Wed, 31 March 2010
Dr. Peniel Joseph Peddles Slick Marketing Constructs As “Black History” By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon “...branding is not history, branding is not policy. Branding is the manipulation of images, words and symbols to call up real and imagined memories that evoke a particular emotional response from an audience.” The job of historians in the service of democracy should be to explain and clarify historical trends for ordinary people, to help us better understand where we are, where we came from, and where we're headed. But not all historians serve democracy. As long as there have been intellectuals a great many have made their careers spinning fables which obscure more than they reveal, histories that reinforce rather than challenge illegitimate power, ill-gotten wealth, and undeserved privilege. Dr. Peniel Joseph is a young and highly acclaimed scholar. He's the author of Dark Days, Bright Nights, From Black Power to Barack Obama. But Dr. Joseph is no peoples' historian. In a recent appearanceon Dr. Jared Ball's Jazz & Justice show on WPFW-FM in Washington, Joseph declared one of the main threads of his most recent book was explaining the campaigns and career of Barack Obama as part of what he called the “radically transformative” outcome of the Black Power movement, which he traces through Malcolm X, Kwame Toure, the former Stokely Carmichael, and the 1980s electoral campaigns of Jesse Jackson and Chicago's Harold Washington. Actually, for black politicians campaigning inside the black community, trying to brand your campaign as the fulfillment of the Freedom and Black Power movements is pretty standard stuff. The Obama campaign managed the neat trick of turning itself into two separate brands, one fungible inside the black community and another outside it as the multiracial apostle of “there is no black America, there is no white America.” When you went to Obama's campaign web site you were greeted with a gorgeous fuzzy photo of Barack, Michelle and the kids with the slogan underneath “Join the Movement.” “When black historians accidentally confuse branding with history, they are fools...” But branding is not history, branding is not policy. Branding is the manipulation of images, words and symbols to call up real and imagined memories that evoke a particular emotional response from an audience. Branding is the tool of marketers who sell us everything from new cars and prescription meds to lifestyles, whatever those are. When black Dr. Joseph himself said that a nuanced view of Barack Obama's place relative to the Black Power movement would necessitate examining his policy positions, issue by issue. But when the show's host used the word “imperialism” to describe the actual policies to which Barack Obama subscribes, Dr. Joseph pronounced it a “totalizing” term, called it “sloganeering” which he said puts an end to any useful dialog. So in Dr. Joseph's world we can prattle on about the “radical transformations” of democracy engineered by the Black Power movement which resulted in the Obama presidency. But with fleets in every ocean and hundreds of military bases scattered across every continent, we can't talk about empire. What's wrong with that picture, huh? When Dr. Joseph awards Barack Obama status as a direct descendant of the Freedom and Black Power movements, which were fundamentally pro economic justice and anti-imperialist he abandons the clarifying role of peoples historian for a comfy seat in the establishment chorus. Dr. Joseph is reselling black people somebody else's marketed image, somebody else's brand name screed as our history. Dr. Joseph is the fake Wizard of Oz telling us to pay no attention to that wealthy handful of corporations behind that curtain. Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and based in Atlanta. He can be reached at bruce,dixon(at)blackagendareport.com. |
Wed, 31 March 2010
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted atGlen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com. |
Tue, 30 March 2010
Culture is the expression of collective personhood. The culture of Africa's descendants in the U.S. has been demonized, belittled and viewed as a threat ever since the days when slavemasters banned use of the drum. With the wholesale gentrification of urban America, a new wave of cultural ethnic cleansing is underway, as inner city entertainment venues are being closed, and owners of remaining night spots collude to squeeze original artists with substantial and established audiences out of commercial viability. Like coffee, some are too black, too strong.
Washington, D.C. : A Case Example of Cultural Genocide by Jared A. Ball, Ph.D. “Bands are literally told to leave their congas at home in order to re-form themselves as jazz or R&B bands, and the famed “pocket,” go-go’s equivalent to hip-hop’s “break beat” is said to now be off limits...” “Fuck all the corny laptop DJs that killed the realness.” I found this comment from Washington, DC-based DJ EuRok about DJs adopting new digital music technology as opposed to the traditional vinyl record to be quite relevant far beyond its immediate focus of the closing of DJ Hut, the long-time mainstay of DJ and hip-hop culture in the city. Perhaps it hit harder considering that only a couple of weeks earlier one of DC’s more prominent Go-Go music sound men told me that “go-go as a culture is going to die.” In each case, the impact of gentrification and new technologies were seen by those who would know to be having a nasty impact that goes well beyond the ravages of uprooted community. To the extent that DC represents a national trend and all that is related to issues of gentrifying communities in what has even been likened to an international return to the European model of cities for the wealthy and suburbs for the rest, the nation’s capital also exemplifies the impact on culture of colonial relocation and land-grabbing. Of course, the cultural expression of Black people has long been a battleground of theft and appropriation. And, as all uninterrupted processes, it continues today. In this case, the long history of “racial cleansing” in the United States has a style and impact that is equally modern in its creeping and slick demeanor. For instance, Washington, D.C. has been targeted as one of Clear Channel’s “Branded Cities” or the plan for complete corporate advertising emersion where “Brandscaping” turns communal spaces into “controlled environment[s]” where “brands [are] to be experienced” and unavoidably interwoven into people’s daily lives. This is the live version of what some lament as the creeping shift of sleeker, more convenient and accessible DJ digital technology which encompasses the closing of record stores which, as all public spheres, mean so much more than a place to purchase albums. It also includes the policy of cleansing the city of its most recognizable cultural expression. Go-Go, with its live musicianship, polyrhythmic, conga-based funk has, according to sound man Greg McNeils, been all-but banned from the city proper. Bands are literally told to leave their congas at home in order to re-form themselves as jazz or R&B bands, and the famed “pocket,” go-go’s equivalent to hip-hop’s “break beat” is said to now be off limits. And similar to EuRok’s dismay at the shift to digital formats McNeils describes a similar trend where street vendors and small store operators are being forced out of business which in turn hurts the underground distribution of go-go mixtapes, or PA taped recordings of live performances, which have been the mass medium network of distribution for those without access to radio. And he is not alone , cats have been seeing this. Oddisee, of the crew Diamond District, recounts how “mom and pop stores {are} replaced by Couture,” and Head-Roc, the “Mayor of DC Hip-Hop,” who himself has lyrically tackled the issue of gentrification, has recently launched a campaign to expose the vicious network of venue operators who continue to deny local Black artists space to perform and who assure that those who do are held in a state of Electric Purgatory or debt peonage as they must cover their own promotional costs or perceived lack of audience draw. '“cultural genocide,...includes all policies aimed at destroying the specific characteristics by which a target group is defined, or defines itself, thereby forcing them to become something else....”' And all of this is also slickly hidden beneath DC’s tightly-controlled media environment which is quite right-wing in general and specifically managed to assure that none of this music is heard on the city’s sanctioned radio. Just this past week, as is the case every week, the dominant “urban” radio stations had all their top ten songs, as measured by times played, or spins, selected by one of three corporations, two of whom, Sony Music’s CEO Howard Stringer and Warner Music’s CEO Edgar Bronfman, share an incestuous board of director interlock. But the issue really is the impact of this nation’s brand of colonialism and how it manifests the “cultural genocide,” as defined by the United Nations who explain it as “the imposition of [an] alien national pattern…” which “includes all policies aimed at destroying the specific characteristics by which a target group is defined, or defines itself, thereby forcing them to become something else.” This includes assaults on the target population’s “books… language… religious works… destruction or dispersion of objects of… artistic… value” and so on. Shifts in technology which force cultural reformations, that also further limitations of the public sphere, that impose alien cultural forms or, in this case, bastardized corporate versions of the cultural expression, that disappear underground communicative traditions, and again force a removal of the drum all relate to the physical forced removal of colonized populations. And as the nation’s capitol, as goes DC, so goes the Black nation. For Black Agenda Radio I’m Jared Ball. Online visit www.BlackAgendaReport.com. Dr. Jared A. Ball is assistant professor of Communications Studies at Baltimore's Morgan State University, host of WPFW's Jazz & Justice, which airs every Monday at 1PM EST, a co-founder of CBC Monitor, and among much else, one of the minds behind VoxUnion.Com.
Category:politics
-- posted at: 7:30 PM
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Thu, 25 March 2010
 A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen FordTens of thousands of mainly Latino demonstrators demanded immediate action on immigration reform from President Obama, last weekend. But Obama supports a “bipartisan” bill that would vastly increase raids and arrests. Unfortunately, “as with every other issue, when Barack Obama stands for an expanded police state, most of the American Left sits down and shuts up."
Immigrants Should Be Careful What They Wish For From Obama
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“On the immigration front, Obama’s practice is little different from that of the Bush administration.”
Tens of thousands of immigrants and their supporters gathered in Washington this past weekend to beseech President Obama to move this year on immigration reform. It’s doubtful they will get their wish, but supporters of meaningful change in U.S. immigration policies ought to be careful what they wish for. This president is no more interested in real reform in U.S. immigration policy than in genuine reform of the health care system.He is joined at the hip with those corporate forces that would condemn immigrants – especially those who are not white – to a world of shadows and perpetual insecurity, always at the mercy of some kind of cop.
Obama was cheered by thousands of demonstrators when his image appeared on giant screens on the Capitol Mall. “I’ve always pledged to be your partner,” said Obama, “and that’s a commitment that I reaffirm today.” But Obama’s commitments to common people are rhetorical and transient, while his ties to the economic and political elite are permanent. On the immigration front, Obama’s practice is little different from that of the Bush administration.
His administration continues Bush’s policy of deputizing local police agencies to enforce immigration laws, a formula for racial profiling and police abuse on a massive scale. The infamous 287(g) program was passed into law in 1996, in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. The perpetrator of the Oklahoma City attack was a white, right-wing terrorist, but the law allowed the federal government to turn local law enforcement loose on mostly non-white immigrants. In many localities, the program has the effect of putting people who appear to be “foreign looking” at the mercy of every racist with a badge. President Obama could bring the local police immigration enforcement programs to a virtual halt, administratively, without consulting Congress, but he has not – which shows his true intentions.
“This president is no more interested in real reform in U.S. immigration policy than in genuine reform of the health care system.”
Obama is on record in support of a U.S. Senate immigration bill co-sponsored by New York Democrat Charles Schumer and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham. Under their legislation, it is generally agreed that immigration authority raids will increase, resulting in huge growth of immigrant detention centers, which already incarcerate 350,000 people per year – the fastest growing sector of the American Prison Gulag. The bill would require a national ID card – something even George Bush found repugnant, and that progressives have long opposed. But, as with every other issue, when Barack Obama stands for an expanded police state, most of the American Left sits down and shuts up.
The Schumer/Graham/Obama bill would ensure that U.S. corporations get all the low wage immigrant workers they want through programs in which guest workers would have little leverage to improve their working conditions. And, of course, the Obama administration has no intention of altering their beloved “free trade” policies that have destabilized the peasant and working classes of Mexico and Central America, fueling the human flow northward.
Jesse Jackson, Cornel West and the heads of the NAACP and the National Urban League spoke in solidarity with immigrants – which is as it should be. But there can be no triumph for immigrant civil rights in a police state, or in a world where inequality is the biggest U.S. export.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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Thu, 25 March 2010
 by BAR editor and columnist Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.
Event Meister extraordinaire Tavis Smiley gathered his hand-picked Black All Stars for a “Black Agenda” conference, in Chicago, over the weekend. The usual suspects were in attendance, shining and rhyming luminously and voluminously. President Obama’s stock had fallen, but “blind adherence” to the Democratic Party still reigned near-supreme.
Tavis Smiley’s Annual Black “Radical” All-Star Game
by BAR editor and columnist Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.
“For every Louis Farrakhan ‘testicular fortitude’ there was a Michael Eric Dyson ‘ovarian audaciousness.’”
This week the already blood soaked, broken and dead carcass of a murdered Black radicalism was further kicked around, then adorned, by Tavis Smiley and all those gathered at his annual Black political All-Star Game. And it truly was an all-star gathering where everyone came to play on the big stage. It had all the political ally-oops, 360 degree word play, dazzling no-look Biblical references and behind the back, through the legs, ankle-breaking alliterations. Cornell West looked spry prancing around the roundtable cheerleading and for every Louis Farrakhan “testicular fortitude” there was a Michael Eric Dyson “ovarian audaciousness.” And all but one of the attendees brought flashy Blacker-than-thou critiques of the president, all in love, of course, as was the theme Smiley laid down literally with a so-labeled centerpiece placed dramatically mid roundtable. But this truly was conservatism draped in radicalism. None advocated breaks with the established political parties, none adopted a tradition of radical intra-racial socialized economics and none called for mass protest or civil disobedience. It was post-election criticism, calls for conservative individualized self-help and obedience to the established political order.
Smiley was clear that he wanted his guests to answer for the absence of an overt support of a Black agenda by the president. So now, and only after his election, Jesse Jackson wonders why it is only a Black agenda that Obama ignores, and Farrakhan says Obama was “selected not elected” and lords over the “White House” for “white people,” and Dyson boldly proclaims Obama to be “Pharaoh… not Moses…” or even Dr. King. Dyson went on to say that he has known Obama the longest and supported him first as the political “Jackie Robinson” who might not be the best but is best suited to be first. This should, of course, be seen as an admission of political ineptitude and the fact that neither Dyson nor anyone else who appreciated that comparison brought up the impact of Robinson on the death of the Negro Leagues or use of him by the state to speak against more radical Black leaders like Paul Robeson, means that the real power of that analogy went without discussion.
“None advocated breaks with the established political parties, none adopted a tradition of radical intra-racial socialized economics and none called for mass protest or civil disobedience.”
And other juicy contradictions were all over the place. Like when the sole youth representative, Raven Curling, asked about the absence of mass protests, and Jackson agreed we should not abandon such tactics, Smiley would later say that he and his roundtable of leaders couldn’t make such calls and that actions should be “individual.” The economic equivalent of the individual as power came from Author Tom Burrell who was first to shift blame of Black poverty to Black spending habits with that favorite myth of Black buying power. This sophomoric economic analysis was championed again by Julianne Malveaux and by Louis Farrakhan who took the myth to even greater contradictory heights. The minister, with calls of “do for self,” suggested separately that America was declining and, therefore, was both “for sale,” and leading toward a time when the U.S. dollar would be “worthless.” Following this “logic” we should use a mythological $1 trillion in buying power to purchase equally mythological wealth-building assets from a declining country whose currency is soon to be worthless. With confusion like this it is little wonder why there is so much to lament in the condition of Black America.
There was little more clarity in the arena of electoral politics. Ron Walters twice called for a “Black Party” but confusingly only as a bloc within the Democratic Party. This kind of blind adherence to the Democrats was further displayed when in response to audience member Phil Huckleberry of the Illinois Green Party, who said that his party was the only party with a real Black agenda, all-star panelist Angela Blackwell actually agreed but only that “green jobs” and a “green economy,” not alternative political party development, were part of a Black agenda. It is this kind of confused analysis that led roundtable participant and Civil Rights veteran Dorothy Tillman to say that Black “political empowerment” is as “diminished” today as she has ever seen it and that this is a result of the ascendancy of president Obama. But it is also true that Obama’s ascendancy and that of the gathered all-stars is also the result of a previous murder of Black radicalism.
For Black Agenda Radio I’m Jared Ball. Online go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
Dr. Ball can be contacted at freemixradio@gmail.com.
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Thu, 25 March 2010
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
 The armory of the Left, such as it was, has been greatly diminished with the demise of ACORN, the nationwide grassroots organization. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, “with Black and progressive forces at their weakest state in at least two generations.”
R.I.P ACORN: The Revolution Will Not Be Subsidized
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“There no longer exists a mass grassroots organization with the numerical forces or political will to directly confront rampaging capital and its servants in government.”
The loss of the grassroots social change organization ACORN is a huge setback to the cause of economic and racial justice in the United States. Born in the Seventies from roots in civil rights, welfare rights and workers rights organizing, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now once boasted membership of 400,000 families in chapters across the country.
This week ACORN, or what was left of it, announced that it would fully dissolve itself by April 1. Most of the group’s 20 chapters had already disbanded, in order to reorganize under different names. New York ACORN has become New York Communities for Change. California ACORN now goes by, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. And ACORN Housing became Housing Centers of America. Some ACORN activists say they are not disbanding, but simply re-branding.
No matter what it's called, the demise of the national operation is as complete as it was sudden. ACORN was brought low by what began as a political sting operation in which two right-wing operatives posing as a pimp and a prostitute tricked local ACORN staffers into appearing to give advice on hiding ill-gotten income. Republicans seized on the footage, and previous problems with the organization’s voter registration activities, to nail ACORN to the cross. Congress was easily stampeded into passing a bill to withdraw all federal funding to ACORN affiliates that assisted low-income Americans on housing and other matters – work that had earned ACORN $54 million over the years.
The legislation was, in fact, an unconstitutional “bill of attainder” – that is, special legislation designed specifically to harm a political opponent. A federal judge agreed, and issued an injunction prohibiting Congress from cutting off ACORN funds, now or in the future. But the damage was done. A cascade of private contributors withdrew their support, sending ACORN into a death spiral.
“ACORN was the rock on which resistance to predatory lending stood.”
Now, with Black and progressive forces at their weakest state in at least two generations, there no longer exists a mass grassroots organization with the numerical forces or political will to directly confront rampaging capital and its servants in government. ACORN has passed into the realm of nostalgia.
For decades, ACORN was the rock on which resistance to predatory lending stood. No organization came close to ACORN in documenting and organizing against financial sector housing policies that finally came crashing down on minority neighborhoods nationwide, destroying generations of Black wealth. In recent years, it fought an ultimately unsuccessful battle for a living wage in New Orleans, the poorest big city in the United States, and provided the troops for a momentous fight against Wal-Mart in Chicago. ACORN, it seemed, was everywhere in the struggle.
And now it's gone. There are many lessons to be learned from the practice of an organization that has been at the forefront of struggle for 40 years. One is, don't depend on Democratic politicians in a pinch. They are mostly worthless. And two, don't build your house on federal funding, because the revolution will definitely not be subsidized.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com. |
Wed, 17 March 2010
A government and society that is ever ready to restrict the freedoms of Black folks now offers “freedom” from Blackness. This census and social “opt-out” for the progeny of interracial couples allows them to hope to be considered “as something entirely separate, different and apart from” what Curtis Mayfield called the “dark deep well.” The Black “baggage” can be left behind.
The Multiracial Sheep IS the White Supremacist Fox by Jared A. Ball, Ph.D. “More people born to interracial couples are happily accepting the racial placebo of ‘multiracial’ and multiple racial choices as official census categorization.” Let’s be very clear from the outset. Multiracial categorization is an aggressive defense of white supremacy. Multiracial census categorization, particularly in the era of what some are calling the first Black and multiracial president, is, pun-intended, the bulked up steroid-induced version of the old sports aphorism that “the best defense is a good offense.” By aggressively encouraging younger generations to identify officially as multiracial the national desire to disappear worsening racial divides gets further juice by offering folks a chance to both adopt the illusion of the “post-racial” and to seemingly categorize themselves away from, if not out of, oppression. The beautiful dialectic traditionally developed in this country’s form of white supremacy was its built-in inability to be white and forced inclusion into Black which has made Black America, if even to a fault, among the most diverse, open and accepting communities in the world. It also increased the potential that that community would become more threatening to white domination which has led to the centuries-long development of neocolonial-styled light-skin privilege as a mechanism of siphoning off some of the more willing participants in an escape from blackness. This continues and now in the form of official racial category. No longer, as a recent USA Today story suggests, will younger people be forced or even encouraged to see themselves as light-skinned extensions of Curtis Mayfield’s “dark deep well,” but as something entirely separate, different and apart from. Younger generations are being encouraged in far greater percentages to accept forms of, what some academics call, hyperdescent, or degrees of identity up the so-called racial caste scale. “Black America is, if even to a fault, among the most diverse, open and accepting communities in the world.” As we have previously described, there is a general delusion happening where the material conditions of Black people are worseningwhile assumptions of progress among Black people are increasing. Similarly, we have also recently discussed, that there is right now are-inscription of America’s racial slavery caste system forcibly locking Black Americans into permanent recessions and entombment at the bottom rungs of the nation’s social or colonial pyramid. So it seems equally alarming that more people born to interracial couples are happily accepting the racial placebo of “multiracial” and multiple racial choices as official census categorization. As the 2010 census is disseminated nationally this month it brings with it all the old baggage of the enterprise, that is, it is used to mask gross inequality in distribution of national wealth, the locked-down gerrymandered political districts designed to assure that this fraudulent “two-party” system remains safely intact, and the sweeping under the rug of stolen prisoners who when caught up in an equally unjust system of mass incarceration are disappeared into distant regions and used to bolster the economic and electoral strength of their captors communities while not, of course, being able themselves to access any of the benefit they help to create by their incarceration. National offerings of mobility in racial category, combined with a president whose multiracial background is used more to blunt discussions of racial inequality than to make them known and addressed, will further allow white supremacy to go unchecked and, therefore, to become more invisible and ultimately powerful. Self-identification is, of course, personal and ultimately up to the individual. But racial categorization is decidedly political and, therefore, means a responsibility that goes beyond any one person’s private choice. The history and current structure of race in this country and its impact materially on Black people who don’t have the immaterial option to be categorized out of their blackness nor the material option of avoiding that category’s real-life meaning in this society demands that we who are offered the devil’s hand up reject it and remain happily categorized with the those in our families whoare our family and who are not able to escape the ravages of being fixed to the racial floor. For Black Agenda Radio I’m Jared Ball. Online go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com |
Wed, 17 March 2010
The advent of America's first Black president has resulted in Black congresspeople voting for wars that their constituents overwhelmingly oppose, which could lead to the conclusion that Obama is “a morally corrupting influence on some Black lawmakers.” More than half the Congressional Black Caucus sided with Obama – and war – last week. Three-fourths of all House Democrats did the same. George Bush should be green with envy.
Half of Black Caucus Votes for More Afghan War A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford “When Obama surges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Black lawmakers who purport to be for peace, retreat.” Slightly less than half of the Congressional Black Caucus, 46 percent, broke with the Obama administration last week to vote for a bill to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. Given that the nation’s first Black president has made the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater of war his own – depicting the ever-expanding aggression as a “good war” – getting 18 Black votes for peace was probably as much as could have been expected. Black Democrats certainly behaved with more decency and sanity than Democrats as a whole, three out of four of whom voted with their war mongering commander-in-chief. Some progressive lawmakers felt it was a victory simply to have been permitted to hold a three-hour debate on the merits of war and peace, at this time of global imperial offensive, and disarray on the Left. Nevertheless, the Black Caucus’s near-even split on Obama’s wars reveals the gross perversion of African American politics as it is filtered through a Democratic Party lurching steadily rightward under the weight of corporate money and the guidance of a president who is, if anything, more militarily aggressive in the region than his predecessor, George Bush. When Obama surges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Black lawmakers who purport to be for peace, retreat. The 18 Caucus members that voted “Yes” for withdrawal from Afghanistan reflect the overwhelming sentiments of a people that polls have for generations shown to be the most pro-peace demographic group in the nation. That 19 members of the Congressional Black Caucus would support U.S. wars against poor people half a world away, is evidence of deep moral and political corruption among the Black leadership class. (See breakdown of CBC vote, below.) “The Black Caucus’s near-even split on Obama’s wars reveals the gross perversion of African American politics as it is filtered through a Democratic Party lurching steadily rightward.” We are shocked that reliably progressive congresspersons like Gwen Moore, of Milwaukee, and Bobby Scott, of Virginia, cast their votes for war, as did a number of other Caucus members who, if Obama were not the president, would surely have been counted on the side of peace. Obama’s very presence in the White House can be viewed as a morally corrupting influence on some Black lawmakers, leading them to give a “pass” to policies they would otherwise oppose. We note that Congressman John Conyers, the Dean of the Black Caucus and usually a dependable progressive, failed to vote, as did Artur Davis, the most right-wing Caucus member, who aspires to be a senator from Alabama. We have not singled out for praise any of the 18 members that voted “Yes” for withdrawal from Afghanistan. They were doing their moral duty and expressing the political sentiments of their constituents; therefore, no accolades are in order. There is no significant war constituency in Black America – even the advent of a Black president cannot change that fact. The peace constituency is obligated to turn out this Saturday, in Washington and San Francisco and other locations in between, to register our outrage at America’s wars – which are now Obama’s wars. That outrage should also extend to the three out of four Democrats and half of the Black Caucus members that cast their votes for mass murder of our fellow human beings, last week. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com. BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com. Breakdown of Congressional Black Caucus vote on HR 248, a bill to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by end of 2010: Yes (18) Yvette Clarke (NY) Emanuel Cleaver (MO) Donna Edwards (MD) Alcee Hastings (FL) Sheila Jackson Lee (TX) Donald Payne (NJ) Edolphus Towns (NY) No (19) Sanford Bishop (GA) Corrine Brown (FL) Andre Carson (IN) Elijah Cummings (MD) Chaka Fattah (PA) Marcia Fudge (OH) Hank Johnson (GA) Gregory Meeks (NY) Gwen Moore (WI) Bobby Rush (IL) David Scott (GA) Bennie Thompson (MS) Melvin Watt (NC) Not Voting (2) John Conyers (MI) Artur Davis (AL) |
Wed, 10 March 2010
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Wed, 10 March 2010
Jared Ball can be contacted at freemixradio@voxunion.com. Read more about Dr. Ball HERE. |
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By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
historians accidentally confuse branding with history, they are fools. When they do so deliberately they are charlatans and mercenaries. Advertising Age, the flagship magazine of the marketing industry doesn't have to fool anybody. It gave the 2008 Obama presidential campaign its
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
By BAR columnist Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.
by Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Jared Ballpowered by
