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 1 of 2
15 Jan 2010
🖨️ Print Article

 

“Mass incarceration – not attacks on affirmative action or lax civil rights enforcement – is the most damaging manifestation of the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement,” says Ms. Alexander, a longtime civil rights lawyer. The U.S. national policy of mass incarceration has created an underclass that “is better understood as an undercaste – a lower class of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society. Although this new system of racialized social control purports to be colorblind, it creates and maintains a racial hierarchy much like the earlier [Jim Crow and slavery] systems of control.”

Click the player below to hear part one of this Black Agenda Report interview. 

Black Mass Incarceration: The Big Payback, a BAR Interview with Michelle Alexander


More Stories


  • Arturo Dominguez
    The US Plan To Pillage Latin America Is Becoming Clearer
    29 Oct 2025
    Trump Administration officials have frequently invoked the Monroe Doctrine, explaining the aggression toward Latin America.
  • Steve Salaita
    Palestine and the Making of a New New World
    29 Oct 2025
    The liberation of Palestine is, above all, a world-building project.
  • Rodrigo Durão Coelho
    15 million Venezuelans enlist to defend their country amid U.S. threats, says ex-diplomat Carlos Ron
    29 Oct 2025
    He stresses, however, that the atmosphere is not one of panic despite the possibility of military aggression.
  • Pablo Meriguet
    Cuba denounces Trump admin pressuring countries to change their vote against the 62-year US blockade
    29 Oct 2025
    The Cuban foreign minister has stated that, in addition to diplomatic pressure, intimidation has been exerted on certain countries that condemn the economic blockade that Washington has maintained on…
  • Jemima Pierre and Mark Lamont Hill
    Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Contributor
    'Leave us alone': Scholar Jemima Pierre on ending Haiti’s foreign occupation
    29 Oct 2025
    As foreign troops, private contractors, and international powers tighten their grip on Haiti, the country is facing one of the worst crises in its modern history. But who is really to blame? On…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us