MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan on Monday highlighted the concerning racial disparities that existed within America’s war against illegal drugs.

“Our big story on this Martin Luther King holiday is the new math of racism in America,” he said. “The greedy bastards have rebranded racism, calling it ‘the war on drugs.’ They’ve made it both acceptable and profitable. While the concerns of racism from the 1950s and 60s have improved in this country, if you look at the numbers the war on drugs has become a racist war.”

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He noted that African Americans are ten times more likely than white Americans to be imprisoned for the same drug charges. He also noted there were more African Americans in prison or on probation today than there were slaves in America before the civil war.

Dylan added that American taxpayers spent $74 billion on prisons in 2007, with a growing percentage of that money going to private prisons.

“And yes, publicly traded for profit prison companies exist,” he said. “These companies have massive political and lobbying wings to keep the war on drugs alive, as they also happen to use the very prisoners as cheap labor.”

Watch video, courtesy of MSNBC, below:

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