Michael Javen Fortner, assistant professor and academic director of urban studies at the CUNY School of Professional Studies Murphy Institute, and the author of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment (Harvard University Press, 2015), argues that Rockefeller's tougher drug laws were supported by working and middle class African Americans plagued by the crimes that surrounded the drug trade - specifically Harlem residents.
“We’re not going to fully deal w/ the scourge of mass incarceration until we really take crime srsly.” @ProfFortner pic.twitter.com/fbwlm6kSw8
— Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) September 30, 2015