The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Ta-Nehisi Coates, October 2015 Issue, The Atlantic Monthly

American politicians are now eager to disown a failed criminal-justice system that’s left the U.S. with the largest incarcerated population in the world. But they’ve failed to reckon with history. Fifty years after Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report “The Negro Family” tragically helped create this system, it’s time to reclaim his original intent.