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.”
Race is a sociopolitical construct, not a biological truth. The real determinants of health are structural factors such as zip code, environmental pollution, and access to resources.
A photograph of Delcy RodrĂguez smiling with Donald Trump after the U.S. kidnapped Nicolás Maduro is evidence of subordination to the United States. These images cannot be reconciled with the dignity…
Imperialist competition and wars that facilitate extractivism have long shaped the use of seaports for access to resources, markets, and devalued labor. In the last decade, countries in the chain of…
Iraqi Kurdish leaders say the US withdrawal will leave their region, long a CIA and Mossad hub, vulnerable to Iranian attacks.
BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley advises caution regarding the narrative that the US is in a state of decline. The US is committed to achieving full-spectrum dominance…
