By Anne C. Bailey — Some 156 years after the end of the Civil War and the official abolition of slavery through the 13th Amendment, the idea of reparations is gaining currency in Washington. On March 1, Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, suggested the White House could “start acting now” on the issue. The comment comes just weeks after a House committee chaired by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee,…
By Tom Engelhardt — How the USS Enterprise Was Transformed into the USS Roach Like Gregor Samsa, the never-to-be-forgotten character in Franz Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis,” we awoke on January 7th to discover that we, too, were “a giant insect” with “a domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments” and numerous “pitifully thin” legs that “waved helplessly” before our eyes. If you prefer, though, you can just say it:…
By Kay Whitlock — White supremacist violence in the U.S. elicits the most outspoken public condemnation when it erupts overtly, amid a flurry of Confederate flags and the swaggering display of racist/white nationalist/neo-Nazi symbols and assault rifles. Demands for intensified policing, prosecution, harsher punishments, and more anti-terrorism measures proliferate. Who doesn’t want to retaliate, hit back hard at power-hungry, violent racists? The desire to “not let them get away with…
By Derek H. Alderman, Joshua F.J. Inwood— How can maps fight racism and inequality? The work of the Black Panther Party, a 1960s- and 1970s-era Black political group featured in a new movie and a documentary, helps illustrate how cartography – the practice of making and using maps – can illuminate injustice. As these films show, the Black Panthers focused on African American empowerment and community survival, running a diverse array of programming that ranged…
By Julianne Malveaux — March is Women’s History Month, and this month is the perfect time to uplift the Black women’s organizations that make such an essential difference in our lives. Last year, both the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) and the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women (NANBPW) celebrated their 85th anniversary. Thanks to COVID, neither organization had the opportunity to celebrate in the way they…
By Cedric ‘BIG CED’ Thornton — A Black woman, who started as a part-time server, is now an owner of her very own Outback Steakhouse restaurant in Michigan, less than 20 years later. According to Fox2 Detroit, Gretta Jackson took a job as a part-time server job at an Outback in Southfield almost two decades ago to put some extra money in her pocket. She worked her way up to become the…
By Bill Fletcher Jr. — It is important to note that both Antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement are networks, at best. There is no one organization called “Antifa,” for instance, and there are many organizations that operate under the banner of Black Lives Matter. Therefore, the right-wing assertions of an Antifa and BLM conspiracy would not make sense in the best of all possible worlds. But more importantly,…
By Nkechi Taifa — WASHINGTON — If acknowledgement is the first step toward acceptance, reparations for Black people in America has taken a major step forward. The Feb. 17th House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Reparations is one case in point. Then you add the recent Harvard study from Harvard Medical School and the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice that shows, as Kamm Howard from the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) testified,…
By Dr. Maulana Karenga — Part II. It was Min. Malcolm X who taught us to cultivate a world-encompassing consciousness, not only as pan-Africanists committed to the liberation of Africans everywhere, but also as part of the worldwide revolution and liberation struggle going on and redrawing the map of history. He taught that we, as African people, were part of that global struggle of the oppressed against oppressors. And he…
By Edmond Campbell— The leadership of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is urging the Joe Biden administration to carry out a “dispassionate early review” of the United States’ scorched policy towards Venezuela, with a view to lifting draconian sanctions that have contributed to an economic and humanitarian crisis in that country. Under the Donald Trump administration, the United States imposed tough sanctions on the South American country as it increased pressure…
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Contributor— “When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.” — Jomo Kenyatta, First President of Kenya, Africa The Catholic Church played a vital role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, according to historians and several published theses…
By Stacy M. Brown — “I think if people begin to associate this legislation with what happened to the descendants of enslaved Africans as a human rights violation, the sordid past that violated the human rights of all of us who are descendants of enslaved Africans, I think that we can find common ground to pass this legislation,” said Congresswoman Jackson Lee in reference to H.R. 40, the reparations legislation…
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Also visit the Reparations Resource Center here on ibw21.org →
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The Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW21) is committed to enhancing the capacity of Black communities in the U.S. and globally to achieve cultural, social, economic and political equality and an enhanced quality of life for all marginalized people. – Learn more here
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