How Race and Social Class Affected the Enforcement of Prohibition? - Essay Sample

Introduction

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State by Lisa McGirr is a well-researched book and an addition to the already existing literature on American Prohibition to connect the past to the present emphatically. The book examines the consequences of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act on American culture, society, and politics. The book draws on documented records, published books and newspaper sources and argues how national Prohibition marked a crucial moment for the establishment of federal law enforcement agencies and the effects of Prohibition on race and classes of the society. This book narrates a more consequential story that is attuned to the various ways in which the social class, race, gender, ethnicity, and religious organizations powerfully shaped the laws of the prohibition on alcohol and drugs. McGirr clearly connects that era's politics and policies to our contemporary Prohibition and the current war on drugs.

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This book further illustrates how battles waged over prohibition between social groups and how the impact on the national law took different casts in distinct settings from the big metropolis like Chicago to the small town and cities like Virginia. This book delves deeply in what can be termed as the identity politics of Prohibition (Collins 88). In these varied setting, the book features a cast of characters from policy entrepreneurs, local and state law enforcers, immigrant workers, politicians, the whites and the African-Americans. The purpose of this essay is to outline how the enforcement of Prohibition was different for the upper class and the working immigrants, and how race and ethnicity played a role in shaping the enforcement of the Prohibition law. This essay will delve into the complexities of how different sorts and groups of Americans experienced Prohibition.

The War on Alcohol retells the story of how selective enforcement of Prohibition always targets the minorities and the poor. Prohibition laws and enforcement regimes differed based on the sort of American someone were, whether rich, poor, working class, black, white, Latino, male or female, or whether one was staying in urban or small towns (McGirr 67). These laws and regimes had a lasting effect on American culture. McGirr describes how law enforcement and criminals alike made life miserable for the working-class immigrants. In this book, the poor were slapped with heavy fines or were killed by the trigger happy Prohibition agents in the name of stopping or controlling alcohol consumption. The wealthy had police, and political connections were allowed to keep their horde of illegal alcohol and entertain their guests (McGirr 88).

The selective enforcement also propagated the use of vigilante justice in the form of the Ku Klux Klan to aid the Prohibition agents. The Ku Klux Klan was an organization that wielded violence and consumed alcohol from the houses they raided painting a picture of how those seeking to make America great was composed of nothing but thuggish moral hypocrites; "The dry mission intersected perfectly with its anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and white-supremacist agenda"(McGirr 135). During this era, those who supported Prohibition were regarded as having 'respectable' morality and upstanding American values which were under assault from the Catholic radicalism.

McGirr's motivation to write a book on Prohibition was to improve American health and well-being of its people. However, the book sparked a central motivation of enacting policy which would make life more difficult for lower-income earners and the racial or ethnic minority groups. Gangland violence was common in the ethnic neighborhoods where consumers of illegal booze lived (McGirr 70). The book describes how government enforcement of Prohibition was directed inappropriately at poorer regions and the working class neighborhoods. In many big cities, the wealthy and upscale citizens had the privilege to enjoy drinks, and the police assured that they would leave them alone while the lower-class consumers and the rural bootleggers never had such assurances.

The hatred of Prohibition among the working-class ethnic groups and the immigrant groups led the immigrants to shift to the Democratic Party in the early 1930s. Prohibition was considered one of the main reasons that led to the realignment of the 1932 election which paved the way for the ascendancy of the Democratic Party over the next several decades (McGirr 83). Prohibition was linked to the anti-immigrant, anti-radical and anti-Catholic sentiment and this led to LDS Church to revise its suggested recommendations on alcohol to a much rigid prohibition and further linked teetotalism to its own cultural identity. McGirr vividly shows how enforcers targeted the immigrant and black communities. During this era, immigration was very high, and there were many people in the cities than in the countryside. McGirr shows how Prohibition nativists transformed the labor violence into a war on the Italian drinkers, and the national officials supported this by deputizing the local Ku Klux Klan that raided homes, rounded up violators and even killed resisters (McGirr 69). The black community faced impossible fines and hard time.

Prohibition of alcohol disrupted the central role that drinking played in so many areas of American life. During this era, saloons were a vital site for social interactions and alcohol was the binding lubricant at these gatherings spots that brought together the workingmen's circles, ethnic clubs, fraternal organizations, political groups, beer gardens among others (McGirr 72). Liquor consumption solidified the solidarity among these groups and impacted heavily on the American culture of social elites, and this is why opposition to Prohibition was strongly propagated. Enforcement of Prohibition looked lighthearted in New York for the middle class who drank in the protected speakeasies but tough on the poor men and women who lived in places such as Virginia, North Carolina and even parts of Texas. Corruption was witnessed along the enforcement chain, and the large-scale criminal suppliers benefited from this kind of corruption.

Prohibition led to the rise of organized crimes and bootlegging mixed with the colossal task of enforcement. Prohibition favored the wealthy and the well-connected by not draining their cellars or attacking their secret drinking establishments (McGirr 72). The minorities and the poor who had no say in the manufacturing and distribution, however, faced the risks of prosecution and violence. The national officials deputized the Ku Klux Klan who seized every opportunity because the dry laws fitted well within its leanings of anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant and racism. They violently attacked the poor and the minorities in the name of maintaining law and order. Federal prosecutions increased under the umbrella of Prohibition, and the government built more prisons and enacted many policies and violated the private lives of citizens. Prohibition laws and selective enforcement against the minorities and the poor became so unpopular, and politicians such as Al Smith and later Franklin D. Roosevelt used this premise and the voices of the weak to reorient the Democratic Party ((McGirr 67).

McGirr analyses how life was made miserable by law enforcement agencies and criminals alike for working-class immigrant Americans who lived in urban areas such as Chicago. The working class drinkers faced high prices that were imposed on them as a regime of enforcement. The local police were corrupted by the bootleggers who had vast wealth, and this created a new federal police culture that focused its attention on the marginalized groups who had nothing to offer them. The wealthy enjoyed drinking from the stock they had piled or smuggled in their private homes or clubs, while the poor in the cities had to brew their own or buy the illicit liquor from the violent and the crime-ridden speakeasies. The law focused its attention on the poor who were not financially stable to defend themselves in the court rooms.

Many of the working class and immigrants were apolitical and did not concentrate on the political issues, but with the rise of Prohibition, this changed. Selective enforcement was an infringement to the realm of their leisure, culture and community ritual and considered Prohibition as a war against them rather than a moral crusade for healthy living. Selective enforcement had significant repercussions for the poor communities, especially in Virginia, where selective enforcement revealed harsh and deadly realities for poor men and women in socially and racially stratified groups in the south (McGirr 93).

Conclusion

In conclusion, by one gross measure, the image and intentions of Prohibition are correct. However, the enforcement regimes did very little to stem the liquor supplied by the black markets to the thirsty Americans. Prohibition law was flagrantly violated, for example, a self-proclaimed avant-garde group challenged the constriction norms in a new world that involved vibrant, experimental and permissive leisure. The book uncovers patterns of enforcement that are still familiar in the modern day where the war on alcohol is waged disproportionately in African-American, immigrants and the poor white communities. Prohibition brought more problems than the solution by enhancing coercion in everyday life and into the private homes. Despite having Prohibition laws in place, the selective enforcement regimes led to more problems than solutions and the marginalized groups considered it a war against them, and they decided to stand up against it. Prohibition sparked escalating crimes for the socially and racially stratified groups that forced many Americans to look to the federal government for solutions to the new national problems.

Works Cited

Collins, John. "Losing UNGASS? Lessons from civil society, past and present." Drugs and Alcohol Today 17.2 (2017): 88-97.

McGirr, Lisa. The war on alcohol: Prohibition and the rise of the American state. WW Norton & Company, 2015.