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
  • omnibus

Empire's Overseers: The Two-Party Trap of Blackface Imperialism
Carlos Sirah
30 Oct 2024
Barack Obama and Kamala Harris

The U.S. political system is perpetuated through the facade of choice. The false belief that we have the power to decide who our political leaders will be and what policy the government will implement, is one cultivated to manufacture compliance and quell the revolutionary spirit of the masses.

The U.S. two-party electoral system functions as an ideological trap of white supremacy by presenting a false binary choice that constrains political imagination while masking the material reality: both parties advance imperial interests through military spending, global interventions, and economic policies that prioritize corporate power over human needs. And the elevation of Black figures like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris to command the imperial machine demonstrates the continued success of this ideological and political trap, where the incorporation of non-white actors into the U.S. imperial machinery serves to legitimize rather than challenge fundamental power structures. This strategy extends from the neocolonial projects in Africa and the Caribbean back to the Americas, operating with greater sophistication, efficacy, and reach.

As a Black and South Asian woman in power, Harris co-pilots the administration’s agenda,  actively undermining Black sovereignty in Haiti, supporting the zionist entity’s genocide of Palestinian people, and guaranteeing the war machine’s bases, contracts, and weapons programs dominate public spending.  Her role demonstrates, once again, the reality that white supremacy works not exclusively through explicit racism but through the assimilation of non-white faces into imperial power structures. This makes the people’s oppression more perfect: by diffusing responsibility across seemingly “progressive” representatives while leaving the material conditions of exploitation intact.

Imperial power deliberately splits "domestic" and "foreign" policy to hide how U.S. imperialism dictates conditions at home. When Congress funnels $175 billion to Ukraine and $20 billion to Israel, it makes explicit economic choices that enrich weapons manufacturers while starving healthcare, housing, and education. Military bases and defense contracts deliberately trap communities in economic dependence, building a loyal base that champions endless war. The military-industrial complex colonizes public universities, turning them into research centers for war and destruction while bridges collapse and flooding decimates cities. Democrats deploy civil rights rhetoric, Republicans preach spreading democracy, while both fund apartheid regimes and death squads.  What we get, then, are not not policies but an imperial system executing its core mission: sacrificing the people at home to maintain dominance abroad. 

Imperial power exposes its true nature when it selectively grants and denies fundamental rights. While Harris claims to defend reproductive rights domestically, she actively supports policies that bomb Palestinian hospitals to smithereens and make childbirth impossible for Palestinian women.  This is not just hypocrisy. It is the coherent application of western white-supremacist imperialist logic operating precisely as intended, measuring human worth by their usefulness to U.S. and western interests.  The U.S. military, of which domestic police is but a branch, first perfects its surveillance technologies by testing them on occupied populations abroad. These weapons are then deployed against U.S. residents.. Military commanders develop and refine counter-insurgency strategies in foreign wars, then teach police forces to use these same tactics against the domestic population.  The war always comes home.

It’s more grisly, even. The military-industrial machine weaponizes poverty itself, by running it through the gristmill converting  economic deprivation into a mechanism of imperial control. Military service becomes one of few viable economic options in poor and minority communities, creating a pipeline where economic desperation drives imperial recruitment. Defense industry jobs create constituencies for continued military spending, while technical education, increasingly orients toward military applications. This is not mere economic policy – it is the systematic creation of material dependencies that make challenging imperial power feel impossible.

Breaking free from white supremacy’s ideological traps requires more than electoral theater. It demands organized, militant resistance by the masses of oppressed peoples who understand their struggles cannot be separated: the fight against Cop City is directly tied to the military occupations of Haiti and the genocide in Palestine.

Blackface imperialism is now the order of the day. Fully colonized Negroes functioning as empire’s overseers, shipping weapons for Palestinian genocide, forcing Haiti’s occupation, and militarizing police terror at home. Our liberation demands masses of exploited and colonized peoples advancing militant political education, forging grounded alliances between struggles, and uncompromising, strategic action that gives the empire no peace. The choice lies not between imperial U.S. political parties, but between submission to empire and militant mass struggle for liberation.   

Carlos Sirah is a writer and cultural worker based in Los Angeles, CA. Sirah is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace.

electoral politics
liberalism
black liberals
Black Misleadership Class
imperialism
U.S. Militarism

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Temerity, Tartuffery, and Toxic Identity Reductionism…the Latest Democrat Party Hoggwash
21 May 2025
The Democratic Party would rather silence critics like Hogg than fix its own rot.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Graylan Hagler: Capitulation Masquerading as Political Thought
30 April 2025
Liberals continue to condemn anyone who didn’t support Kamala Harris and the latest iteration of neo-liberal treachery.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Neo-Kautskyism: Exposing the Bernie/AOC “Fight Oligarchy” Tour de Farce
23 April 2025
Lenin called out Kautsky’s fake socialism more than a century ago—today, Bernie and AOC are playing the same game, trading radical change for l
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
From Uncle Tom to Cousin Cory: (Or, The Curious Case of Mr. Booker’s Senate Floor Minstrel Show)
09 April 2025
Senator Cory Booker’s recent 25-hour Senate speech is hailed by some as an act of resistance.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
The Death of DEI
29 January 2025
Black people must be discerning about racist attacks on DEI programs while also acknowledging that “diversity” can be a con t
Alan MacLeod
Marco Rubio: From ‘Perfect Little Puppet’ to Most Dangerous Man Alive
29 January 2025
/*-->*/ /*-->*/
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Joe Biden's Terrible Legacy
15 January 2025
The moniker “Genocide Joe” is well deserved and one that Joe Biden can neve
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
The Ghost of Jimmy Carter
08 January 2025
Hagiography is inevitable when presidents and other prominent people die.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Eric Adams and Daniel Penny Make Black People the Face of Crime
18 December 2024
Daniel Penny’s acquittal was not surprising, and neither is Mayor Eri
When we vote we win
Joseph Massad
Why even progressive US voters are America Firsters
06 November 2024
The fate of billions whom the US dominates and oppresses is effectively exchanged for a few possible reforms in domestic policies that affect p

More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio May 23, 2025
    23 May 2025
    In this week’s segment, we discuss the legacy of Malcolm X and the state of the political party that many Black people feel trapped in. We are joined by a guest in Libya who explains the lasting…
  • Richard Medhurst
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Independent Jourmalist Richard Medhurst Targeted by Western Governments Acting on Israel's Behalf
    23 May 2025
    Our guest is Richard Medhurst. He is an independent journalist whose work has been severely impacted by state repression in the UK and Austria. He was arrested and detained in the UK in August 2024…
  • Malcolm X
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Malcolm X Legacy and Politics Today
    23 May 2025
    Anthony Rogers-Wright is a Black Agenda Report contributor and host of the WPFW program Full Spectrum, where Margaret Kimberley was recently a guest. They discussed the legacy of Malcolm X on the…
  • Libya
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    How the Libyan People Are Still Impacted By the U.S./NATO Destruction of Their State
    23 May 2025
    Our guest is Dr. Abdelkarim Kashkar. He is a physician and author who writes about politics in Libyan newspapers. He joins us from Benghazi, Libya, to discuss how the United States impacts the people…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Biden's Fate and Israel's Sadistic Revenge
    21 May 2025
    Israel is starving Gazans to death and continuing its bombing attacks on civilians. Israel also specializes in personal revenge, targeting men, women, and children who might be the subject of…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us