| Black Agenda Report

Deutsche Welle
Burundi to Demand Colonial Reparations From Germany and Belgium
19 Aug 2020
The East African country is a former German colony and lived under Belgian rule until gaining independence almost 60 years ago. “The ruling powers strengthened the divide between the Hutu and Tutsi groups.” Burundi wants Germany and Belgium to pay €36 billion ($42.6 billion) in reparations…
P. Khalil Saucier
What I Fear About University Actions in the Context of Black Lives Matter
19 Aug 2020
White folks at the university decided to set things right on race – without consulting Africana Studies. “If we are to take this problem seriously and do it right, certain people, departments, and disciplines need to step aside.”
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…
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Biden’s Philly Headquarters Rents a Fence to Stop the Poor People’s Army
19 Aug 2020
Cheri Honkala tells Ann Garrison that the Biden campaign headquarters threw up a rent-a-fence when they heard the Poor People’s Army was coming. “The only efforts they make in our neighborhoods are to make sure that the dope flows freely, and the campaigns throw around enough money to get some…