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Black Elites, and Many Black Voters, Supported Mass Black Incarceration
25 Jul 2017
πŸ–¨οΈ 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 β€œfills a giant hole in the literature,” illuminating the role played by β€œBlack elites in the rise of the mass incarceration system,” said Street, himself an expert on race and the U.S. penal system. β€œMany 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.


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