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Book review: the left’s part in putting black America behind bars
Harvard historian Elizabeth Hinton's book From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime explains how liberal politicians, not just conservative Republicans, are responsible for the mass incarceration of black Americans today
Reading Time:4 minutes
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From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime
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by Elizabeth Hinton
Harvard University Press
4/5 stars
What if the mass incarceration and policing of African Americans in the United States was conceived not by reactionary Republicans but progressive Democrats? What if, in order to understand why police in the United States kill people daily and why there are about a million black faces behind bars in that country, you need to consider not just the usual bogeymen of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, but also the liberal lions John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson?
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