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


  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor , Dr. Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad
    Somaliland Pins Hopes of Recognition on Trump
    12 Feb 2025
    Somaliland is pinning its hopes of recognition as an independent state on Donald Trump, and Trump has suggested that the breakaway state accept Palestinians exiled from Gaza.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Erehwon (Shangri La Utopia)
    12 Feb 2025
    "Erehwon (Shangri La Utopia)" is the latest from BAR's poet-in-Residence.
  • Jon Jeter
    Landless and Poor, Black South Africans Say they will Defy Trump and Move Ahead, Finally, with Land Reform
    12 Feb 2025
    A torrent of false and racist claims culminated in a presidential executive order suspending any aid to South Africa. Donald Trump is attempting to stand in the way of its land reform process.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    While Trump Waves a Flag of white “Supremacy,” Democrats are Waving a White Flag of Surrender
    12 Feb 2025
    Donald Trump began his presidency with an onslaught of executive actions meant to dismantle those governmental agencies that offer any lifeline for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white…
  • Iker Suarez
    Mass Deportation as Ethnic Cleansing: on the Ongoing War
    12 Feb 2025
    The United States is a colonial empire, repressing and exploiting colonized peoples domestically and internationally. Mass deportations are a function of ethnic cleansing and a continuation of U.S.…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us