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.”
For Black August, read William L. Patterson on racial genocide, the law, and the Martinsville Seven.
One year ago the U.S. was ousted from Afghanistan after making war on that country for 20 years. But the U.S. killed civilians as it left and stole Afghanistan's assets. It seems there is no end to…
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This week’s featured author is Boukary Sawadogo. Sawadogo is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and Black Studies at City College–City University of New York. His book is Africans in Harlem: An…
Ahjamu Umi and Roberto Sirvent discuss revolutionary organizing.
