Episodes
Monday Dec 28, 2020
Black Agenda Radio - 12.28.20
Monday Dec 28, 2020
Monday Dec 28, 2020
Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from Covid-19, and the U.S. economy remains crippled, but China is nearly Covid-free and economically growing. A new book explores the vast differences in how the two social systems performed during the contagion. And, major league baseball claims it is embracing the old Negro leagues. However, a professor of Afro-American studies says something’s wrong with that picture.
But first – Paul Clark is a doctoral candidate in African and American Studies who’s been doing research on labor, policing and privatization in South Africa. Before the end of white minority rule, South Africa was a world leader in mass incarceration, along with the Soviet Union and the United States. Clark says South Africa continues to hold that dubious distinction.
Veteran activists Sara Flounders and Lee Siu Hin are the editors of an important new book, titled “Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S.” It’s an anthology of essays by 50 writers, that explores why the United States has handled the virus so badly, while China was able to quickly bring the contagion under control. Sara Flounders says the real loser, is late stage capitalism.
Major League baseball has finally agreed to recognize the contributions to the so-called national past-time by the Negro baseball leagues, back in the time of segregation. The historically white franchises are now, in a sense, taking ownership of the Black baseball teams that they once excluded. Is that a good thing? We asked Josh Myers, a professor of Afro American studies at Howard University.
Monday Dec 21, 2020
Black Agenda Radio 12.21.20
Monday Dec 21, 2020
Monday Dec 21, 2020
Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: The post-colonial regime in Zimbabwe was determined to, literally, keep Black women in their place. We’ll speak with an author who has studied that era. And, a new book details how sex was a leading item of political discussion among anti-colonial activists in the Dutch West Indies.
But first -- Before famed Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture, he made a big impression on freedom organizations in Africa – some of it good, some not so favorable. Back in 1967, Carmichael took part in several conferences on the continent, and offered a critique of how the Black Liberation movement was going on the continent. Toivi Asheeke is a post-doctoral fellow in the sociology department at Vassar College. He wrote an article titled, ““Black Power and Armed Decolonization in Southern Africa: Stokely Carmichael, the African National Congress of South Africa, and the African Liberation Movements.”
Rudo Mudiwa is a Phd in Communication and Culture, and currently a Research Fellow at Princeton University. Mudiwa is a native of Zimbabwe, and is critical of how the Black government that replaced white rule treated Black women. Dr. Mudiwa wrote a recent article titled, “Stop the Woman, Save the State. Policing, Order, and the Black Woman’s Body.”
In the years after World War Two, sex was the big topic of discussion among pro-independence activist in the Dutch Caribbean colonies of Aruba and Curaçao
New York City University History professor Chelsea Shield has studied this era, and written a book titled “Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy after Empire.” We at Black Agenda Report had never heard of a colonial struggle in which sexual issues – including prostitution – played such an important role.
Monday Dec 07, 2020
Black Agenda Radio - 12.07.20
Monday Dec 07, 2020
Monday Dec 07, 2020
Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: It is now widely accepted that Black Americans are owed a debt for hundreds of years of slavery and racial oppression. But, can Reparations be a distraction from the work of Black liberation that needs to be done? And, how do you defund the police in a city like Baltimore, unless you can also assure the Black community that other ways can be found to deal with violence and crime?
But first – President-elect Joe Biden’s cabinet is taking shape, comprised mainly of corporate and imperial political operatives. Rebecca Ann Wilcox is a community organizer and Phd candidate at the Princeton Theological Seminary, with a special focus on Race, Gender and Class Analysis. Wilcox believes that corporate Democrats are, in some ways, more dangerous than overt white supremacists.
Zuri Arman Kent-Smith is a Poet, writer and activist with a degree in Africana Studies and Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Kent-Smith has a particular interest in the question of Reparations for Black Americans. In the early stages of the Democratic presidential primaries, a number of candidates endorsed the principle of Black Reparations. But, does that mean the issue has become mainstreamed?
The grassroots youth organization called “Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle” have been deeply involved in Black empowerment activities in Baltimore, Maryland. Lawrence Grandpre is the organization’s Research Director. He was a recent guest on Dr. Jared Ball’s acclaimed podcast, “I Mix What I Like.” Grandpre agrees in principle with the demand for defunding of police. But he doesn’t think the Black Lives Matter organization has a clue how to sell the concept to the Black community.