Numerous paths were available to us, as a nation, in the wake of the crack crisis, yet for reasons traceable largely to racial politics and fear mongering we chose war. Conservatives found they could finally justify an all out war on an “enemy” that had been racially defined years before...THE WAR ON DRUGS, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered Whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward Blacks and Black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism.