Black Agenda Radio 09.07.20

Black Agenda Radio

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: A Black educator who put Africa at the center of his teaching is still impacting the profession, thirteen years after his death. And, some of the biggest fortunes in the world have been derived from poisoning generations of people and polluting the air, water and soil. We’ll examine the lethal history of arsenic.

But first – Joy James teaches political theory, feminist theory and critical race theory at Williams College. We spoke with Prof. James about her upcoming book, on what she calls “captive caretakers” of the Black community, and her recent article, “Airbrushing Revolution for the Sake of Abolition.”

When Dr. Asa Hilliard died in 2007, the former Dean of Education at San Francisco State University and Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University was mourned by thousands around the world. Hilliard was famed for advocating the African-izing of African American education. De Reef Jamison is a professor of African American Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He recently published an article, titled “Asa Hilliard: Conceptualizing and Constructing an African-Centered Pedagogy."

Arsenic. It’s a lot more than just the favorite weapon of sneaky murderers. Arsenic occupies a special place in the history of killer chemical agents – which is Northwestern University Phd candidate Jayson Porter’s field of study. As Porter explains, arsenic has played a huge role in agriculture, manufacturing and war, ending the lives of untold numbers of insects, plants and human beings in the process.