Bad messages need fertile soil. The "drug war" (and to a great extent enforcement of gun-carry laws which, hello Europe, we do have) are essentially licenses to harass minority group members (because for a variety of reasons white people in the USA would never stand for aggressive enforcement of these rules in their own areas). The underlying danger is not only that such law enforcement habits perpetuate the image of blacks as irreducibly violent (guns) and irrational (drugs) but they also require the physical intrusion of the home and of the body through searches, while providing easy law enforcement successes. This insures great incentives to stop people and cars readily, to unpleasantly interrogate and bodily invade, to find excuses for arrests, and to militarize law enforcement with lethal consequences using anti-gang and anti-gun explanations. The last alone has caused numerous unnecessary deaths and harassment.

I am sympathetic to those who say there are too many complaints about racism in the United States and disagree with those who complain that real change has not happened. But there is still a rule where it is operative: any law that allows disproportionate and aggressive targetting of minorities will lead to that result. At least today.