Black Agenda Radio - 04.27.20

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: a Black scholar says Blacks will remain a subservient people if they continue making REQUESTS, rather than DEMANDS, of power. And, we’ll take a look at a state that where whites, Hispanics and Native Americans are all acknowledged celebrated, but Black people are erased from history.

But first – the state of Louisiana incarcerates more of its citizens per capita than any other place in the world, most of them Black. That Black prison majority is now mortally endangered by the coronavirus epidemic. The Black Is Back Coalition held a national teleconference, featuring two activists battling to free Louisiana’s prisoners from the Covid-19 death-trap. Belinda Parter Brown spoke first. She’s head of Louisiana United International.

It has long been fashionable in some Black circles to speak of all the racial “progress” that has been made. But Professor Anthony Farley, of Boston College Law School, has written a paper that maintains the system of slavery is still with us in the United States, and that Black politics often amounts to nothing but Perfecting Slavery.

New Mexico is among the least Black states in the country. But Dr. Natasha Howard, a lecturer on Africana Studies at the University of New Mexico, says the reason Blacks are scarce is because the state was for a long time very hostile to ANY Black presence. Dr. Howard wrote on article that focused on a mural on display at the University, celebrating Anglo Whites, Spanish-speaking people, and Native Americans, but leaving out Black New Mexicans entirely.