Black Agenda Radio - 09.16.19

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: Black people get the worst health care in the United States, but we’ll talk with a doctor and author who says Blacks also pay more for bad health outcomes; and, a researcher on education says Black and brown students have every right to be outraged at the racist treatment they are subjected to in US schools.

 Brazil has long been a killing ground for Black and brown people, but the carnage has increased with the election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who some call the Donald Trump of South America. In just three months, police in Rio de Janeiro killed 434 people, most of them young Black men. We spoke with Joao Costa Vargas, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, at Riverside. Dr. Costa Vargas is from Brazil, and is author of the book, “The Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil.” We asked him if Bolsonaro is encouraging police massacres of young Blacks.

We all know that Black folks are disproportionately given subprime loans by banks. But, Dr. Leslie Hinkson says, the same is true in healthcare. Dr. Hinkson is co-editor of the new book, “Subprime Health: Debt and Race in U.S. Medicine.

The corporate media has long been obsessed with violence in urban schools, but they seldom consider the violence that the schools exert against Black and brown students. Dr. Connie Wun is an analyst an researcher who advocates for women and girls of color. Dr. Wun wrote an influential article in The Feminist Wire titled, “Racialized and Gendered Violence Permeates School Discipline.” She begins the article with the plight of Jada Williams, an eighth-grade student in Rochester, New York.