News and Commentary
Mosibudi Mangena, Consciousness Defines Who We Are
To be truly free, we need to be strong, cohesive and in solidarity with one another. For that to happen, we need to give ourselves generous doses of Black Consciousness. Then, and only then, shall we be able to build an open, democratic and more equal society in which the colour of your skin will count for nought.
Maulana Karenga, Sharing the Burden and Possibilities of the Crisis
African Americans must self-consciously reaffirm their role as a moral vanguard in the country by taking an ethical stand in several matters no matter how unpopular. We must speak out against the easy non-solution of war and for the difficult task of peace. And it must be a peace based on an ethics of sharing the good and tasks of the world, i.e., shared status (the inherent dignity and worth of all humans), shared knowledge, shared space, shared wealth, shared power, shared interests and shared responsibility for building the good world we all want and deserve to live in. It is in this context that Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s stand against war and unlimited powers to the President is so meaningful and praiseworthy.
Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, No Palestinian Ever Called Me A Nigger!
Our fight is *in America* and *with America* for full human rights and liberation, not in Kabul, Pakistan, Khandahar, Islamabad, Algiers, or hundreds of places we know nothing about and have no beef with their people. It is this country which is *our* enemy, and which is depriving us of our human rights. This hypocritical country, which is bleeding us dry and subjecting us to continued oppression and servitude in numerous forms. We ain’t got this situation straight yet, and now we are supposed to go galavanting across the globe to fight for this white racist government. Colin Powell may be a dog for Bush, but it don’t mean the rest of us have to be!
Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Slavery, Racist Violence, American Apartheid: The Case for Reparations
…the struggle for reparations necessitates an internal dialogue about the process of political and economic decision-making. For instance, how would the Black community determine what reparation proposal to pursue? How would we decide on a process for allocating resources and redistributing wealth? For me, reparations are simultaneously an objective but more importantly a means for strengthening and democratizing Black civil society. The struggle for reparations has the potential to politically mobilize a broad cross-section of Afro-America. Mass participation is the key to creating a strong participatory democratic culture throughout Afro-America. Finally, I contend that rebuilding and transforming frican America’s autonomous institutional structure is the key to lack liberation and a radical transformation of the United States.
Conference: W.E.B. DuBois & Frantz Fanon: Postcolonial Linkages and Transatlantic Receptions
On the eve of the centenary of W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk and upon the 40th anniversary of Algerian independence, this conference aims to highlight the significance DuBois and Fanon hold for contemporary scholarship.
Ama Hetepunuta, Reparations and Revolutionaries
The Africans who participated in the slave trades are like the black exploiters and traitors among the ranks of today’s capitalist leagues of entrepreneurs, politicians and even so-called religious leaders. Those blacks who trade off and sell out the interest of black communities for their personal gain and self-interest. Often they deal ruthlessly with other blacks that oppose their agenda, neutralizing or turning them over to the full brunt of “white power”. Yet, are they the grand puppeteers? Certainly, they are not.
Dalton Conley, Forty Acres and a Mule Isn’t Enough!
The devaluation of African-American neighbourhoods is partly a result of white fears of a decline in property values and the “white flight” that ensues. As long as whites are a significant majority and can decide where they will live, they will have an economic incentive to flee integrated neighbourhoods, perpetuating the vicious cycle. Aside from personal choice, it is therefore in the economic interest of white homeowners to sell up when they anticipate that their neighbourhood has reached a racial turning point, for fear that others will make the same calculation and sell off first, causing them to lose money on their home.
Frances M. Beal, The Right to Dissent: First Casualty of Terrorism?
Even more ominous is Attorney General Ashcroft’s so-called anti-terrorism bill, which is on a fast track in Congress. The bill proposes unlimited powers for law enforcement and the intelligence services to ignore Constitutional restrictions that protect citizens from undue government invasions into our right to privacy and our right to dissent. The bill provides for vastly expanded electronic surveillance, detaining immigrants indefinitely without charges, and the seizure of property without judicial supervision.