The Need for a Black Agenda

Glen Ford @ Black Agenda Report - The African American Left’s failure to formulate a Black Agenda has made it “largely irrelevant during the greatest crisis of capitalism since at least the Great Depression, and the worst economic and social crisis for African Americans since the death of Reconstruction.” The default Black Agenda is Obamaism, which is corporatism, and the death of Black politics. “If all that matters is Obama, then there is no need for a Black political agenda – except four more years of Obama.”

Malcolm X, whose assassination is commemorated this week, warned us that, "If we don't stand for something, we may fall for anything." Forty-seven years later, most Black politicians and mainline African American organizations are willing to stand for nothing beyond the re-election of the First Black President. For the second presidential season in a row, in deathly fear of embarrassing (or somehow tainting) Barack Obama, traditional and elected Black leadership have made no demands of the Democratic standard bearer, thus giving the world the impression that there is no African American agenda worth putting forward.  Read more.