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


  • BAR Book Forum: Zakiya Luna’s “Reproductive Rights as Human Rights”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Zakiya Luna’s “Reproductive Rights as Human Rights”
    13 Jan 2021
    This book is a story about a group of (mostly) women who wanted to make change and understood that liberation is an inside job.  
  • BAR Book Forum: Chris A. Barcelos’ “Distributing Condoms and Hope”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Chris A. Barcelos’ “Distributing Condoms and Hope”
    13 Jan 2021
    Replacing cops with social workers could “reproduce the same kinds of harm,” as this author explains.
  • Coup d’état or Insurrection – What’s Good for the Goose… 
    Dr.Wilmer J. Leon, III
    Coup d’état or Insurrection – What’s Good for the Goose… 
    13 Jan 2021
    Under what authority does the American government have the right to instigate and execute coup’s against democratically elected governments in other countries?
  • The Trump Administration’s Parting Outrage Against Cuba
    Medea Benjamin and Leonardo Flores
    The Trump Administration’s Parting Outrage Against Cuba
    13 Jan 2021
    Cuba’s placement on the state sponsors of terror list is meant to be a thorn in any plan by the Biden administration for rapprochement.
  • On the Anniversary of His Death, Theodore W. Allen’s Analysis Still Resonates
    Jeffrey B. Perry
    On the Anniversary of His Death, Theodore W. Allen’s Analysis Still Resonates
    13 Jan 2021
    “White supremacy” wrote Allen, is “both the keystone and the Achilles heel of U.S. bourgeois democracy.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us