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


  • Trump Derangement Syndrome Returns
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Trump Derangement Syndrome Returns
    17 Aug 2022
    Why would Black people laud the FBI or criticize protection against self-incrimination? The FBI search of Donald Trump's home has reawakened Trump Derangement Syndrome.
  • ESSAY AND PETITION: Massacre at Attica, The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, 1971
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY AND PETITION: Massacre at Attica, The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, 1971
    17 Aug 2022
    ​​​​​​​To commemorate Black August and in memory of the forty-two men massacred during the September 13, 1971 Attica Prison uprising we reproduce below an essay and petition from The Black Panther…
  • …and who paid for the raid?
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    …and who paid for the raid?
    17 Aug 2022
                                                         
  • BAR Book Forum: Tanya KaterĂ­ Hernández’s Book, “Racial Innocence”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Tanya Katerí Hernández’s Book, “Racial Innocence”
    17 Aug 2022
    This week’s featured author is Tanya Katerí Hernández. Hernández is the Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law. Her book is Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-…
  • The City Has Failed University City Townhome Residents. They Should Pay For It — Literally
    Ernest Owens
    The City Has Failed University City Townhome Residents. They Should Pay For It — Literally
    17 Aug 2022
    The traumatizing clearing of the University City Townhome encampment in West Philadelphia symbolizes the ongoing racial injustice of gentrification. One solution: The city should buy the…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us