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

The Straight Line from Slavery to Mass Incarceration
Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
15 Oct 2018
🖨️ Print Article

The US model of mass incarceration can only be understood as an extension of slavery, said Martha Escobar, author of Captivity Beyond Prisons: Criminalization Experiences of Latina Immigrants. “Bringing non-white bodies into this country to labor for a predominantly white society has been the model that has carried over as immigrants entered the United States,” said Escobar, a professor of Chicano Studies at California State University at Northridge.

Slave Trade

More Stories


  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    White Supremacy and Climate Change: A Sinister Symbiosis
    19 Aug 2026
    The climate movement will never be effective as long as it refuses to confront white supremacy within its own organizations and as a belief system which is unconcerned about Black and brown death.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    They Wear The Masks
    19 Aug 2026
    "They Wear The Masks" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Wolfgang Bronner
    North Nashville's Reckoning: The Fight for Sovereignty in the Shadow of a Data Center
    19 Aug 2026
    Fisk University, an HBCU, is presenting a $400 million A.I. data center as progress for the North Nashville community. In truth, it means more pollution, more surveillance, and another chapter in a…
  • Ryan Kost
    A Judge Said Queens Prosecutors Hid Evidence. A Secret Committee Cleared Them Anyway.
    19 Aug 2026
    The mass incarceration system demands thousands of Black bodies behind bars. That system is maintained by prosecutorial misconduct which goes unpunished. That impunity is integral to keeping the…
  • Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
    Who Killed Jason Arday?
    19 Aug 2026
    Arday was killed by the contradiction at the heart of white elite institutions: they want the appearance of racial progress without structural change, and they readily discard Black people, even…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us