Reading Schedule:

September 17th Pages 1-82 (Chapters 1-2)

September 24th Pages 83- 145 (Chapters 3-4)

October 1st Pages 146-End (Chapter 5)

More on Blueschild Baby:

 

George Cain’s autobiographical novel, “Blueschild Baby,” which has been largely forgotten during the years since it was greeted with critical fanfare, in 1970, effectively predicted Nixon’s war on drugs a year before it officially began. The novel follows a young black man—named George Cain, like his author—who is struggling to overcome his addiction to heroin, while also fully aware of the ways his government wants to turn his addiction against him.

 

Every addiction story needs a villain. But America has never been able to decide whether addiction is an illness or a crime. Some addicts get pitied, others get blamed. Alcoholics are tortured geniuses. Drug addicts are deviant zombies. Male drunks are thrilling. Female drunks are bad moms. White addicts get their suffering witnessed. Addicts of color get punished.

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In an interview conducted decades later, Nixon’s domestic-policy chief, John Ehrlichman, confessed to precisely this: “Did we know we were lying about the drugs?” he asked. “Of course we did.” Ehrlichman said that the Nixon Administration couldn’t make it illegal to be black, but they could link the black community to heroin: “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.”