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

Political Scientist Rejects Organizing Based on “Purely Ethnic Affinity”
Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
16 Aug 2017
🖨️ Print Article

Cedric Johnson, a political scientist and associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago, has no confidence in the long term effectiveness of organizing based on “a purely ethnic affinity.” Dr. Johnson told the Dead Pundits Society podcast: “There are many different interests that are operating within the Black population at any given moment. Whenever we have these sorts of national agenda-setting exercises, what you get is a portrait of some of the different things that Black people want, but it’s not really a functioning agenda.”

black power

Related Podcasts

 Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power Meets African Liberation
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power Meets African Liberation
22 December 2020
In the political hotbed that was Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1967, US Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael, who had not yet changed his name to
Super-Hero Comics and Black Empowerment
Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
Super-Hero Comics and Black Empowerment
28 May 2018
Prof Turtel Onlihas been producing and marketing Black super-hero comic books for more than four decades, through his Chicago

More Stories


  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Spinning Half-truth straw into big lie gold…
    14 Jan 2026
    "Spinning Half-truth straw into big lie gold…" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    The Domestic Global South and The Need for Climate and Environmental Internationalism
    14 Jan 2026
    True environmental liberation demands south-to-south solidarity against racial capitalism, linking the struggles of oppressed communities from Palestine to Louisiana under a shared framework of…
  • Pan-African Community Action
    Occupation Forces Upheld by Federal Judiciary Demonstrates DC’s Need for Community Control
    14 Jan 2026
    While politicians debate legal procedure, residents of Washington DC live under a sustained military deployment, exposing how both federal and local power collaborate against them.
  • Hanna Eid
    Hyperscale Data Centers and the Production of Waste
    14 Jan 2026
    The A.I. revolution has a hidden cost. Its massive data centers create huge amounts of waste and decimate labor and humanity.
  • Willie Mack
    Trump 2.0: A dark mirror into our past
    14 Jan 2026
    The Trump 2.0 administration is demonstrating the logical endpoint of a state project built on racial oppression. Trump’s actions show continuity with past history.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us