12 November 2020 — Black Agenda Report
Black Voters: “Contrarian” Men and “Communal” Women
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
A significant portion of Black males are “contrarians” that take positions at odds with the general Black political consensus – while Black women tend to take the communal approach.
Freedom Rider: The Real Resistance Begins
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
“Kamala Auntie” and Joe from Scranton will do as little as possible so that “nothing will fundamentally change” that would halt endless wars and the Race to the Bottom.
Joe Biden’s Victory is Still a Loss for Humanity
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
The Biden-Harris administration is good news for corporations, cops, war profiteers and banks too big to fail, but offers nothing to save the people and planet from multiple rises.
Susan Rice, a Butcher of Africans, May Become Secretary of State
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor Rice`
Rice has been intimately involved in covering up the deaths of moe than six million Congolese, and has cultivated close relations with every US-backed tyrant on the continent.
My Wise Country Cousin on Unca Jim Clyburn an de Sharp Rite Turn
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Son, it look lak Unca Jim say, “Las’ time I chek I’se de whip— an’ got no time fo’ young Negroz wit all dey Blak Life lip…”
Black Cops Don’t Make Policing Any Less Anti-Black
Bree Newsome Bass
The idea that we can resolve racism by integrating a fundamentally anti-Black institution is the most absurd notion of all.
The FBI’s War on the Left: A Short History of COINTELPRO
Alex Zambito
The Bureau’s COINTELPRO deployed every trick and crime in the book to crush left dissidents, from disruption to assassination.
Letters from Our Readers
Jason Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
This week the presidential election and the legacy of Paul Robeson were on your minds.
BAR Book Forum: Lia T. Bascomb’s “In Plenty and in Time of Need”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Politicians ignore at their peril the power of popular culture and its people-moving practitioners.
BAR Book Forum: Adrienne Brown’s “The Black Skyscraper”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Facial masks and Black Lives Matter murals are part of the ever-changing panorama that shapes our perceptions of hierarchy, just as tall buildings do.
A “Communalist” Future?
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
“Socialism is communalism in the modern form,” said activist and University of Illinois doctoral candidate Shay Akil McLean, citing Kwame Nkrumah. “When it comes to who has the power” over “how things will be governed and how resources will be distributed, it has to be in the hands of the people,” said McLean.
Biden to Oversee a Kinder, Gentler Repression
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
“The Democratic Party has used the language of law and order as much as the Republicans,” said Justin Lang, a doctoral candidate and activist at Brown University. Joe Biden “will try to maintain the same state of policing” as his predecessors “and just make it seem less repressive on the surface.”
White Supremacy Lite Wins the Prize
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was about how best to preserve whiteness, said Dr Johnny Williams, professor of Sociology at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. The choice was presented, “Do you want to preserve whiteness in terms of white supremacy, or white supremacy lite?” The race-based nature of the campaign, Williams maintains, allowed the candidates to avoid running on issues.
The COVID-19 Pandemic Exposes Fatal Health Inequities
Meredeth Turshen and Annie Thébaud-Mony
Privatization of health care is why some of the wealthiest countries have proved unable to respond rapidly to the pandemic.
“No Coloreds:” Racism in Britain has a Long if Contested History
Angelique Richardson
The Brits practiced a nonjudicial form of Jim Crow against non-white immigrants from their colonial empire.
Black Argentinians Demand Inclusion in National Story
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Argentina created a mythology of national whiteness that pretended the country’s Black population had long ago gone extinct, and ignored the presence of indigenous people. But young African-descended Argentinians are fighting “for their visibility” in the nation narrative and history, said Dr Erika Edwards, professor of Colonial Latin American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and author of the book, “Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Public. The Black movement, said Edwards, is “saying that, not only have we not just arrived” in the country, “we have always been here.”
The Elusive Quest for Justice in Black America
Bashir Muhammad Akinyele
We as Black people must keep pushing, organizing, and demanding a Black agenda centered on reparations.
Stolen Freedom: The Ongoing Incarceration of California’s Indigenous Peoples
Morning Star Gali
For 350 years, California has imprisoned and disenfranchised its Native peoples like few other places.
Now that Trump Has Been Defeated…
Popular Resistance
We need to continue building power from the bottom up through organizing, political education and community assemblies.