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 Mass Incarceration: The Big Payback, a BAR Interview with Michelle Alexander. Part 1 of 2
15 Jan 2010
🖨️ Print Article

 

“Mass incarceration – not attacks on affirmative action or lax civil rights enforcement – is the most damaging manifestation of the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement,” says Ms. Alexander, a longtime civil rights lawyer. The U.S. national policy of mass incarceration has created an underclass that “is better understood as an undercaste – a lower class of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society. Although this new system of racialized social control purports to be colorblind, it creates and maintains a racial hierarchy much like the earlier [Jim Crow and slavery] systems of control.”

Click the player below to hear part one of this Black Agenda Report interview. 

Black Mass Incarceration: The Big Payback, a BAR Interview with Michelle Alexander


More Stories


  • The Cradle News Desk
    Yemen vows ‘no security’ for Saudi Arabia after major missile, drone attack
    16 Sep 2026
    The Yemeni attack involved dozens of ballistic missiles and drones, targeting sites from which Saudi warplanes took off to strike Yemen.
  • Berthony Dupont
    What Is Happening to the Haitian Left?
    16 Sep 2026
    Responsibility for Haiti's deteriorating conditions does not rest on the Haitian masses. A population does not rise up spontaneously but depends on political movements and organizations to build it.
  • Gary Wilson
    Germany’s war drive feeds the far right in Saxony-Anhalt
    16 Sep 2026
    The AfD's landslide in Saxony-Anhalt reflects real working-class anger at the war and the arms buildup, but the party redirects that anger toward migrants and leaves the capitalist system that caused…
  • Brett Wilkins
    ‘Nothing Short of Torture’: Critics Decry Abuse Affirmed by DHS Alligator Alcatraz Probe
    16 Sep 2026
    “DHS needs to be dismantled and held accountable for this complete inhumanity,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
  • BAR Radio
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio September 11, 2026
    11 Sep 2026
    In this week’s segment, we discuss the 55th anniversary and legacy of the 1971 Attica prison revolt. But we begin with the history of W.E.B. Du Bois and his struggle against the domestic repression…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us