Michael Javen Fortner
Associate Professor of Government, Claremont McKenna College
Chapter Member: Los Angeles Unified SSN
Areas of Expertise:
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About Michael
Fortner’s research interests focus on American culture and politics, race and social problems, crime and criminal justice, and inequality and public policy. He is the author of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment (Harvard University Press, 2015). Along with Amy Bridges, he edited a volume on city politics, Urban Citizenship and American Democracy (SUNY Press, 2016). He has also been published in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Newsweek, and Dissent magazine, and his research has been covered in major media outlets, such as The New York Times, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, and the Daily Beast.
Contributions
Black Politics and the Origins of America's Prison Boom
Key Findings Brief,
In the News
Quoted by Henry Gass in "New Black Lives Matter Platform: From Indignation to Remedies," Christian Science Monitor, August 2, 2016.
Opinion: "The Last Hurrah of the 'Silent Majority'?," Michael Javen Fortner, Arguments, Democracy Journal, July 29, 2016.
Opinion: "Bill Clinton was Right: Blacks Supported the Crime Bill (and That Should Surprise No One)," Michael Javen Fortner, History News Network, May 24, 2016.
Research discussed by , in "The Forgotten History of ‘the Black Silent Majority’," The Federalist, May 5, 2016.
Quoted by Jamelle Bouie in "The Messy, Very Human Politics of Bill Clinton’s Crime Bill," Slate, April 11, 2016.
Quoted by Henry Gass in "Why Many Black Voters Don't Blame Hillary for Tough-on-Crime Laws," Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 2016.
Quoted by Leon Neyfakh in "Black Americans Supported the 1994 Crime Bill, Too," Slate, February 12, 2016.
Quoted by Jason L. Riley in "An Alternative Black History Month," Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2016.
Quoted by Daniel Denvir in "The Truth about Mandatory Minimums: The Left’s Painful-but Necessary-Conversation about Crime & Punishment," Salon, October 29, 2015.
Opinion: "Are the Clintons to Blame for Turning the U.S. into a Prison State?," Michael Javen Fortner, Newsweek, October 10, 2015.
Interviewed in "Mass Incarceration's Black Support," WNYC: The Brian Lehrer Show, September 30, 2015.
Opinion: "The Real Roots of ’70s Drug Laws," Michael Javen Fortner, New York Times, September 28, 2015.
Quoted by John McWhorter in "Black Lives Matter Is Living in the Past," Daily Beast, September 28, 2015.
Research discussed by , in "The Black Activists Who Helped Launch the Drug War," New York Magazine, September 27, 2015.
Research discussed by , in "‘Black Silent Majority,’ by Michael Javen Fortner," New York Times, September 21, 2015.
Quoted by Daniel Denvir in "The Long, Ugly History of 'Law and Order' Candidates," The Atlantic, September 16, 2015.
Research discussed by , in "Mass Incarceration Has Become the New Welfare," The Atlantic, September 16, 2015.
Opinion: "How the Black Middle Class Pushed for Harsher Drug Laws," Michael Javen Fortner, The Daily Beast, September 14, 2015.
Quoted by Brentin Mock in "Can We Talk About Urban Violence Without the Word 'Black'?," Atlantic:City Lab, September 10, 2015.
Research discussed by , in "The Real Problem with America’s Inner Cities," New York Times, May 9, 2015.
Guest on NCPR News, August 19, 2013.
Guest on NPR's Code Switch, August 16, 2013.
Interviewed in "Election 2012: Previewing the Party Conventions," Wicked Local, Taunton, August 23, 2012.
Publications
"Black Silent Majority: Urban Politics and the Development of the Rockefeller Drug Laws" (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).
Examines the role the black middle-class played in the development of mass incarceration, rejecting the widely popular new Jim Crow thesis.
Urban Citizenship and American Democracy: The Historical and Institutional Roots of Local Politics and Policy (edited with ) (SUNY Press, forthcoming).
Reaffirms the centrality of local politics and urban citizenship to 20th-Century American political development and democracy.
"Rediscovering the Tocquevillian Impulse: Urban Government and the Historical Development of American Democracy" in Urban Citizenship and American Democracy: The Historical and Institutional Roots of Local Politics and Policy, edited by Amy Bridges and Michael Javen Fortner (SUNY Press, forthcoming).
Constructs a theory of the urban state and explores the ways in which local politics influences broader patterns in American politics.
"'Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone?' Reverend Oberia Dempsey and His Citizens War on Drugs" The Journal of Policy History 27, no. 1 (2015): 118-148.
Traces Dempsey’s activism from the early 1950s until the passage of the Rockefeller drug laws and describes the organic grassroots political responses to drug addiction, trafficking, and related crimes that developed in Harlem during the 1960s and early 1970s. Explores how the forces of urban change drove conflict between the black underclass and working and middle-class African Americans and birthed black penal populism. Argues that Dempsey and others mobilized the rich civic resources that were so crucial to the success of the black rights movement in the 1950s against the black underclass in the 1960s and early 1970s.
"‘The Silent Majority’ in Black and White: Invisibility and Imprecision in the Historiography of Mass Incarceration" Journal of Urban History (2014).
Refines the historiography of mass incarceration and post-war American political history by revealing the existence of a “black silent majority” and situating “law and order” concerns within specific local political contexts.
"The Carceral State and the Crucible of Black Politics: An Urban History of the Rockefeller Drug Laws" Studies in American Political Development 27 (April 2013): 1-22.
Examines the role the black middle class in Harlem played in the development of New York State’s Rockefeller drug laws.