the harm goes in America when it comes to anti-Blackness.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When you hear the term crack cocaine, what do you think of? |
| 0:06.1 | I think urban areas with impoverished people. |
| 0:10.0 | People like lead out on the corners and like ask if we're changed. |
| 0:13.8 | John Key, like do anything for it, selling it at mom and stuff and, you know, doing some |
| 0:19.2 | crazy stuff to get it. |
| 0:20.2 | We're in the Houston's interview with Crackers Work. |
| 0:23.4 | Any more? |
| 0:27.0 | Everybody that participates in those activities, I'd probably stay away from it. |
| 0:32.1 | People like trying to get themselves together, like trying to lie and be like they want money, |
| 0:36.1 | just go get other stuff. |
| 0:37.1 | And I think of people that's like really addicted and trying to get they some off of it, |
| 0:40.9 | but they don't break it. |
| 0:41.9 | Something not good for your body. |
| 0:43.6 | When I think of crack cocaine, I think about how it took over DC in the 70s and kind of |
| 0:48.7 | destroyed the city and now it's coming back. |
| 1:09.4 | It's notes from America and Kairate, welcome to the show. |
| 1:13.4 | It's hard to overstate the impact that crack cocaine had on American life. |
| 1:17.8 | On our culture, on our politics, on our economy, and on our story about ourselves as a nation. |
| 1:24.4 | For more than a decade, it was just everywhere. |
| 1:26.8 | And so were the many myths and misunderstandings that surrounded and frankly prolonged the |
| 1:32.7 | epidemic of addiction. |
| 1:35.1 | Journalist Donovan X Ramsey says the epidemic invades his earliest memories. |
... |
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