“Got it?”
That’s what the disembodied voice of JayZ asks a little over halfway through a four-minute illustrated video, published as a guest editorial on the New York Times website, titled “A History of the War on Drugs, from Prohibition to Gold Rush.”
“Got it?” he asks, begging you to understand that venture capitalists, mostly white, are getting rich on the same drug that has sent millions of black and brown men to prison.
The video also touches on the differences in conviction rates between white cocaine users and black crack users, the explosion in the prison population and the disparities in enforcement between black and Latino neighborhoods and white neighborhoods, despite similar rates of drug use.
All told, the narrative concludes, “the war on drugs is an epic fail.”
The video was produced by filmmaker Dream Hampton in partnership with the social impact agency Revolve Impact. It features illustrations by Molly Crabapple.
