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


  • x
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Gaza Media Accountability Encampment
    08 Aug 2025
    The Gaza Media Accountability Encampment began in response to what organizers call the media’s “complicity in manufacturing consent for Israel’s crimes against humanity.” Activists are demanding an…
  • Kenya protest sign
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    "The Kenyan President is a Colonizer"
    08 Aug 2025
    Marcela Onyango is a Luo stand-up comedian and writer based in Brooklyn and Washington DC. She is the founder of Feel the News on TikTok, a columnist for Shado Mag and host of a monthly show, Feel…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Zionist Shakedown
    06 Aug 2025
    Israel is a genocidaire apartheid state silencing critics around the world through threats, intimidation, lawfare, and accusations of antisemitism to prevent facing justice through international…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Attica Then and Now! Acklyn R. Lynch, 1971
    06 Aug 2025
    “The men at Attica were prepared to die for the democratic principles not only enunciated in their Manifesto, but experienced in their revolt…”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Eritrea: We Won’t Kneel Down
    06 Aug 2025
    Eritrean Americans celebrated their 51st Eritrean Festival and their home country’s resolute independence from August 1 to 3, 2025.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us