Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Arsenic and Agrarian Racial Capitalism
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
07 Sep 2020
🖨️ Print Article

Margaret Kimberley · Arsenic and White Corporate Profits

The highly toxic herbicide and multi-purpose poison arsenic was key to the production of cotton in the United States and Mexico, and in the process sickened and killed a multitude of Black and brown agricultural workers, said Jayson Porter, a PhD candidate in history at Northwestern University. Arsenic “helped build the U.S. empire” and paved the way for the so-called ‘Green Revolution’ and large-scale cash crop farming, as well as the bioweapons used to decimate Vietnamese plant life and people, said Porter.

environmental racism

Related Podcasts

End colonialism
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
African Descendants and Just Transition in the Climate Crisis
24 April 2026
The first International Conference to Phase Out Fossil Fuels takes place i
Status Coup Flint
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Flint, Michigan Water Crisis Continues Without Repair or Justice
26 January 2024
Jordan Chariton is the founder of Status Coup news.
Black Agenda Radio September 8, 2023
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio September 8, 2023
08 September 2023
Maurice Carney is Executive Director of Friends of the Congo.

More Stories


  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    For an ICU VA Nurse
    28 Jan 2026
    "For an ICU VA Nurse" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Austin Cole
    Data Center Boom, Corporate Extraction, and the Obfuscation of the Land Question in the U.S.
    28 Jan 2026
    The grassroots resistance against data centers is about more than zoning and community benefit agreements. It is the latest front in America’s war against the people over land, sovereignty, and who…
  • Jacqueline Luqman
    Continuity of Social Control From Slave Patrols To Policing To ICE
    28 Jan 2026
    To understand the violence of contemporary immigration enforcement, one must trace its lineage directly to the antebellum slave patrols — a system founded on racial terror and complete state control.
  • Aby L. Sène
    Patagonia Forest Fires Reveal Imperialist Theft of Protected Lands
    28 Jan 2026
    The arson attacks that engulfed the protected forests of he Andean-Patagonia region serve as a reminder that Western conservation models, which dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands, are…
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Trump Derangement Syndrome Is Real, And It Obfuscates the Requisite Question of Self-Determination in the Heart of U.S. Empire
    28 Jan 2026
    When political energy is channeled into opposing an individual, that energy is diverted from the work of building the popular power needed to challenge the empire he represents.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us