Sarah Furay was called
“adorable” and “photogenic” for allegedly selling ecstasy, cocaine, and weed.
Would that have happened to a black girl?
Twenty-four hours after
authorities arrested Sarah Furay on charges of drug possession and manufacture
charges, the 19-year-old Texan was safe at home.
Inside the bedroom of
her College Station apartment police found large amounts of Ecstasy, cocaine,
marijuana, methamphetamine, and an LSD analogue. They also found packing
materials and two digital scales. Following the seizure, Furay was taken to
Brazos County Jail, where the evidently unruffled teen smiled for a mugshot.
After posting $39,000 bail, she left.
In the days after her
arrest, multiple news organizations ran stories focusing not on her crimes as
much as her “photogenic smile.” Her picture was coined the "happiest
mugshot in America" by some; the "jolliest mugshot in reent
history," by others. Rather than a criminal act, her offense was called
“an entrepreneurial approach to avoiding student loan debt." The icing on
the cake was news that her father is a “head honcho” at the local DEA office—a
fact that was treated more as a potential TV plot line than a damning fact.
Death and Taxes, the
first to run a story calling Furay “adorable” wrote a formal apology for the
mistake, admitting that the story “missed the mark.” The apology is genuine,
with the editor conceding that her smile is likely related (at least in part)
to the fact that “the criminal justice system works to her favor.”
The editor says the
article was not meant to be malicious. Indeed, the story itself is far from the
worst manifestation of this phenomenon. There’s no need to use the coddling of
a white teenage drug dealer in the news as proof that racial disparity in the
war on drugs exists when there are real life examples of African Americans
spending their lives in prison for mere possession of $20 worth of pot.
In a 2009 report, Human
Rights Watch found black adults to be arrested for drug charges at rates 2.8 to
5.5 times higher than those of white adults in every year from 1980 through
2007—the most recent for which there was data. One in three of those arrested
in that time period was African American.
The study also found,
as many since have as well, that although African Americans make up the
majority of drug arrests, they are not more likely to use drugs or sell them.
According to The Drug Policy Alliance African Americans make up 30 percent of
the drug law arrests, despite making up only 13 percent of the U.S. population.
But for many, the
arrest is just the beginning. According to recent statistics, prosecutors
pursue mandatory minimum charges against blacks at a rate of 2:1 when compared
to whites with similar crimes. The number helps explain why 57 percent of state
prison law violators and 77 percent of federal are minorities.
Art Way, a senior drug
policy manager at The Drug Policy Alliance, says the 19-year-old likely
benefitted (and will continue to) from her ethnicity and family status. “Furay
has posted bond that was likely smaller than what most people of color her age
would have received, and I’m sure she has private counsel,” he told The Daily
Beast. “As a result, she escapes pretrial detention and possibly prison through
early plea bargaining.”
His reaction to her
arrest in general is emblematic of how rare it is for authorities to arrest of
a white teen for dealing drugs—despite the fact that they do it in equal
numbers (or as some research shows, more) than black teens. “It is more
difficult for the tentacles of the system to reach those like Furay,” he
says. “I’m surprised they were actually
looking for her instead of her falling in their lap on accident. The truth is probably more akin to the latter.”
In Way’s opinion, the
roots of the racial inequality fueling the war on drugs runs deeper than
unfairly targeting blacks. “The overarching disparity is the reality that drug
policy is intertwined with the continued disenfranchisement of communities of
color. This is the only explanation of
the type of gross disparity we see across the country,” he says. “Communities
of color are the day to day battleground for the drug war.”
Abby Haglage
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