| Black Agenda Report

Russell Rickford
Beyoncé's "Black is King" and the Pitfalls of African Consciousness
19 Aug 2020
With Black is King, Beyoncé and Disney have combined to sell audiences a lavishly fabricated Africa—one that is entirely devoid of class conflict. “An African American megastar and entrepreneur has appropriated African nationalist and Pan Africanist imagery to promote the spirit of…
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Aliyah Khan’s “Far from Mecca”
19 Aug 2020
Islam should be understood as a religion of enslaved African Muslims and contemporary Black Muslims in the Americas—not simply as a religion of 20th and 21st century Arab, African, and Asian immigrants. “’Muslim’ has never functioned solely as a religious category in the Americas.”
Semassa Boko
BAR Book Forum: “Black Study and Abolition”
19 Aug 2020
Our theorizing must take on the dynamic, fugitive, and excessive aesthetics of black practice and performance. “The black body is tortured by the slavemaster’s whip, but also the’“abolitionist’s’ empathic identification with the black body.”
Jahan Choudhry Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
19 Aug 2020
This week protests in Portland and Racial Capitalism were on your minds. We share your letters for “Dispatch from PDX (Portland, Oregon); Black Lives Matter in a White Utopia” and “‘Racial Capitalism’ is the Kind We’ve Got.”
Charisse Burden-Stelly, PhD
Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism: Some Theoretical Insights
19 Aug 2020
Anti-Blackness and antiradicalism function as the legitimating architecture of modern U.S. racial capitalism. “The resolution to racial capitalism is antiracist socialism.”
Paul Street
Kopmala’s Padlocks and the Games Politicians Play
19 Aug 2020
The Big Business-backed Harris earned a reputation as a friend of the police and an agent of racially disparate mass incarceration. “It’s an old game in American politics: Democrats posing as populists and progressives when they are owned by the nation’s imperial ruling class.”
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Beirut BOOM
19 Aug 2020
A big BOOM— 27,000 tons of ammonium nitrate… chemical compound for agricultural Fertilizer… ‘stored’ 6 years at the port of Beirut 220 dead 5,000 injured 300,000 houseless; Millions traumatized A big BOOM— surgically removing cranes, grain silos, warehouses, hospitals—billion dollar…
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Trump is Wrong, Joe Biden is not the “Radical Left.” He is an Enemy of Humanity
19 Aug 2020
Both candidates are jockeying for who can best gaslight the U.S. public into remaining loyal to one side of the two-party corporate duopoly or the other. “Trump and the Democrats have tightened their grip over the political narrative in the United States.”
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: “Feet to the Fire” and Other Lies
19 Aug 2020
When the Democratic Party ends its charade of a primary process and spits out the person most closely aligned with neo-liberal policies, the gas lighting begins. “The farce always intensifies with a black person on the ticket.” Democrats love to pretend. They pretend their party advocates on their…
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Free All Political Prisoners – and Say Their Names!
19 Aug 2020
It is righteous and correct to say the names of victims of police violence, but we must also “Say the names!” of our living political prisoners. “They can’t wait for ‘Abolition.’” BAR executive editor Glen Ford made the following remarks on August 15 to the Black is Back Coalition…