California Ethnic Studies Bill Sidelined
Powerful interests don’t want students to “interrogate the systems of power and privilege that are at stake” in today’s struggles, said Dr Gilda Ochoa, a key player in crafting legislation requiring all students in California’s public university system to pass an ethnic studies course before graduation. The bill was put on hold in the face of fierce opposition. Seventy-five percent of the state’s K1-12 students are non-whites, but few students or teachers “have learned this crucial history,” said Ochoa, a professor of Chicano/Latino Studies at Pomona College.
Muslims Always Implicated in White Men’s Mass Shootings
Even when white men are the perpetrators, Muslims are always somehow brought into the discussion, said Dr Maha Hilal, co-director of the Justice for Muslims Collective and author of an article titled “Leave Muslims Out of This; Let’s Discuss White Violence on It’s Own Terms.” Corporate media cover mass shootings “as if white violence can only be understood within a context of violence by Muslims,” said Hilal, although whites have historically committed horrific violence in the US.
Everywhere in the Diaspora, Blacks are Treated as “the Enemy”
“It’s always been important for us to be seen as enemies of whatever is considered decent, right or correct” by the white patriarchy,” said Cheryl Rodriguez, co-editor of “Trans-Atlantic Feminism: Women and Gender Studies in Africa and the Diaspora.” Rodriquez’s co-editors included women scholars and activists from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Ghana and Uganda.
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
Liberation struggles are not fought only on the battlefield. The African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) left a legacy of educational decolonization.
Glen Ford debating Michael Eric Dyson on Democracy Now in 2008, the abuses of the child welfare system in North Carolina, and residents of the University City Town Homes in Philadelphia face mass…
