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


  • Hanna Eid
    Imperialism and the Arab World: An Interview with Tara Alami
    27 May 2026
    Compliant Arab regimes spent decades spreading anti-Iran propaganda, but the current assault on Iran is shattering those lies.
  • Joshua Reaves Charmelus
    Unity and Sovereignty: Cuba’s True ‘Threat’ To US Interests
    27 May 2026
    The U.S. indicted 94-year-old Raúl Castro not out of concern for the people of Cuba or the U.S., but because six decades of sanctions have failed to destroy Cuba's revolutionary continuity.
  • Gary Wilson
    Musk’s A.I. Power Plant Exposes Capitalism’s Data-Center Crisis
    27 May 2026
    A Black community in Tennessee is living with the environmental impact of a data center brought to them by Elon Musk and conniving elected officials.
  • Elías Jaua , Federico Fuentes
    Former Chávez VP: Venezuela Needs a New ‘struggle for liberation’
    27 May 2026
    A former vice-president who served with Hugo Chávez provides analysis on what he calls neo-colonial control and coercion the U.S. is exercising against Venezuela.
  • Matt Sledge , Sam Biddle
    ICE Recruitment Tweets Are So Racist That Cops Feared They Could Incite Neo-Nazi Violence
    27 May 2026
    A newly uncovered police bulletin warns that white supremacists may interpret ICE social media content as a call to violence.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us