Black radicalism [consequently] cannot be understood within the particular context of its genesis. It is not a variant of Western radicalism whose proponents happen to be Black. Rather, it is a specifically African response to an oppression emergent from the immediate determinants of European development in the modern era and framed by orders of human exploitation woven into the interstices of European social life from the inception of Western civilization. . .Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism (79) How do we map the Black Radical tradition? How can we understand its praxis? If we are to truly to ..read more

Image: John Biggers, Band of Angels: Weaving the Seventh Word, 1992-93 According to the Dogon, “in the beginning before anything existed there was the Supreme Being, Amma. Amma existed in the form of an egg divided into four parts by four bones [the clavicles], which were joined together. Apart from the egg, nothing existed, for Amma rested on nothing. The four arts of the egg represented the four elements: water, air, fire, and Earth. So, the fundamental elements already existed in the egg in embryo form. In the egg Amma had designed the world before it was created” [51]. Ultimately, Amma cre ..read more

[produced and aired, 2016...note...our production is getting better...: )] In a 1968 in the March edition of Negro Digest titled, the Nature and Needs of the Black University, Gerald McWorter [Abdul Alkalimat] writes…and I must quote in its entirety here: “Revolutionary change for the liberation of a people from oppressive social structures is not the special function of one course of action, but, more likely, the result of several. And while education is generally hoped to be a liberating force on our minds and bodies, often it has been used as a debilitating tool in the interests of an oppre ..read more

We are living in a time of great challenge and opportunity. Across the African world people are challenging their historically rooted contemporary conditions. The practical work of the long tradition of African and Diasporic freedom fighters has provided the frame work for these various manifestations of Africana resistance to find a way forward---to think, reason, and see that another world is not only possible, but absolutely necessary. The current sociopolitical, economic, and cultural organization of global society is truly not sustainable. Amie Cesaire writing in 1950—in Discourse on Colo ..read more

Amadou Hampâté Bâ, quoting his teacher Tierno Bokar, suggest that “writing is one thing and knowledge is another. Writing is the photograph of knowledge but is not knowledge itself” [A. Hampâté Bâ, The Living Tradition, General History of Africa Vol. 1: 166]. According to Hampâté Bâ, “the world’s earliest archives or libraires were the brains of men [and I must add women] … The written word is not without thought. The written word without being refined through action and interaction which is articulated through nommo is without power. Without nommo – the African conceptualization of the energ ..read more

Originally produced and aired in 2016...: The great political theorist, cultural philosopher, revolutionary, C. L. R. James once said that he is black, number one, because he is against what they have done and are still doing to us; and number two, he has something to say about the new society to be built because he has a tremendous part in that which they have sought to discredit.— C. L. R. James, C. L. R. James: His Life and Work. In the article The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses (The—sees), Fred Moten and Stefano Harney start their analysis with this powerful quote: “To the u ..read more

The history of the geographical region now called, Eritrea is deep and rich. Eritrea has been occupied in turn by Ottoman Turks, Egyptians, Italians (from 1886 until 1941), the British until 1952 (who defeated Italy in Eritrea during the second world war) and the Ethiopians ever since [Pateman 1990:51]. In 1 952, the British and the United Nations determined on a federation of Eritrea and Ethiopia. In the first 10 years after the federation was formed Ethiopia's direct rule over Eritrea was imposed. Towards the end of 1952 La Voce de' Eritrea, a newspaper critical of the federation, was banned ..read more

Image: Female literacy volunteers return to Havana at the end of the literacy campaign in December 1961 On June 23, 2021, a total of 184 countries on voted in favor of a resolution to demand the end of the US economic blockade on Cuba, for the 29th year in a row, with the United States and Israel, being the only countries voting against resolution. Three countries - Colombia, Ukraine, and Brazil - abstained. Wednesday, July 7, of last week, the world received news of the assassination of then Haitian president in the midst of already tension conditions on the ground. On this same day, a histor ..read more

Saladin Muhammad argues in an article titled Black Workers for Justice, Twenty-year of Struggle, in Against the Current that: “The national oppression of African Americans in the U.S. South makes Black workers in the South the most exploited section of the U.S. industrial working class. Black Workers for Justice [BWFJ] thus bases its trade union and political perspectives on the principle of the centrality of the Black working class.” “The struggle against racism, for political power and self-determination for African descendant people are key aspects of this principle in forging the unity of ..read more

The clear and intentionality in the processes of violence carried out upon African/a peoples as they are constituted around the world and its symmetry in form and function upon people who are categorized as native in the Americas is not without precedent. European modernity is responding to its disintegration and has been for over the past 500 years. A process that has its origins in the formation of the entity known as Europe, as it began to organize the loosely tied collection of tribes into nations all built upon continuities in a worldview that propel the interdependent logics that animate ..read more