Anew study by Human Rights Watch has found that black Virginians are 13.2 times more likely to be sent to prison for drug crimes than white Virginians. Nationwide, blacks are 10 times more likely than whites to be in prison for drug crimes.

Another study, by the Sentencing Project, found that from 1980 to 2003, the drug-arrest rate for blacks in Virginia Beach skyrocketed 729 percent; drug arrests for whites during the same period fell by 24 percent.

Those are stark and shocking figures. The studies don't blame the numbers on racism -- but that doesn't mean racism played absolutely no role in the racial disparities. Even in our enlightened times America's great stain cannot be entirely discounted.

It certainly is not discounted by those who are locked up. Gary MacDougal, chairman of the Illinois Task force on Human Services Reform, re cently recalled the words of a young black man he interviewed in prison at Joliet: "Look around this room -- almost everybody here is black. This is white man's genocide. You put us in here to keep us down." That belief might be misguided. But it cannot be considered a bolt out of a clear blue sky given, e.g., the wide gulf between the long sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine and the much shorter sentencing guidelines for powdered cocaine. Such guidelines have hit African-Americans particularly hard.

BUT THEY WERE not imposed in a vacuum. Those with long memories will recall, a decade or two ago, concern that the twin scourges of drug addiction and drug-gang violence were decimating African-American communities. Back then, people were concerned that drug offenses were resulting in too little incarceration. As one 1992 article in this newspaper began: "Despite all the hoopla about the national 'war on drugs,' court records show that fewer than one in five drug defendants in Richmond is sentenced to jail or prison."

In the late 1980s and early 1990s gangs such as the the Valley Boys, The Uptown Boys, the Heights gang, the K-9 Posse, the Jamaicans, and Richmond's infamous Newtowne Gang were well-known to Central Virginia's police and to the community at large -- not to mention local hospitals and morgues. Gangs were feared in the areas most hard-hit by violent crime: Bellemeade, Afton Avenue, Hull Street, Mosby Court, Hillside Court, Whitcomb Court, Fairfield, and Church Hill.

The drug-running Newtowne Gang was responsible for 12 homicides in the span of 45 days, and drug-gang violence fueled by the crack-cocaine epidemic made Richmond the murder capital of America in 1994 -- one year after Richmond Police Chief Andre Parker confronted the brutal reality when he lamented: "The fabric of the African-American community is being destroyed from within."

Parker is black -- just like his predecessors, Jerry Oliver and Marty Tapscott, and his successor, Rodney Monroe. It stretches imagination beyond the breaking point to suggest they might be tools of the white man's genocide. To the contrary: They were trying to stanch the flow of black men's blood.

THE REGION'S skyrocketing murder rate disproportionately affected African-Americans: Nine out of 10 murder victims in Richmond in 1994 were black males, with an average age of 20. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nationwide homicide perpetration and victimization rates among African-Americans spiked in the mid-1980s and did not begin falling until a decade later -- while the rates for whites in each category continued a slow downward glide.

Public officials sometimes were accused of ignoring the carnage in the black community out of indifference. In response, government at the federal, state, and local levels instituted a spectrum of policy reforms, from hard-nosed ones such as Project Exile (five years in a far-off federal prison for gun-related offenses) to kinder-and-gentler approaches such as Richmond's Weed and Seed, or the Blitz to Bloom neighborhood-revitalization effort. Tougher drug-crime sentencing standards were part of the mix.

In some ways, Virginia suffers less prison disparity than other parts of the country. The commonwealth incarcerates six times as many blacks as whites -- a lamentable statistic, but not as bad as in some states where blacks make up markedly smaller proportions of the population, such as Maine (seven incarcerated blacks for every one incarcerated white), New Hampshire (9-1), or Connecticut (12-1).

Yet that is small consolation. Former Virginia Attorney General Mark Early says mass incarceration of minorities is a crisis requiring continued attention. He's right. And as the Sentencing Project's Ryan King says, "Arresting hundreds of thousands of young African-American men hasn't ended street-corner drug sales." If we fail to find alternatives, we merely invite a continuation of the cycle. At present, tens of thousands of young, mostly black, men are growing up with no father to guide them. That is a profound tragedy -- both in itself and in the making.

My thoughts do not aim for your assent -- just place them alongside your own reflections for a while.

--Robert Nozick.
Contact A. Barton Hinkle at (804) 649-6627 or bhinkle@timesdispatch.com.