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


  • The Obama-fication of “The Squad” Strengthens the Right at the Expense of the Left
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    The Obama-fication of “The Squad” Strengthens the Right at the Expense of the Left
    13 Jan 2021
    The so-called ‘progressive” model would have us wait half a dozen election cycles before taking real action on the demand for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.
  • This is what hypocrisy looks like…
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    This is what hypocrisy looks like…
    13 Jan 2021
    “It's like writing history with lightning.“ â€” Woodrow Wilson on Birth of A Nation
  • W.E.B. Du Bois and the Paths to Communism: A Review
    Anthony Monteiro, BAR editor and columnist
    W.E.B. Du Bois and the Paths to Communism: A Review
    13 Jan 2021
    Du Bois, the father of Pan Africanism and the towering theorist of race, was – just as importantly -- one of the great theorists of communism.
  • The Capitol Catastrophe and Trump’s Hijacked White Nationalism
    Mark P. Fancher
    The Capitol Catastrophe and Trump’s Hijacked White Nationalism
    13 Jan 2021
    Trump threw a monkey wrench into the capitalist system’s population management machine.
  • Letters from Our Readers
    Jason Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers
    13 Jan 2021
    “The Squad Won’t Fight Pelosi and Corporate Power” by Glen Ford 
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us