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.”
The late Charles Rangel served as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus for more than 40 years. But the goals of Black politics and electoral politics are not necessarily the same.
“In theory and in practice, then, Zionism is a degraded repetition of European imperialism.”
Eritrea remains true to the revolutionary ideals forged during its 30-year War of Independence.
By vetoing a bill to study reparations, Maryland Governor Wes Moore has aligned himself with a long line of Black Democrats who prioritize white approval over their own base.
The 2020 uprisings could have sparked a multiracial working-class movement against systemic oppression, but liberal elites defanged its radical potential. By reducing Black liberation to performative…
