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 Elites, and Many Black Voters, Supported Mass Black Incarceration
25 Jul 2017
🖨️ 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 “fills a giant hole in the literature,” illuminating the role played by “Black elites in the rise of the mass incarceration system,” said Street, himself an expert on race and the U.S. penal system. “Many 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.


More Stories


  • PetroCaribe and Haiti’s Lost Opportunities
    Jean Jores Pierre
    PetroCaribe and Haiti’s Lost Opportunities
    29 Jul 2020
    The US puppets that run Haiti have squandered an historic opportunity for economic and social development.
  • San Quentin Death Sentence
    David Bacon
    San Quentin Death Sentence
    29 Jul 2020
    Prisoners’ supporters and loved ones demanded release of half the population and no transfers between prisons or to ICE.
  • A View from the Faultlines of National Oppression and Class Contradictions 
    Shaka Shakur
    A View from the Faultlines of National Oppression and Class Contradictions 
    29 Jul 2020
    They try to kriminalize the righteous rage of the people. “This slaughtering has a historical context and foundation.”
  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 27, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 27, 2020
    27 Jul 2020
    Has Covid-19 Initiated the Final, Fatal Crisis of Capitalism?
  • Nurturing a “Pan African Diasporic Consciousness”
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Nurturing a “Pan African Diasporic Consciousness”
    27 Jul 2020
    The interchange of ideas and experiences among African-descended people around the world has fostered a “Pan African Diasporic Consciousness” that advances all Black struggles, said Ja
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us