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
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio March 21, 2025
    21 Mar 2025
    In this week’s segment, we hear about the Trump administration's attempt to force CARICOM member nations to end their participation in a Cuban medical program. The administration is also sending…
  • Cuban doctors leaving Venezuela
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    U.S. Pressures CARICOM to End Cooperation with Cuba and Sends Venezuelans to El Salvador
    21 Mar 2025
    Camila Escalante is an editor for Kawsachun News and a Latin America correspondent for PressTV. She will discuss the latest Trump administration policies moves in Latin America. Secretary of State…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Will Trump Send U.S. Citizens to El Salvador?
    19 Mar 2025
    Showdowns between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary will determine the fate of everyone in the country, including whether the government has the right to send citizens to jail in…
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Israeli Fascism Is Fueled by U.S. and European White Supremacy
    19 Mar 2025
    The unlimited support western powers give to Israel is a continuation of colonial violence and white supremacy. The U.S. and the west wield a false moral superiority over…
  • Ntozake Shange
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: Bocas: A Daughter's Geography, Ntozake Shange, 1983
    19 Mar 2025
    Ntozake Shange reminds us that whether we come from Haiti, Savannah, Luanda, or Palestine, we may not speak the same language, but “we fight the same old men.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us