Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class

This book describes in detail -- at a very personal level -- how drug dealers from white prosperous backgrounds operate on college campuses, and do so with almost complete freedom. The contrast with how young men of color are treated could not be more vivid. The dealers described in this carefully researched book move large amounts of illegal drugs, are tied into drug networks that cross state lines and go into Mexico, and yet rarely face any consequences, even when they move large amounts of illegal drugs in their flashy personal cars, speeding, parking illegally, and brazenly confronting the police. Meanwhile, of course, young people of color, even though they act with discretion and sometimes even if they don't even use drugs, face harassment and the threat of prison sentences counted in decades.By any criterion, these dealers do as much harm as any other drug dealer, break the same laws, and yet are keenly aware that it is almost impossible that they will get in any trouble, let alone face the long prison sentences that are commonplace in inner city neighborhoods. A major reason for this, the book makes clear, is the existence of gatekeepers, including physicians, college officials, campus police, parents, and ordinary law enforcement, all of whom protect these dealers from consequences.This is an essential book for understanding racial disparity in this nation, easily deserving a place on the shelf with American Apartheid, the groundbreaking book on housing segregation, Black Wealth/White Wealth, Medical Apartheid, and The New Jim Crow. However, unlike these critical books, Dorm Room Dealers focuses on the privileges given to prosperous white people, making clear that they include not only material goods and social status but protection from the consequences of one's action, no matter how deeply condemned they are to society.

Easy read. I enjoyed reading it for my class. It really puts a scope on the use of drugs and drug dealing issues.

Great book

Really interesting read.

Meh

I am a clinical psychologist who just finished reading Dorm Room Dealers. I work with a lot of clients who are working on recovery from substance abuse and have a particular interest in reading more about drugs, drug culture, and drug policies.In this book, the authors spent about 6 years infiltrating college campuses across California and getting to know the college drug selling business from the inside out. They interviewed many people and were able to discuss a variety of ways in which white, upper middle class white students who sold drugs operated differently than the stereotypical lower class urban minorities. This is an important topic, and this book definitely helped me to understand this better; their book gives me a basis to feel like I know what I'm talking about if I were to now discuss the biases in law enforcement when it comes to drug policy.However, before buying this book, you should note that it reads like a research paper and can be kind of dry and repetitive. That was a major downside which made it kind of tedious for me to plow through this book.

It seems the authors may not have considered something very fundamental to law enforcement practitioners: some crimes are more problematic than others, and some criminal activity is more troubling than others. When college drug dealers start making the public nervous, when they wear colors, hang out on street corners and shed blood over markets and distribution points, then the public might view them differently. It is much like street level versus high-class prostitution, or an armed robber versus a con-artist. We disapprove of all of them, but not inthe same ways or with the same visceral discomfort.

good book. Available from the publisher for $22. this is an overpriced third-party entry.