Why America Needs A Black Agenda

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Saturday, black intellectuals and public servants at a 6,000-seat inaugural summit debunked the notion that creating a national agenda to aid black communities was exclusionary or racist. Their reasoning: Progressives policies for the public interest and the common good must address the condition of folks at the bottom of the socio-economic totem pole, i.e. the group of Americans with the highest rate of poverty, unemployment, and home foreclosures: black people.

Cornel West, Princeton professor, said: “Anytime you talk about black folk in America, you’re talking about a state of emergency, especially for black poor and working people… you’re making it a priority to say, ‘America, keep track of the prison industrial complex, keep track of the dilapidated housing, keep track of the disgraceful school systems, keep track of the unemployment rates and underemployment rates, and unavailable health care, child care.’ That is what it means to talk about the black agenda. Now what does that mean? That means the black agenda has always been the best agenda for the nation.”

We already see that any president is under tremendous pressure from the strong, the corporate elites, Wall Street oligarchs, various powerful folk at the top, who can easily push Obama in such a way that he tilts too much toward the strong and he doesn’t focus the way he ought on the weak, on the poor, on working people. And that’s why we’re here today.”

Having a black-identified president was applauded by speakers and audience members alike. But “…a black agenda is not qualified or surrendered because Mr. Obama is in the White House,” exclaimed Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson. In the age of Obama, the goals of social justice advocates remains unchanged: the social and economic gap must be closed and Americans with the least amount of resources must not be forgotten. Dyson pointed out that defending a black agenda may ironically “be even more viciously assaulted when we have a black face on an American empire that has historically been insensitive to the causes and claims of black people.”

Said Michael Fauntroy, George Mason University assistant professor, “Too many of us are just happy that we have a black president. I’m not sure that a lot of us are prepared to ask this President and this Congress to do what we as American citizens… have a right to petition the government to do…Special problems require special solutions… Just think about what’s going on 90 minutes north of here in Milwaukee where in late 2008 the black male unemployment rate was almost 50 percent. In my city, Washington DC, a city that has done reasonably well in this overall recession, the black male unemployment rate is 35 percent. Now that strikes me as a special problem. If Wall Street can identify a special problem that needs to be resolved then why can’t we?”

Amid the impassioned speeches, some viable pro-equity solutions (PDF) were offered: grassroots voting, rallying at Congress’ door, and redistributing stimulus funds into cities to support threatened institutions like libraries rather than sending the cash to states.

Follow Titania Kumeh on Twitter.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate