Black Agenda Report: Issue for: May 2 – May 8

BAR-produced stories:

Hip Hop Profanity, Misogyny and Violence: Blame the Manufacturer
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
The often convoluted debate over hip-hop lyrics and images frequently misses the point: mass marketed rap recordings, videos and stage acts are corporate products, and the artists are virtual employees and subcontractors of huge multinationals. Corporate control of the cultural marketplace is the real villain in this story, not artists who did not pick themselves for stardom and cannot on their own alter boardroom business models. Corporations have been usurping and reshaping Black mass culture for decades – hip-hop is just the latest product line.

Freedom Rider: “These People Frighten Me”
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel is right to be scared of most of the Democratic field of presidential candidates. Except for Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the contenders jockey for the title of most-likely-to-attack-Iran. Impeachment “is the only way to discredit Republicans enough to insure a Democratic victory in 2008,” but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hear none of that. Even if the Democrats somehow triumph, nothing much will change, because the frontrunners are all beholden to Big Money and enthralled with war.

A ‘Ho’ By Any Other Color: The History and Economics of Black Female Sexual Exploitation
by contributing editor Dr. Edward Rhymes
While white women’s sexuality is celebrated in movies and magazines, Black women acting out the same behavior are relegated to the ranks of whoredom. This gross double standard is rooted in slavery and super-exploitation of Black females, who were made prey to white male lust and depicted as sexually animalistic, in addition to bearing the burden of unremunerated labor. Conversely, “ even at her most licentious,” a white woman “is made to appear innocent, wholesome and strangely virginal.”

Big Media Censor the Kucinich-Gravel Tag Team
A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Glen Ford
Even when the evidence of their eyes and ears says otherwise, the corporate media will continue to insist that Barack Obama is an anti-war candidate. Obama’s foreign policy belligerence was on display at the South Carolina Democratic presidential debate, revealed under pressure from candidates Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. However, the exchange – the most newsworthy moments of the debate – was immediately downplayed by corporate media, who are in the reality-suppression business, not the news business.

Other articles in this issue:

May Day in LA: "We Will Not Be Divided"
by Cynthia McKinney
African Americans and immigrants must band together to resist a forced march to the bottom, said the former congresswoman in a May Day speech in Los Angeles. The United States government should oppose, rather than abet, corporate policies that force people across borders. The Democratic Congress is way behind schedule in addressing critical issues such ensuring Katrina survivors’ right of return, and repealing George Bush’s tax cuts, the Patriot Act, the Military Tribunals Act and the Secret Evidence Act.

Why Black Workers Should Support Immigrant Rights
by John Parker
Black workers are constantly told that immigrants are determined to take their jobs – the same line that was fed to white workers about Blacks moving to industrial cities from the South, in past eras. The author, a Los Angeles resident, says empowering local police to act as immigration agents threatens all people of color. He compares the separation of immigrant families by deportation to the separation of Black families at slave auctions. There is plenty of common ground for a strategic Black-immigrant worker alliance.

The Democrats and U.S. Mercenaries in Iraq
by Jeremy Scahill
In addition to the other, many shortcomings in the Democrats’ Iraq “withdrawal” legislation, the measure fails utterly to deal with the 126,000 “contractors” in Iraq – tens of thousands of whom are armed mercenaries. The private force rivals the uniformed services in size, and earns far more money, all of it paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Unaccountable to U.S. military or Iraqi law, the mercenaries are a shadow army undergirding the occupation – and a corporate profit center for George Bush’s friends.

You don’t have to notify us if you post any of these articles on your site – although that would be nice. Like you, BlackAgendaReport.com is on a mission for peace, racial equality, and social and economic justice.

Let’s fight the good fight, together.

© Scoop Media