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 2 of 2
13 Jan 2010
🖨️ Print Article

Part One of this interview appeared here, in the January 6 issue of BAR. On January 20, BAR will begin publishing excerpts from The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [The New Press].

“Mass incarceration has turned the Black community against itself,” says Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Black Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Mainstream organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights put out laundry lists of proposed reforms, while failing to make America’s Black Gulag a priority. “If the way we pursue reforms does not contribute to the building of a movement to dismantle the system of mass incarceration,” says the veteran civil rights lawyer, “and if our advocacy does not upset the prevailing public consensus that supports the new caste system, none of the reforms, even if won, will successfully disrupt the nation’s racial equilibrium.”

 


More Stories


  • BAR Radio
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Report October 2, 2026
    02 Oct 2026
    In this week’s segment we hear about the right-wing politics of the anti-migrant movement in South Africa, ANC failures, and upcoming elections in that country. But we begin with the first and only…
  • Chris Smalls
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Chris Smalls' "When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class"
    02 Oct 2026
    Chris Smalls discusses his memoir, "When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class," published by Penguin Random House. He is the first and only union leader to successfully…
  • South Africa anti-immigration march
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    South Africa's "March and March" Collaborates with Right Wing Afrikaners
    02 Oct 2026
    Our guest is Nairobi based political writer and strategist Clinton Nzala. He joins us to provide an update and an analysis of the South African anti-migrant March and March movement, which is…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Defending a Non-Existent International Law
    30 Sep 2026
    The Hague Group’s goal is to “. . . take coordinated legal and diplomatic measures against Israel’s violations of international law.” But international law was never a reality.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    LETTER: “We See Preparations for a Direct Military Intervention by the United States and Its Allies,” Fidel Castro, 1990
    30 Sep 2026
    “I believe that the Movement of Nonaligned Countries…can buttress the united will of the Arab nation and help it to prevail against intervention and aggression.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us