Black Agenda Blog

by BAR Managing Editor Bruce DixonThe fragility of Barack Obama’s DLC-inspired electoral strategy is now exposed for all to see. Obama has chosen to “reach out” to white and Republican voters while challenging none of their assumptions about America, racism or empire, at the same time, counting on on a deaf and blind black nationalism to shield him from accountability to African Americans. Republicans (and Hillary Clinton) know all they need do to counter him is prove to whites that he is not as conservative as he seems. Obama will thus be forced scramble relentlessly rightward from here on, disowning, denouncing and dishonoring any and all stirrings of black or grassroots militancy to keep white support without telling white America anything it doesn’t want to know.

by BAR editor and senior columnist

Margaret Kimberley

A Barack Obama presidency would certainly be a first - the first time that “most black people will end their historic progressive politics and applaud this country’s criminal activity just because the head criminal looks like them.” Despite the fact that African Americans overwhelmingly agree with the thrust of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s critique of American society, history and government policies, they will undoubtedly vote in huge majorities for the Illinois senator who has repudiated Wright. “Obama’s campaign has been filled with a laundry list of lies” and promises to continue on that track. But, as with Colin Powell’s lying, international lawbreaking term in high office, “most black people [will make] excuses for him and for his crimes.” Although verbally less bellicose than Hillary Clinton, Obama is no less the warmonger in substance.

by Mel Reeves

Barack Obama demands that African Americans “respect” the verdict in the Sean Bell case - but what about justice? Why should Blacks respect any element of a police-judicial apparatus that sanctions the deployment of 50-round firing squads targeting unarmed men? If all U.S. laws and judicial decisions deserve Black folks’ respect, then Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney’s 1857 declaration that Blacks have no rights a white man is bound to respect should also be respected. Every outrage known to mankind was once legal in the United States when inflicted on Blacks and Native Americans. “We know from history that that which is legal is not necessarily just.”

by Pam Martens

The candidate that claims to be the only presidential contender who doesn’t take money from lobbyists is in fact the biggest recipient of lobby-related contributions. Barack Obama rakes in millions from law firms serving the interests of Wall Street, including the financial institutions that gave us the subprime lending crisis. Lawyers that work for firms that earn hundreds of millions of dollars for lobbying may technically not be lobbyists, but they share in their colleagues’ earnings as influencers of Congress - a legal loophole that allows Obama to claim his hands are clean of lobby loot. “The top contributors to the Obama campaign are the very Wall Street firms whose shady mortgage lenders buried the elderly and the poor and minority under predatory loans.”

by Nikki Ayanna Stewart

When the Black Freedom Movement withered away from disuse and neglect, it left a generation of enthusiastic young activists-to-be with unprecedented “access” to white dominated institutions, but no movement with which to affiliate. What’s a determined mover-and-shaker to do? Get a job, that’s what. While the author’s friends settled in as corporate lawyers, management consultants and other odd jobs, she was fortunate enough to become - for a time - a “professional feminist” working for “reformist” non-profits. But financial pressures pushed her towards academia, and the realization that “I and others in my group” are “repositories for the Civil Rights generation’s left-over hopes and dreams.” Barack Obama, she now understands, has been the “symbolic beneficiary and repository” of those dreams - which is not the same thing.

by Shannon Prince

Some supporters of Barack Obama have seized the occasion of the confrontation with Rev. Jeremiah Wright to air a litany of old grievances. In an op-ed article for Newsday, Michael Meyers, head of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, who despises anything that smacks of Black Nationalism, labeled Rev. Wright a “crackpot” along with the rest of what he calls the “blacker-than-thou crowd.” According to Meyers, Rev. Wright is an “endangered species” - there is no place for his ilk in the 21^st Century. Meyers believes that Blacks who attend elite colleges agree with him, that racism is not endemic in America. However, one of those Black Ivy leaguers is determined to set Meyers straight: “What Reverend Wright said about America isn’t divisive or fiery or anti-white but merely factual truth.”

by Ali Abunimah

If Liberation Theologians like Rev. Jeremiah Wright feel discarded by Barack Obama, consider the Palestinians. By all accounts, as an Illinois State Senator Obama was at least open-minded about the plight of Palestinians - to the distress of Israel lobbyists. No more. Obama managed to inject pro-Israel, anti-”radical Islam” remarks into his speech on race relations in the U.S. He speaks of a history of “tensions” between African Americans and Jewish Americans, but fails to trace these conflicts to Israel’s support for apartheid South Africa. And then there is Min. Louis Farrakhan. “Why must every black candidate to a major office go through the ritual of denouncing Farrakhan, a marginal figure in national politics?” Rejection of Farrakhan and unquestioning support for Israel is the price of admission to mainstream U.S. politics.

Sometimes it seems the bigger the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) becomes, the worse it gets. Gone are the not-so-long-ago days when the CBC could be counted on to present a virtually unified, progressive front on domestic and foreign policy issues. While Black activists increasingly embrace the Latin American sector of the global African Diaspora, the CBC as a body remains parochial, as if unaware that millions of Blacks live in South America. Most shameful is the CBC’s failure to take a firm stand on behalf of Afro-Colombians, targeted by rightwing death squads allied with the U.S.-backed government. A significant faction in the CBC supports corporate-written trade deals with Colombia that would displace and further impoverish much of the Black population, whose representatives have repeatedly beseeched the Black Caucus for help.

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
The world views of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Sen. Barack Obama were incompatible from the start, just as the mythical American Manifest Destiny world view is directly at odds with the facts as perceived by Blacks in the United States. Wright finally forced Obama to choose sides in the conflict of racial/historical visions, and in doing so, performed a service on behalf of clarity. Obama lashed out in a startlingly personal manner, calling Wright a “caricature” of himself and linking the minister to forces that give “comfort to those who prey on hate.” Rev. Wright exposed the flimsy tissues of so-called “race neutrality” in a nation founded on racial oppression.

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The ghastly record of police acquittals in the death of unarmed Blacks continues to unfold. In a verdict that “surprised” even the governor, a New York judge found three cops innocent of all charges in the 50-shot volley that killed Sean Bell on the morning of his wedding, wounding two of his companions. “The police have no expectation of punishment, even when they kill without cause.” It made little difference that two of the policemen were also of African descent. But race seems to factor heavily in some celebrity cases. Just ask actor Wesley Snipes, who was sentenced to three years on an income tax charge.

The Campaign, part 3 of 4, an Open Letter to White America 

The Sean Bell verdict reminds former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of the 1857 Dred Scott Decision, which declared that Blacks have no rights that a white man is bound to respect. In this case, three New York City cops failed to respect Bell’s right to life; he died in a fusillade of 50 shots that also wounded two of his friends. All were unarmed. “The prospects are that black and brown men and women will continue to be murdered by police officers who, fundamentally, seem scared of black people.” McKinney fought for legislation that would “deny federal funds and the use of federal equipment to any law enforcement unit found to have violated the civil rights of the people.”

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The 41 signers of an open letter denouncing ABC’s farcical conduct during the most recent presidential debate may have thought they were doing the right thing - but they managed to send the wrong message. Although there is no doubt that George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson made fools of themselves and their corporate employers in the “worst” debate of the season, the signers failed to place last week’s televised travesty in the context of the rapid extinction of any semblance of professional journalism among corporate media. In expressing hope that corporate media will “return to serious journalism” during the general election debates, the letter gives the impression that last week’s debacle was an aberration - when, in fact, nonsense and lies posing as “news” has become the norm.

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Columnist Kimberley correctly sees the candidates and the so-called debate moderators as co-enablers of lawlessness in the Bush administration. Not only did Stephanopoulos and Gibson fail to ask about George Bush’s admission that he “approved” of torture-planning discussions in the White House, but Obama and Clinton got away with not having to explain why the latest torture revelations do not rise to the level of criminal activity deserving of serious action. So appalling has been the conduct of the corporate media to date in the face of Bush crimes, “it is a bit late in the day” to take effective corrective action. Both the candidates and the so-called journalists covering the campaign seem determined to cover up, rather than expose, the Bush outlaw legacy.