“Mass incarceration – not attacks on affirmative action or lax civil rights enforcement – is the most damaging manifestation of the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement,” says Ms. Alexander, a longtime civil rights lawyer. The U.S. national policy of mass incarceration has created an underclass that “is better understood as an undercaste – a lower class of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society. Although this new system of racialized social control purports to be colorblind, it creates and maintains a racial hierarchy much like the earlier [Jim Crow and slavery] systems of control.”
Click the player below to hear part one of this Black Agenda Report interview.
Black Mass Incarceration: The Big Payback, a BAR Interview with Michelle Alexander
Eritrean Americans celebrated their 51st Eritrean Festival and their home country’s resolute independence from August 1 to 3, 2025.
History exposes the Fed's inflation fight for what it truly is: a decades-long class war waged against working people under the guise of monetary policy.
"There is no starvation" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
The U.S. climate movement claims to fight for change while systematically silencing radical action. This isn’t resistance. It’s controlled opposition dressed in green.
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Karen Antoinette Scott.
