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


  • Mass Protest in France
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Mass Protest in France
    05 May 2023
    Philippe Gendrault, Ph.D. is a mental health provider committed to the anti-racist, anti-imperialist struggle for social and political justice. He joins us from San Francisco to discuss the…
  • The Struggle Against the Proposed Arena in Philadelphia's Chinatown
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Struggle Against the Proposed Arena in Philadelphia's Chinatown
    05 May 2023
    Asantewaa Nkrumah Ture is an organizer with the Philadelphia Tenants Union. She joins us to talk about the plans to build a new NBA arena in that city’s Chinatown, which that community and its allies…
  • School Safety for Black Students
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    School Safety for Black Students
    05 May 2023
    Dr. Gregory C. Hutchings, Jr. is an Executive-in-Residence for the School of Education at American University and a former superintendent of Alexandria, Virginia public schools.
  • Whither Black Voters in 2024
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Whither Black Voters in 2024
    03 May 2023
    The duopoly trap for the 2024 election has been set, but Black voters can refuse to step into it.
  • SPEECH: “I’ll Be Damned if I Go Back to Work Under Those Conditions!” Lucy E. Parsons, May 1, 1930
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    SPEECH: “I’ll Be Damned if I Go Back to Work Under Those Conditions!” Lucy E. Parsons, May 1, 1930
    03 May 2023
    A 1930 speech by Black anarchist and labor organizer, Lucy Parsons, recalls the radical origins of May Day.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us