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


  • Progressive International
    "Their aim is silence — ours is truth"
    25 Jun 2025
    Statement from the Sovereign Media collective, a new coalition of anti-imperialist media organizations, on the Israeli regime's assault on journalists from Palestine to Iran.
  • Baraka on LSR
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist , Charisse Burden-Stelly, PhD , Layla Brown, PhD
    Ajamu Baraka Speaks on Israel, Iran, and Zionism
    25 Jun 2025
    Ajamu Baraka joins LSR to discuss BAP's June 13, 2025, statement, "The Middle East is On Fire Because Israeli and U.S. Imperialism Lit the Match". What is the current situation in the region? How…
  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio June 20, 2025
    20 Jun 2025
    In this week’s segment, we hear about the liberation struggle in the southern African nation of Swaziland, where an imperialist-backed monarchy holds political prisoners and engages in other…
  • LA Protest
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Los Angeles Protests, Immigration, and Black Politics
    20 Jun 2025
    Thandisizwe Chimurenga is a Los Angeles-based journalist and host of RootWork, which can also be seen on Black Liberation Media’s YouTube channel. She joins us to discuss the recent protests in…
  • Break the Chains
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Breaking the Chains in Swaziland
    20 Jun 2025
    Our guests are Titus Vilakati of the Break the Chains Campaign, which calls for the release of political prisoners in the southern African nation of Swaziland and the end of human rights abuses…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us