John Chase

I am so glad you discovered Michelle Alexander (“Cruel and Unequal,” February 2011; see also “‘Colorblind’ Racism” by Liane Rozzell, June 2010). The U.S. may finally recover from Nixon’s war on drugs, which began when H.R. Haldeman wrote in his 1969 diary, “[President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”