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

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 11/17/14
19 Nov 2014
🖨️ Print Article

The “Whitening” of Black Colleges

Court decisions combined with state and federal policies have led to the “whitening” of HBCUs – Historically Black Colleges and Universities – including Delaware State University, where Dr. Jahi Issa taught until his arrest at a student demonstration in 2012. “We’re looking at over two decades of strategic removal of African American faculty and students,” said Issa, whose multi-part articles titled “How Black Colleges are Turning White: The Ethnic Cleansing of HBCUs in the Age of Obama” are published in Black Agenda Report. This trend, along with falling Black enrollment in historically white institutions and assaults on African American Studies programs, poses an existential threat to Black higher education in the United States. HBCUs will likely continue to exist, but “there just probably won’t be too many Black people there,” said Issa.

Reparations “Enforcement” is Key

In recent decades, the struggle for reparations for Africans and their descendants has moved from simple advocacy to “a mode of activism called reparations enforcement,” in which Blacks in various localities target businesses and institutions that have profited from slavery and Jim Crow and present bills for the criminal damages that have been inflicted on Black people, said Kamm Howard, of NCOBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. The reparations movement needs a revolutionary language that speaks in terms of criminal acts historically committed against Blacks – acts for which there is no statute of limitations, said Howard, speaking at a Black Is Back Coalition teach-in at Howard University, in Washington.

Defining and Defending U.S. Political Prisoners

The scores of political activists still languishing in prison are testament to U.S. violation of international law and treaties prohibiting racial discrimination, said Efia Nwangaza, of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, in Greenville, South Carolina. Nwanga has just returned from a United Nations forum in Geneva, Switzerland, at which the U.S. claimed, as always, that it holds no political prisoners. Since the term “political prisoners” is also not part of UN terminology, Nwangaza’s Malcolm X Center and the Jericho Movement speak, instead, on behalf of “Cointelpro and civil rights era political activists and human rights defenders.” In arguing before the UN, Nwangaza maintains that “the focus of Cointelpro” – the FBI’s campaign to neutralize political dissidents – “had a significant racial component and, as a result, a significant impact on the Black liberation struggle.”

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 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: One hour. Click here to download the show.


More Stories


  • Julia Wright
    What Happens When You Cannot Describe What Your Eyes See?
    26 Feb 2025
    State and corporate media control through censorship is intended to have a psychological effect on the masses. The genocide in Palestine reveals the dangers of this depraved effort.…
  • Bruce Dixon
    Another Black Face on MSNBC: Good News For Joy Ann Reid, Not So Much For The Rest of Us
    26 Feb 2025
    If Fox News is the Republican ministry of TV propaganda, MSNBC is the mouthpiece of the White House and corporate Democrats. The last real journalist in an MSNBC host spot was Phil Donahue, fired for…
  • Ryan S.
    Elon Musk and DOGE Slash Funding for Major Black Kansas City Neighborhood Councils
    26 Feb 2025
    Elon Musk & DOGE are targeting one of Kansas City’s most prominent Black-led neighborhood councils—slashing a federal grant and threatening a vital food sovereignty movement.
  • Chuck Squatriglia
    Feds Lend Tesla $465 Million to Build Model S
    26 Feb 2025
    Elon Musk is Donald Trump's right-hand man and viewed as an evil incarnate, but it was Barack Obama's administration which bailed out Tesla with a $465 million loan in 2009. Both wings of the duopoly…
  • Tamara Nassar
    Palestinians Forced to Flee US-Armed Israeli Military in West Bank
    26 Feb 2025
    Israel initiated a massive assault against the West Bank, displacing tens of thousands of people. As the terror and destruction go on, settlers continue to steal land as part of Israel's expansionist…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us