24 March 2020 — Black Agenda Radio

Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 23, 2020 

Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
Black Trillion Dollar “Buying Power” is a Capitalist Hoax / James Baldwin’s African Awakening / Too Fast to Be a Woman

Black Trillion Dollar “Buying Power” is a Capitalist Hoax 

Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
For decades, politicians and business people have claimed that, if only African Americans used their alleged trillion dollar consumer purchasing power wisely, Blacks would make great economic and political strides.  But Dr. Jared Ball, professor of communications at Morgan State University and author of “The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power,” said the theory “does not comport with actual studies of the condition of Blacks or any other community. We are actually devolving” compared to 50 years ago, said Ball, “but the propaganda continues.”

James Baldwin’s African Awakening 

Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
Although famed writers James Baldwin never wrote a book entirely about Africa in his long career, his later works show him awakening to “the potential of Black internationalism” with the decolonization of the continent, according to  Dagmawi Woubshet, professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. “The early Baldwin is concerned about the kinship between white and Black America,” said Woubshet,

Too Fast to Be a Woman 

Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
When South African track star Caster Semenya won a silver medal at the 2012 Olympic Games, critics claimed “she was cheating and had no right to compete with other women” because she performed more like a man,” said Anima Adjepong, professor of sociology at Simmons University. The furor showed that Black gender and sexuality are depicted as “excessive or not adequate,” said Adjepong.