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


  • Palestinian children stand amid the rubble of destroyed buildings
    Ramzy Baroud
    The Injured Gaza Boy and His Drawing: Do Palestinians Have the Right to Self-Defense?
    21 Feb 2024
    It is interesting how the colonizers and the colonized continue to build relations and solidarity around the same old principles. The Global South is, again, rising in solidarity with the…
  • Protest banner
    Palestinian Youth Movement
    Free Palestine. Stop Cop City.
    21 Feb 2024
    It is clear that Stop Cop City represents one of conjunctural spear tips for expanding the existing systems of counterinsurgency that span Africa, Asia, and the Arab world.
  • Black Agenda Radio
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio February 16, 2024
    16 Feb 2024
    This week we discuss the bipartisan consensus on punitive immigration policies and a community organizing solidarity event in the Bronx and call for freedom of a political prisoner. But first we talk…
  • NAARPR
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black and Brown Coalition for Palestine
    16 Feb 2024
    Frank Chapman and Hatem Abudayyeh join us from Chicago to discuss the city council vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and update us on events in Palestine and in Chicago.
  •  Immigrant Justice Network
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Bipartisan Consensus for Punitive Immigration Policies Continues - Part 1
    16 Feb 2024
    Aly Wane is on the advisory board of the Immigrant Justice Network. He joins us from Syracuse, New York to discuss the failure of the recent immigration bill and the bipartisan consensus on punitive…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us