| Black Agenda Report

Bill Quigley
Obama's Violin: Who's Playing, Who's Being Played?
04 Mar 2009
by Paul Street Delving into the speeches and writings of the President of Change reveals a Barack Obama sharply at odds with the popular image. On war, peace and a host of other issues the gulf is widening between what many voted for, and what they are beginning to get from the 44th president.
Bill Quigley
Obama and the Legacy of the 1963 March on Washington
20 Aug 2008
by Touré F. Reed The coincidence of the 45th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and the Democratic national convention is a political PR person's dream. "The Obama campaign is doing its best to co-opt the rally's legacy in its effort to reinforce the notion that the charismatic centrist…
Bill Quigley
The Boondocks as Black Public Sphere
11 May 2010
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR columnist Jared A. Ball Ph.D. Some folks are too dense even for cartoons – when they’re produced by Aaron McGruder. The Boondocks author’s political take on President Obama is too heavy for at least a portion of the audience, who tend to see the world as…
Bill Quigley
The "Predatory Buccaneer" and the Overpopulation Lie
02 Jun 2010
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR columnist Jared A. Ball, Ph.D. The logic of the world-stealers leads inexorably to genocide. Thus, the vast miseries that are the inevitable result of imperial mega-theft must be blamed on the victims who insist on continuing to breathe. There is no…
Bill Quigley
May Day and Hip-Hop Nationalism
05 May 2010
by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Jared A. Ball If hip hop is more than a movement, but a “nation,” as some have suggested, then some militant hip hop nationalism is in order. Logically, such a militant hip hop nationalism would seek to seize control of the means of cultural production – which…
Jared Ball
The Myth of Black “Buying Power"
25 Aug 2009
The immense “buying power” of African Americans, we are told again and again, makes us a huge economic power. So harnessing this power by changing the consuming habits of black America, the story goes, is an essential pre-requisite for black uplift. We've all heard it many times, from the screen,…
Bill Quigley
Social Movement: Obama’Laid and the Internet
12 Aug 2010
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR columnist Jared A. Ball, Ph.D. The recent Netroots Nation conference shows that Obama'Laid is easily dispensed in digital form, inebriating millions. What does it matter if 25 percent of Twitter users are Black, when “by 2012 75 percent of the country will…
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Black Business Class Leadership and the Crisis of Gentrification
21 Apr 2010
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon Why is the only model of inner city economic development that anybody has tried in living memory amount to moving poorer urban residents out, and wealthier ones in? What happens to the people who are moved out, and why does…
Bill Quigley
Black America, Abortion and the Morality of Choice
06 Jan 2010
by Sikivu Hutchinson Women of color face multiple challenges when seeking effective reproductive choice. In addition to an Obama administration and Democratic congressional leadership that “kowtow to antiabortion forces out of political expediency,” African American women are brow-beaten by Black…
Bill Quigley
Ida B. Wells -- Still Wielding the Sword For Our People
07 Jan 2010
Born in Mississippi in 1862, Ida B. Wells was perhaps the most formidable African American leader of her day. That she is rarely mentioned in the chronology of black leadership that usually runs from Frederick Douglass, to Booker T. Washington to DuBois and Garvey and on into the 20th century is a…