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Affirmative White Preference for Black Immigrants

Tue, 03/20/2007 - 18:00 — Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio Commentary

by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

In yet another example of the devolution of affirmative action as actually practiced in the United States, a recent study shows immigrant Blacks are heavily over-represented at elite U.S. universities, relative to African Americans of native background. Despite efforts to focus on supposed cultural failures among African Americans as causes of the imbalance, the real culprit is clear: Whites prefer to elevate Blacks who are perceived as "different" from the home-grown variety. Does the name Barack Obama ring a bell?

The Unraveling of Another U.S. Race War: Iraq, Four Years Later

Tue, 03/20/2007 - 18:00 — Glen Ford

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by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

Despite poll numbers that show more Americans want out of Iraq, peace activists should not expect a sea change in basic public perceptions of the U.S. "role" in the world. The debacle in Iraq can only be understood through the logic of (white) American Manifest Destiny and Imperial Racism. The supposed "mistakes" and "flaws" of a "dumb" policy are in fact symptomatic of a deep cultural malady: an inability to perceive non-white "Others" as human beings. Americans make enemies because their entire history has been to see Others as either The Enemy, or as their fawning protégés - but never as equals.

Black Lawmakers Digitally Redline African American Neighborhoods

Tue, 03/13/2007 - 21:03 — Bruce A. Dixon

by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon

Last year Big Cable and Big Telephone interests teamed up to propose national cable franchise laws that would have killed network neutrality, privatized the Internet and allowed providers a free hand to redline broadband deployment in black, poor, rural and urban neighborhoods nationwide. Stopped in the U.S. Senate last fall, they have resurfaced in more than two dozen state legislatures from coast to coast. Prominent among supporters of Big Cable and Big Telephone are the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, thanks to tens of thousands in donations from AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

Freedom Rider: Michelle Malkin and Dinesh D’Souza - Fascists of Color

Tue, 03/13/2007 - 18:00 — Margaret Kimberley

by BAR Editor and Senior Columnist
Margaret KimberleyFRMaulkinCrazed

White supremacy,
sensing the need of repackaging itself for consumption in polite company,
partially fills the demand for racist bile by outsourcing to mercenary writers
of color. Michelle Malkin and Dinesh D'Souza - of Filipino and
Indian descent, respectively - are top
guns of the genre, ever eager to slander non-whites, especially Blacks, as
threats to Euro-American white "civilization." For premium fees, Malkin and
D'Souza act as trusted Gunga Dins and shock troops for fascism.

Belafonte Protects the Soul of Struggle

Tue, 03/13/2007 - 18:00 — Amy Goodman

BelafonteChavezby Amy Goodman

Entertainer/producer/activist Harry Belafonte turned
80 this month, "a living library of not only the civil rights movement, but of
liberation struggles around the world." Friend, advisor and confidant of Paul
Robeson, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and generations of other
strugglers, Belafonte remains an outspoken nemesis of "house Negroes" and their
racist benefactors. Belafonte demands that presidential aspirants Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama cease their "platitudes" and provide "plans for the
Katrinas of America."

‘We Must Resist!’

Tue, 03/13/2007 - 18:00 — Cynthia McKinney

McKinneyNoWarBlueSkyby Cynthia McKinney

The Black body politic is "comatose," and "the
entire American body politic is in dire straits, too." So says former Georgia
congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who urges a "different kind of leadership" that
is "revolutionary in its impact."  This
new "rainbow movement for peace and justice" must endeavor to "change the
structure within which we cast our vote." Now no longer tethered to the purely
electoral aspect of politics, McKinney offers herself as a fundamental
change-maker. "If no one else will do it, then I guess I'll have to do that,
too!"

How Barack Obama Learned to Love Israel

Tue, 03/13/2007 - 18:00 — Ali Abunimah

by Ali AbunimahObamaAtAIPAC

A decade ago the author, a Palestinian activist
based in Chicago, thought wishfully of then State Senator Barack Obama: "If only a man of this calibre could become president
one day." No longer. Obama now identifies totally with the political line of
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most relentlessly aggressive
arm of the Israel lobby. Although saddened by Obama's "about-face," the author
isn't surprised. "He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected
and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power."

The Hearts of Darkness: How European Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa

Tue, 03/13/2007 - 18:00 — Milton Allimadi

Part Eight, Conclusion

OAUflagby Milton Allimadi

In the last installment of the author's book,
serialized in BAR, he documents the more recent machinations of the New York
Times and other U.S. publications in service of continued European and
American domination of the African continent. "Blacks are considered inferior "by the people who run
the Times, NigeriaPMTimeMagCover"here and wherever they are," said a former African American
reporter for the newspaper. Now, as in the days when Western writers first
popularized the image of Africans as inhuman "savages," media insist on
referring to the various peoples of the continent as "tribes" - a deliberate
implication that Africans are "primitive
or barbaric peoples," and one that makes as much sense as calling the
Scots and Welsh "tribes" of Britain.

Oblivious Uncle Toms and Mayan ‘Mojos’

Tue, 03/13/2007 - 18:00 — Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio Commentary
by Bar Executive Editor Glen FordBARdonLemon

So-called racial and ethnic "diversity" in corporate media doesn't seem to have made much impact on the racist packaging of what passes for news in the United States. Mayan Indians, victims of genocide at the hands of a succession of U.S.-backed Guatemalan dictators, this week announced they would attempt to "purify" a site visited by George Bush, to remove any evil spirits the president might have left there. To CNN's Black anchor Don Lemon, the story was a big joke.

Congressional Black Caucus: Divided on Trade, Immigration

Tue, 03/13/2007 - 18:00 — Leutisha Stills

CBC Monitor Report Card, Second Session 109th Congress

by Leutisha Stills, CBC MonitorCapitolBlackCrowd

There is still reason to believe that the Congressional Black Caucus can be rescued from its slide into irrelevance - but only if energized constituents mobilize behind "bright line" issues that members dare not cross. The new CBC Monitor Report Card documents the Caucus' inability as a body to resist massed corporate power on trade issues, and a retreat by a quarter of its members in the face of mounting police state pressures. Nevertheless, the CBC's overall grades are up - most likely because only a few bills challenged them on matters of principle.

What Use Are Black Mayors - An Open Letter to the Natl Conference of Black Political Scientists

Mon, 03/12/2007 - 02:56 — Jerry G. Watts

By Jerry G. Watts

Exactly what do the poor in Atlanta, Washington DC, Charlotte, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Detroit and other cities have to show for having elected African Americans to City Hall?

What Use Are Black Mayors?

An Open Letter to the National Conference of Black Political Scientists

Busting A Black Move On the Black Caucus

Tue, 03/06/2007 - 21:34 — Bruce A. Dixon
A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixonmic01

Freedom Rider: Crazy, Greedy White Men

Tue, 03/06/2007 - 18:00 — Margaret Kimberley

by BAR Editor and Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley
 

The Bush administration is a putrid swamp of career criminals, who operate with impunity both inside and outside the boundaries of the executive branch of government. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld camps in offices just outside the Pentagon, an “unpaid” consultant with seven paid staffers and full access to “secrets” he may have invented in the first place. Vice President Dick Cheney’s career is built on mountains of mega-lying over decades. In the Bush world, criminal insanity is eminently rational.

Prosecuting Jim Crow’s Ghosts: The Racist ‘Past’ Lives

Tue, 03/06/2007 - 18:00 — Paul Street

by Paul Street

The FBI, which once covered up anti-Black crimes committed by its racist "informants" in the Deep South - and its own crimes against activists in the Black Freedom Movement - now vows to leave no stone unturned in a review of 100 cold-case murders in Dixie. Although justice delayed is better than murder with total impunity, there is also the danger that white America will conclude that racism is finally a problem of the "past," to be buried with the dead. Meanwhile, institutional racism is alive and well, daily deforming and limiting the life-prospects of millions.

FBI Hunts the Dead: Can a Deceased Black Panther Ever Rest in Peace?

Tue, 03/06/2007 - 18:00 — Soffiyah Elijah

by Soffiyah Elijah

The man the FBI would have arrested as the ninth member of the Panther Eight, on charges of killing a San Francisco policeman in 1971, is dead. But the Bureau won't let John Bowman rest in piece. In a macabre quest to "flip" the already-deceased, agents interrogated family members, funeral home workers, and crematoria personnel. Said Bowman's attorney: "The authorities know that if John Bowman were alive today he would stand up to these allegations and vigorously defend himself and the other men also facing the charges."

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