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


  • Black Agenda Radio September 16, 2022
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Black Agenda Radio September 16, 2022
    16 Sep 2022
    Black politics in San Francisco Part 2, FBI surveillance of Aretha Franklin, and how the U.S. drives conflicts in Horn of Africa nations.
  • Black Politics in San Francisco, Part 2
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Black Politics in San Francisco, Part 2
    16 Sep 2022
    Jemma Decristo is a community organizer in San Francisco, where a Black mayor, London Breed, continues neo-liberal and pro-police policies and where gentrification and displacement continue. She…
  • FBI Surveillance of Aretha Franklin
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    FBI Surveillance of Aretha Franklin
    16 Sep 2022
    Afeni is a community organizer and writer who is co-authoring an article soon to appear in Rolling Stone about FBI surveillance of Aretha Franklin. Afeni is joining us from Washington DC.
  • The U.S. Instigates Conflict in the Horn of Africa
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The U.S. Instigates Conflict in the Horn of Africa
    16 Sep 2022
    Thomas C. Mountain is an historian and educator known as a widely published independent journalist in Africa. He explains U.S. interference against Ethiopia and Eritrea and how the TPLF, Tigray…
  • Decolonizing the Mind
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Decolonizing the Mind
    14 Sep 2022
    The word decolonization should not be treated as trendy slang. It describes an important political and psychological process. Media and state attempts at indoctrination show just how…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us