Black Agenda Radio - 11.30.20

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: New and updated terms have entered the vocabulary of Black liberation. We’ll speak with an academic and activist about critical race theory, racial realism and Afro-pessimism. And, we’ll take a look at the history and current struggles of quilombos, the autonomous Black and indigenous settlements of Brazil.

But first -- A globally important webinar on U.S. militarization of Africa, through its military command, AFRICOM, will be held on December 4. One of the panelists is Marie Claire Far-EYE, a Congolese member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Far-Eye currently lives in Great Britain, a country where, like the United States, most people are not even aware that the greatest genocide since World War Two is still unfolding in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Shameka Powell is co-director Educational Studies at Tufts School of Arts, and co-author of an essay titled, "Kissing Cousins: Critical Race Theory’s Racial Realism and Afropessimism’s Social Death.” These are subjects that are hotly debated in Black academic circles, and among some activists, but not the stuff of daily Black conversation. We talked with Prof. Powell about the relevance of Racial Realism and Afropessimism.

Brazil is home to the biggest Black population in the world outside of Nigeria, yet Blacks wield very little institutional power. Carla Maria Guerrón Montero is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Delaware. She’s done extensive studies of Black populations in Latin America. Most recently, Professor Montero immersed herself in the Quilombos of Brazil, autonomous settlements established to escape slavery and ongoing oppression of Black and indigenous people.