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


  • Freedom Rider: Black People Lose in 2020
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Black People Lose in 2020
    05 Nov 2020
    Black people will get nothing from a Joe Biden administration except fiscal austerity and the precarity that comes with it.
  • Confronting Bipartisan Repression and the US-led Axis of Domination Beyond Election Day
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Confronting Bipartisan Repression and the US-led Axis of Domination Beyond Election Day
    04 Nov 2020
    No matter who sits in the white peoples’ house, we will have to continue to fight for social justice, democracy, and People(s)-Centered Human Rights.  
  • American Exceptionalism Won’t Save the U.S. Empire from Itself, or Stop China’s Rise
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    American Exceptionalism Won’t Save the U.S. Empire from Itself, or Stop China’s Rise
    04 Nov 2020
    China’s rise reflects a bourgeoning global movement away from U.S. imperialism and toward self-determination.
  • That is not the Question
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    That is not the Question
    04 Nov 2020
    The question is not if teargas breath thugs weaponizing COVID; co-signing starvation; stage whispering, “Lock her up!” ripping children from mothers’ arms—splintering 
  • Rubble Kings: How the Violence Stopped and Hip Hop Emerged in the South Bronx
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Rubble Kings: How the Violence Stopped and Hip Hop Emerged in the South Bronx
    04 Nov 2020
    A fact-based, crowd-funded film on urban devastation and gang warfare in the South Bronx packs a bigger political punch than the cult classic, The Warriors.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us