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


  • Mamdani and Tisch
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Mamdani Reappoints NYPD Commissioner Who Refused to Punish Killer Cops
    28 Nov 2025
    Samy Feliz is an organizer with Justice Committee, a grassroots organization dedicated to building a movement against police violence and systemic racism in New York City and empowering low-income…
  • Congress members
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Illegal Orders, Liberal Hypocrisy, and Fake Outrage
    26 Nov 2025
    Democrats recruit military veterans and former intelligence agency operatives to run for office to prove their pro-war credentials. A contrived fight with Donald Trump shouldn’t fool anyone.
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    United Nations Security Council Resolution on Gaza is a Surrender to U.S. Led Global Fascism
    26 Nov 2025
    By approving a U.S. "peace plan" that legitimizes genocide and ends the right to resist, the United Nations Security Council has not just failed Palestine—it has actively consolidated a new era of…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EXCERPT: Die Nigger, Die! H. Rap Brown, 1969
    26 Nov 2025
    “Blackness alone is not revolutionary.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    The United Arab Emirates Use a Black Sport to Whitewash a Genocide in Africa
    26 Nov 2025
    National Basketball Association (NBA) players are 70-75% Black, so the game is commonly referred to as “a Black sport.” Now the United Arab Emirates are using it to whitewash a genocide in Africa.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us