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


  • Why good guys with guns flunk out (In schools near you)
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Why good guys with guns flunk out (In schools near you)
    10 Jun 2022
                                                           â€¦
  • U.S. Effort to Hurt Russia Undermines Itself and the World
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    U.S. Effort to Hurt Russia Undermines Itself and the World
    08 Jun 2022
    The U.S. drive to dominate creates self-inflicted wounds and self-imposed crises. It also creates suffering around the world with only the most servile vassal states willing to do what…
  • For the Peoples of our Region, the Failure of Biden’s Summit of the Americas Would be a Welcome Event
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    For the Peoples of our Region, the Failure of Biden’s Summit of the Americas Would be a Welcome Event
    08 Jun 2022
    The Summit of the Americas is not the property of the host nation. The U.S. has no right to exclude, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, but has done so in disregard of their sovereignty. The U.S. is not…
  • DOCUMENT: The Decline of the United States Empire, James Boggs, 1963
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    DOCUMENT: The Decline of the United States Empire, James Boggs, 1963
    08 Jun 2022
    James Boggs was a Detroit auto worker, activist, and author. Nearly 60 years ago he analyzed revolutionary movements in the Americas and described their role in hastening the U.S. empire's…
  • Why the Belt and Road Initiative Won’t be Derailed by the Ukraine Crisis
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Why the Belt and Road Initiative Won’t be Derailed by the Ukraine Crisis
    08 Jun 2022
    Ukraine has been at the center of a massive geopolitical and economic whirlwind. But the turmoil caused by the U.S.-instigated conflict shouldn't cause problems for the Belt and Road Initiative.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us