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


  • Three Revolutionary Black Women
    Dr. Gerald Horne
    Three Revolutionary Black Women
    31 Aug 2022
    Dr. Gerald Horne reminds us that Esther Cooper Jackson, Louise Thompson Patterson, and Dorothy Burnham made many contributions as liberation movement leaders.
  • “We must collectively fight back”: An Interview with Jordan McGowan
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    “We must collectively fight back”: An Interview with Jordan McGowan
    31 Aug 2022
    The Neighbor Program is a "Pan-African Socialist Organization committed to serving the people & loving our neighbor." Founder Jordan MacGowan speaks to Roberto Sirvent.
  • BAR Book Forum: Alyosha Goldstein and SimĂłn Ventura Trujillo’s book, “For Antifascist Futures”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Alyosha Goldstein and Simón Ventura Trujillo’s book, “For Antifascist Futures”
    31 Aug 2022
    This week’s featured authors are Alyosha Goldstein and Simón Ventura Trujillo. Goldstein is Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Trujillo is Assistant Professor in the…
  • The “International Community” is an Unreliable Broker in Ethiopia Conflict
    Hermela Aregawi
    The “International Community” is an Unreliable Broker in Ethiopia Conflict
    31 Aug 2022
    The ongoing conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray region has been fueled by support from the United States. It is yet another proxy war which has brough great suffering to thousands of people.
  • 'You Can't Swim the Same River Twice': Why Full Employment Was a Great Idea, But is No More
    Jon Jeter
    'You Can't Swim the Same River Twice': Why Full Employment Was a Great Idea, But is No More
    31 Aug 2022
    Had it been fully implemented the Hawkins-Humphrey full employment bill would have been a boon to U.S. workers. Any talk of reviving it is now moot, as the industrial economy of the 1970s has been…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us