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

The Blue Plague and Black Death
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
27 May 2020
🖨️ Print Article
The Blue Plague and Black Death
The Blue Plague and Black Death

George Floyd’s death by Blue Plague in Minneapolis was widely condemned by the same parties that have encouraged and funded the spread of the fatal contagion.

“The Blue Plague is a serial killer that dates back to the slave patrols of the pre-Civil War South.”

The pathogen that kills Black people at two and a half times the rate of whites took the life of 46 year-old George Floyd, this week in Minneapolis. Floyd’s last words were, “I can’t breathe,” much like the desperate utterances of plague victim Eric Garner, struck down in 2014 in New York City.  Unlike the still raging Covid-19 virus, which is virulent among Blacks of both sexes, the Blue Plague is especially lethal to Black males of all ages. According to researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Michigan, 1 in every 1,000 black boys and men will be fatally stricken by the Blue Plague at some point in their lifetimes – at ages ranging from 12 year-old Tamir Rice, snuffed out in Cleveland in 2014, to 50 year-old Walter Scott, who fell victim to the pestilence in North Charleston, South Carolina in 2015.

Covid-19 is categorized as a “novel,” or new, virus, having mutated recently from wild animals. But the Blue Plague is a serial killer that dates back to the slave patrols of the pre-Civil War South. Indeed, the first vector of the Blue Plague has been traced back to Charleston, South Carolina, which established a paramilitary force called the City Guard in 1783, primarily to “police” Black slaves – although the term police had not yet been invented. The City Guard helped suppress the Denmark Vesey slave rebellion in 1822 – a success that is believed to have led to the mutation of slave patrols into full-fledged vectors of Black death in cities across the nation, not just the South. 

“The Blue Plague is especially lethal to Black males of all ages.”

Researchers are hoping to find a vaccine for Covid-19, possibly within the year, but the Blue Plague only grows more deadly over time and enjoys a host of immunities. Although Black people had hoped that the historic expansion in the number of Black elected officials would create political antibodies to limit the spread of the Blue Plague, the opposite has happened. In 2014, just months before Michael Brown’s life was cut short by the Blue Plague, in Ferguson, Missouri, 80 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus voted to continue funneling billions of dollars in military weapons, gear and training to local infestations of the plague, despite ample evidence that such infusions have made the scourge even more toxic to Black life. Four years later, 75 percent of the Black Caucus voted to classify the Blue Plague as a “protected class,” further immunizing the disease from the possibility of cure. The Protect and Serve Act of 2018 was “superfluous, since cops are already the most protected ‘class’ in the nation.”

More radical thinkers, steeped in the struggle against social pathogens, argue that the virulence of the Blue Plague can be weakened, at least among concentrated Black populations, through Black Community Control of the disease. A number of plague control formulas have been put forward, but the Black Misleadership Class, deeply embedded in the Democratic Party, fiercely resists any curb on the blue contagion, and actively encourages the spread of the disease among the federal secret police. In March of this year, two thirds of the Congressional Black Caucus joined with a large majority of Democrats in support of the wildly misnamed USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act, which has since passed the Senate, as well. Only 17 of the 50 full-voting Black members of the House voted against the law, which was supposed to expire this year along with other provisions of the infamous Patriot Act. As reported in The Verge, the Act allows the FBI “to collect ‘tangible things’ related to national security investigations without a warrant, requiring only approval from a secret court that has reportedly rubber-stamped many requests.” These tangible things include spying on targeted peoples’ web browsing “without having to demonstrate that those Americans have done anything wrong,” in the words of Oregon Sen. Wyden.

“The Black Misleadership Class, deeply embedded in the Democratic Party, fiercely resists any curb on the blue contagion.”

The Blue contagion has spread around the world as the United States deploys its vast military as a kind of global police force, backed up by killer drones that carry out White House authorized executions in the far reaches of the planet. President Barack Obama authorized a regular schedule of snuff jobs on “Kill Tuesdays,” but President Trump’s timetable is probably more erratic.

This being an election year, George Floyd’s death by Blue Plague in Minneapolis was widely condemned by the same parties that have encouraged and funded the spread of the fatal contagion. The Democratic mayor of the city fired the four cops involved in crushing Floyd’s neck, and Joe Biden, the presidential candidate who brags that he “wrote” the Plague-proliferating 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, tweeted that “George Floyd deserved better and his family deserves justice. His life mattered.” But Biden and his party’s history as vectors of mass death say otherwise.

In the absence of an immediate cure, it is certain that some endangered Black males – and sisters, who are not immune to the ravages of the Blue Plague – will resort to home remedies to ward off the pestilence, as did Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and, more recently, some brothers in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com

Killer Cops

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Grand Jury Refuse to Charge Police in the Murder of Kwamena Ocran
Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
Grand Jury Refuse to Charge Police in the Murder of Kwamena Ocran
13 October 2021
Police killings in Maryland go unpunished as they do in the rest of the country.
Police and the License to Kill
Matthew D. Lassiter
Police and the License to Kill
06 May 2021
Detroit police killed hundreds of unnamed Blacks in response to the civil rights movement, revealing why most of today’s proposals to make police m
Black Caucus Support for Anti-Lynching Law is a Sham
Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
Black Caucus Support for Anti-Lynching Law is a Sham
04 July 2018
“The lynchers-in-blue run amuk because they are aided and abetted by the Black Misleadership Class and its Democratic elected represent

More Stories


  • Sara Flounders , Joe Lombardo
    RESPONSE TO: Lawrence S. Wittner’s “Spinning Illusions: The Anti-American Left and the Ukraine War” – a new McCarthyism
    23 Aug 2023
    Recently articles have appeared on the front page of the New York Times that try to smear Code Pink, The People’s Forum and TriContinental as Chinese agents. The Times article was followed by a…
  • Yes! An NFL Player Can Be Exploited
    Gus Griffin
    Yes! An NFL Player Can Be Exploited
    23 Aug 2023
    Michael Oher’s story of exploitation is even worse than the white savior narrative presented by Hollywood.
  • Case studies: US military assistance in Africa doesn’t work
    Jim Lobe
    Case studies: US Military Assistance in Africa Doesn’t Work
    23 Aug 2023
    ​​​​​​​Authors of a new report worry that Washington won’t heed their warnings but double down in an era of Great Power Competition.
  • How Washington Shapes ICC To Its Own Aims
    Maureen Clare Murphy
    How Washington Shapes ICC To Its Own Aims
    23 Aug 2023
    The International Criminal Court is itself criminal in its selective prosecutions and obedience to Washington's directives. In turn, the U.S. specifically prohibits aid to the Palestinian Authority…
  • Why Is the U.S. Now Favoring Accelerating the Formation of a Force to Intervene in Haiti?
    Narciso Isa Conde
    Why Is the U.S. Now Favoring Accelerating the Formation of a Force to Intervene in Haiti?
    23 Aug 2023
    The impending occupation of Haiti is the latest example of imperialist aggression against that nation and others.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us