Part One of this interview appeared here, in the January 6 issue of BAR. On January 20, BAR will begin publishing excerpts from The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [The New Press].
“Mass incarceration has turned the Black community against itself,” says Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Black Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Mainstream organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights put out laundry lists of proposed reforms, while failing to make America’s Black Gulag a priority. “If the way we pursue reforms does not contribute to the building of a movement to dismantle the system of mass incarceration,” says the veteran civil rights lawyer, “and if our advocacy does not upset the prevailing public consensus that supports the new caste system, none of the reforms, even if won, will successfully disrupt the nation’s racial equilibrium.”
Outrage over ICE raids rings hollow while 2 million languish in prisons. America has always had concentration camps. We just reserve our anger for the ones with TV cameras.
“Racists don’t give up easily, we learned, and the racists in sports are especially dedicated.”
"Don’t point fingers. Don’t ask evil questions." is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
As settler-colonial violence escalates from Kanaky to Palestine, Fanon’s century-old warnings are critical today—capitalism’s genocidal expansion demands revolution.
Kenya's Gen Z uprising is met with live bullets and a US-funded police crackdown. The brutal repression exposes the reality of neocolonialism, where Western 'aid' arms murderous regimes and IMF…
