| Black Agenda Report

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: COVID-19 and Deadly Health Care for Black People
15 Apr 2020
Even if the United States had a strong public health system, Black and brown people would be plagued by racist medical practices. “In all likelihood the American vaccine will be tested on black people.” When black people need medical care they are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. The…
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Yellow Skin, White Masks: Andrew Yang and the Democratic Party’s School of White Supremacist Thought
15 Apr 2020
Yang’s hope that Asian-Americans fight racism by marrying themselves to American exceptionalism is nothing more than an attempt to maintain his own economic privileges. “Yang’s insistence that Asian-Americans drape themselves in the American flag is particularly egregious.”
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
The USS COVID-19, from Guam to Puget Sound
15 Apr 2020
While the world confronts a real-life deadly epidemic, the Covid-afflicted US Navy struggles to maintain the farce of keeping the planet safe from fictitious threats. “The US Navy’s Pacific Command is not in its normal operational mode.”
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
…NOW’S THE TIME…
15 Apr 2020
coronavirus is coming across treacherous food deserts—their Red Lined decades of diabetes— over hills of hypertension; steep mountains of medical neglect; over shattered ruins of poverty like a good traveler: simple and silent; appreciative of hosts beneath stars and bars Below the Canadian…
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
The End of Sanders, and Maybe the Beginning of a Mass Independent Left
16 Apr 2020
Sander’s early Return of the Prodigal Son to the bosom of the Party allows him to escape the deep critique of capitalist medicine and political-economy that would be required of a “leftish” presidential candidate as this never-in-our-lifetimes crisis unfolds. “A core of Sanders supporters will…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Racism In and Against China
22 Apr 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has resuscitated the old “yellow peril” canard to its fullest extent, revealing deep xenophobia and racist intent against China. “U.S. accusations directed at others are always a projection of its own failures and wrong doing.”
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
U.S. Response to COVID-19 Equals Genocide for Blacks, but “Progressive” Leaders Offer Nothing But Words
22 Apr 2020
AOC and Bernie Sanders made public condemnations of the corporate bailout but did little in the way of resistance. “The epidemic represented a second virus for Black America which has only accelerated the genocide.”
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
I had a nightmare (For friend/fellow Poet Genny Lim)
22 Apr 2020
I had a nightmare that down in Mississippi, its governor having his lips dripping with words of Social Darwinism, Herd immunity and Mengele Medicine, Defied COVID-19 and hosted his own Houston-style “Howdy Modi” Rally— A gathering of strongmen— not wrong men A gathering of right men for the white…
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
The Black Plague
22 Apr 2020
The rapidity with which the pandemic has consumed black communities provides an unvarnished look into the dynamics of race and class that existed long before it emerged “Racism in the shadow of American slavery has diminished almost all of the life chances of African-Americans.” The old African-…
João Costa Vargas and Ana Flauzina
Antiblackness of the Pandemic in the US and Brazil
22 Apr 2020
At the heart of health disparities is antiblackness, a social code that renders Black people disposable. “In Brazil the virus is far more lethal to Blacks than it is for whites.”