Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Black Elites, and Many Black Voters, Supported Mass Black Incarceration
25 Jul 2017
🖨️ Print Article

Historian, author and activist Paul Street has high praise for James Forman Jr.’s new book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Forman is a professor at Yale Law School and a former public defender in Washington, DC. His book “fills a giant hole in the literature,” illuminating the role played by “Black elites in the rise of the mass incarceration system,” said Street, himself an expert on race and the U.S. penal system. “Many ordinary, working class Black voters in the 70s and 80s have actively supported the racially disparate war on crime and drugs that ended up producing racist mass incarceration,” said Street, whose latest book is titled They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy.


More Stories


  • The Turkana people protesting at the Africa Climate Summit
    Aby L. Sène
    Western Climate Agenda Goes Against African Development
    06 Mar 2024
    Carbon and biodiversity offsets are the latest imperialist weapons used against African people and their nations. Self-determination is the key to ecological health for the continent.
  • Rosa Parks
    Ingrid Banks , Jaime Alves
    Antiblackness and Palestinian Humanity: A Call to Resist Fear
    06 Mar 2024
    Internationalism is the path toward Black liberation. Black people must resist the push to silo our movements and move in this spirit of Rosa Parks - with fearless integrity.
  • A mourner places incense at a memorial for Aaron Bushnell
    Julia Wright
    A Love Supreme
    06 Mar 2024
    Aaron Bushnell's act of self-immolation is a symbol and a call for people around the world to break their silence and fight for a free Palestine.
  • Chicago racist terror of 1919
    Abayomi Azikiwe
    Cultural Renaissance, Economic Crises and the Struggle Against Fascism, 1919-1945
    06 Mar 2024
    In the time between the two imperialist wars, the spirit and politics of Pan-Africanism grew. African Americans continued to organize and built movements to resist rising fascism.
  • Leaders of ECOWAS
    Tanupriya Singh
    ECOWAS Lifts Sanctions on Niger Weeks After Sahel States Announce Withdrawal From Bloc
    06 Mar 2024
    The West African trade bloc has lifted a majority of the sweeping sanctions it had imposed on Niger, including border closures and a freezing of state assets. The move followed soon after Niger, Mali…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us