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

White Supremacy Goes Back to the Crusades
Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
12 Nov 2019
🖨️ Print Article

The roots of western European anti-Blackness lie in the Middle Ages, in the Crusades to seize Arab lands, said Cord Whitaker, a professor at Wellesley College and author of “Black Metaphors: How Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking.” It was during this era that “you started to see the idea that darkness of skin, blackness, denoted potential evil,” said Whitaker. “It was still not the racial ideology we have today, but it was an important step in getting there.”

white supremacy

Related Podcasts

BAR Radio Logo
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio September 26, 2025
26 September 2025
In this week’s segment we discuss the need for self-defense against racist, white supremacist forces.
One People’s Project
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
One People's Project and the Fight Against Racism and Fascism
26 September 2025
Our guest is Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder of One People’s Project.
NYPD gang database
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
NYPD Gang Database Targets Young Black and Latino Men
28 February 2025
Proposed legislation in the New York City Council, Intro 798, seeks to end the NYPD’s Gang Database, ensuring that individuals unjustly labeled as

More Stories


  • Robert Brooks memorial
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Robert Brooks, Rikers Island and the Fight Against New York Incarceration
    10 Jan 2025
    Darren Mack, co-founder and co-director of Freedom Agenda, talks to us about the killing of Robert Brooks, who died after being beaten by corrections officers in a New York state prison, and the need…
  • International Decade of People of African Descent
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Cuban Conference Against Racism and Racial Discrimination
    10 Jan 2025
    The National Program against racism and racial discrimination conference was held in Cuba as part of the UN declared International Decade of People of African Descent.
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Ghost of Jimmy Carter
    08 Jan 2025
    Hagiography is inevitable when presidents and other prominent people die. The unwillingness to ‘speak ill of the dead’ and the propaganda that would have us believe in American exceptionalism must be…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Unconscionable Costs, Ronald V. Dellums, 1983
    08 Jan 2025
    The late Ronald V. Dellums shows us how to fight against the Pentagon-inspired madness of military spending and nuclear proliferation.
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Remembering Jamaica in the East/West Crossfire
    08 Jan 2025
    Jamaicans still remember their visionary leaders, Norman and Michael Manley, and the bloody general election of 1980.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us