The Dig Folgen

Putting “black faces in high places,” scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor argues, has not only failed to benefit the working class and poor black majority; it has actually harmed them by legitimating an individualistic, meritocratic narrative that blames poor black people’s condition on their own personal failings. Taylor is a professor of African-American studies at Princeton and the author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, from Haymarket Books.

Prisons don’t just keep inmates in; they keep the public out. Even at a moment when mass incarceration is under unprecedented criticism it is quite hard for people on the outside to empathize with people who they cannot see or speak to. My guests today are Brett Story and Jordan Camp. Story is a filmmaker who has made an incredible new documentary called The Prison in 12 Landscapes, which shines a harsh light on America’s prison archipelago without ever taking a peek inside. is a scholar of the carceral state.

Trump’s oligarchic regime is an extreme version of the imperial and economic vision that has guided presidents of both major parties. But the popularity of Trump’s chauvinist, xenophobic appeal points to a major crisis in the ideological and political-economic regime of the United States and the world for decades. That’s neoliberalism, a system that isn’t quite over under Trump. But as Nicole Aschoff argues in the most recent issue of Jacobin, it has radically changed. Today, my guest is Nicole Aschoff, managing editor at Jacobin and the author of The New Prophets of Capital, part of Jacobin’s Verso Series. You can read her article “The Glory Days Are Over” in the new issue of Jacobin and at jacobinmag.com.