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 Elites, and Many Black Voters, Supported Mass Black Incarceration
25 Jul 2017
🖨️ Print Article

Historian, author and activist Paul Street has high praise for James Forman Jr.’s new book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Forman is a professor at Yale Law School and a former public defender in Washington, DC. His book “fills a giant hole in the literature,” illuminating the role played by “Black elites in the rise of the mass incarceration system,” said Street, himself an expert on race and the U.S. penal system. “Many ordinary, working class Black voters in the 70s and 80s have actively supported the racially disparate war on crime and drugs that ended up producing racist mass incarceration,” said Street, whose latest book is titled They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy.


More Stories


  • Maurice Carney
    United States Secures its National Security Interests In Congo Peace Deal
    10 Dec 2025
    The so-called "peace agreement" between Rwanda and Congo prioritizes U.S. access to mineral riches. The violence carried out against thousands of civilians continues.
  • x
    Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Year in Rear View: What the Lack of Principled and Pronounced Opposition Reveals About that US Left (Or, Why Oppressed People Best Watch Your Backs)
    10 Dec 2025
    Trump’s accelerated fascism is met with the silence of a compromised U.S. "left." Its institutions, tethered to capitalism and the Democratic Party, reveal they are part of the machine they claim to…
  • Essam Elkorghli
    De-Baathification 2.0: One Year Since the Fall of Syria
    10 Dec 2025
    Western media celebrate the terrorist they supported as Syria's savior. Syria’s new U.S.-backed rulers have erased anti-colonial history, enacted neo-liberal policies, and welcomed Israeli occupation…
  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio December 5, 2025
    05 Dec 2025
    In this week’s segment, we hear about events in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, a disputed election, and a so-called coup that was actually carried out on behalf of the president. But first…
  • Margaret Kimberley and Jamarl Thomas
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    China Cannot Be Contained
    05 Dec 2025
    Margaret Kimberley was a guest on the Jamarl Thomas YouTube Channel. We present excerpts of the discussion of her contribution to the new anthology China Changes Everything. Her chapter is entitled "…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us