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W.E.B. DuBois

Ella Baker and the Limits of Charismatic Masculinity

Tue, 02/19/2013 - 17:38 — Pascal Robert

by Pascal Robert

Ella Baker, the consummate organizer, “was very critical of the hot shot Black preachers who would seem to mesmerize their audience with soaring oratory, then leave and expect others to implement an agenda.” She put forward a grassroots critique of overwhelmingly male Black leadership, and showed “more wisdom, courage, and vision then almost all of them.”

The Historical Failure of Black Leadership

Tue, 02/05/2013 - 14:49 — Pascal Robert

by Pascal Robert

There’s something wrong with the process by which Black leadership is selected. “Black people are trapped in a viscous cycle of looking at their favorite leaders and revering them like baseball cards.” What’s needed is democracy in struggle. “People must be trained with the organizational and political capital to advocate and fight for policy and economic models that best serve their needs.”

Why I Won't Vote (1956)

Tue, 09/04/2012 - 15:55 — Anonymous

 

by W.E.B. Dubois

On October 20, 1956, W. E. B. Du Bois delivered this eloquent indictment of US politics and why he won't vote in the upcoming Presidential election. Du Bois condemns both Democrats and Republicans for their indifferent positions on the influence of corporate wealth, racial inequality, arms proliferation and unaffordable health care. The article appeared in The Nation.

Black Secularists and The Church

Tue, 09/04/2012 - 15:46 — Benjamin Woods

 

by Benjamin Woods

African American mythology tells us that the Black Freedom Movement was born in the church. That’s because “the Black church has had better propagandists than Black freethinkers.” But freethinkers also populate the liberation pantheon, while the church has sometimes proven an obstacle to the Movement.

The World Went to Hell and the Black Man Didn’t Go Free

Wed, 01/04/2012 - 02:21 — Jemima Pierre

 

by BAR editor and columnist Jemima Pierre

Despite the fact that Barack Obama’s “approach to domestic economic and social policy has savaged the U.S. Black community on every front,” the election season will see increased demands that Blacks circle the wagons around “their” president. Narrow group thinking leads African Americans to behave as if “it does not matter that targeted assassinations and indefinite detention are the order of the day, or that a Black man is helping to foment war on the African continent.” Ignoring both the lessons of history and Obama’s role in the current Black economic catastrophe, “our establishment Blacks continue to be imprisoned in an imperialist capitalism.”

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