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.
This week’s featured author is Miguel Valerio. Valerio is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis. His book is Sovereign Joy: Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640.
The Congressional Black Caucus has strayed far from the politics of its original members. Once called the "conscience of the congress," the group is made up of Democratic Party loyalists living off…
The governor of Missouri refused to grant clemency to Kevin Johnson and the state Supreme Court denied motions to halt his execution. The US Supreme Court refused to hear his case. Kevin Johnson was…
Racial inequity is the result of racist and capitalist policies and can't be defeated by the self-interested Black political class.
There is a long and terrible history of exploitation and abuse of Haitians and Haitian descended people in the Dominican Republic's sugar industry.
