"Black Silent Majority" by Michael Fortner. A Review

 

Single-cause interpretations are a huge problem. They are tools used by ideologues to convince people to step into the “Us vs. Them” morass. It stirs polarization and partisanship. Single-cause interpretations are a serious problem. But a single-cause interpretation is not to be found in the 368-page hardback “Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment” written by Michael Javen Fortner, who was Assistant Professor and Academic Dean of Urban Studies at the CUNY School of Professional Studies and is presently Associate Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California. It’s a slow read filled with details, data, and reports of and by real people. It is an essential read, especially if one is concerned with penal reforms, or restoring racial relationships.

 

Fortner put this book together “because the literature on mass incarceration neglected the voices of working- and middle-class African Americans dealing daily with drug addiction and violent crime and their aftermath. Few scholars have taken stock of their views” (x). He further desires to “redeem the agency of black people who are portrayed, at best, as backbenchers to history, treated either as hostages of white supremacy or as collateral damage to neoliberalism. I wrote this book to recover the voice of the ‘invisible black victim’” (xii). I think the author has skillfully achieved his aim.

 

This densely argued work is “not about the morality of the criminal justice system in the United States” but, instead, “brings to light the complexities of crime policymaking and” to “solve one particularly vexing puzzle: why the carceral state, this nation’s most ignoble institution, appeared after the monumental civil rights victories of the 1960s.” Fortner finds that the answer has less to do with white resistance to racial equality and “more to do with the black silent majority’s confrontation with the ‘reign of criminal terror’ in their neighborhoods” (22-3). That is the book in a nutshell.

 

Working from roughly 1940s to the 1970s, Fortner piles in heavy data, strong studies, and weighty resources to show the various levels of change in black Barrios, Ghettoes, and Hoods, when it came to crime and punishment. From the white reformers who worked toward rehabilitation but didn’t live in the high-crime neighborhoods, to the black activists who lost much to crime in their communities and worked toward criminal punishment. The author examines multiple layers explaining the changes in perspective and policymaking.

 

Though the author uses Harlem as his main investigative sample, he makes it clear how the same trends were happening in Chicago, Detroit, and beyond. “Black Silent Majority” is a significant work that needs to be read by policymakers, those concerned with policing policies, pastors, and anyone working on promoting a healthy America. It is an impressive tale, and will carefully lead readers to see that “the black silent majority spoke. It organized. It abandoned liberalism, embracing harsh sentences and aggressive policing methods in order to end their nightmare and restore the benefits of their newly won citizenship…The carceral state did not rise like the sun at an appointed time: the black silent majority was present at its making” 279-80). I highly recommend the work!

For Black History Month 2023, this was one of three books I read by black authors. You can see my reviews of the others at: Wilfred Reilly and "Hate Crime Hoax" and Anthony Bradley and "Faith in Society."