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


  • Rikers Island
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Rikers Island, Slave Catching, and the Modern Carceral State
    07 Mar 2025
    Darren Mack is co-founder and co-director of Freedom Agenda, an organization devoted to decarceration and system transformation, including
  • A Thousand Youth for Palestine
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Israel and Complicit Middle East Countries Commit War Crimes in Gaza
    07 Mar 2025
    Dilara Sengul is a member of “A Thousand Youth for Palestine”, an organization based in Turkey that is a member of the International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine. She joins us to discuss…
  • illustration of women political figures
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    International Working Women's Day
    07 Mar 2025
    Participants in an International Working Women's Day webinar explain the importance of the day in building international solidarity.
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Liberals Want War in Ukraine, Trump Wants Peace in Ukraine, But All Agree on Death in Gaza
    05 Mar 2025
    Donald Trump’s efforts to normalize relations with Russia, and to end the fighting in the Ukraine proxy war are logical and sensible. But years of whipped up anti-Russia hatred make logical solutions…
  • Mary McLeod Bethune
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    DOCUMENT: My Last Will and Testament, Mary McLeod Bethune, 1955
    05 Mar 2025
    Mary McLeod Bethune’s testament to a good, ethical life.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us