by Afeef Khan (Opinion, Crescent International Vol. 42, No. 6, Ramadan, 1434)
Racism is so deeply embedded in the American psyche that even with an African-American as president, killing blacks is routine, as Trayvon Martin’s murder verdict showed.
As this issue goes to press, we would be in the middle of Ramadan, a month in which we are to try to place local injustice within the domain of global injustice; that is, injustice anywhere is related to an attitudinal worldview that exhibits itself in a variety of domestic flavors and colors. Taking precaution against Allah’s (swt) corrective justice requires us to take a look at the big picture, for Allah’s (swt) justice is not simply symptomatic, but gets to the root of a problem, and thereby the branches end up taking care of themselves.
One issue being presented in a way that divorces it from the consuming attitudes that trivialize the very existence of dark-skinned people all over the world is the not-guilty verdict for George Zimmerman in the killing of an unarmed African American teenager, Trayvon Martin. African Americans, almost categorically, consider Trayvon to be the victim of a racially motivated murder, and that justice for Trayvon’s family was bastardized by a racially biased legal and court system. Many of the defenders of white American privilege (conservatives, libertarians, evangelicals, etc.), on the other hand, regard it to be either a tragic accident or an act of self-defense. African Americans, to their credit, have argued that had it been the other way around (an armed black man killing an unarmed white teenager), the public discourse and the resulting verdict would have been decidedly different.
In previous issues of Crescent, its writers have belabored the point that the one feature of human society that has the greatest impact on the expansion of social justice is muttaqi leaders who shape and inform the attitudes of the dominant power culture. Conversely, corrupt leaders lend their abilities to the regression of social justice. And thus, it should come as no surprise that the dominant imperialist power culture has chosen, for its own ends, to largely present this case as a domestic issue. To this end, its chief executive, President Obama, came out with the sanctimonious pietism that would ingratiate him to the power culture he serves. Fasting in Ramadan requires us to make the broader (and more significant) connections.
Those who are faint of heart should stop here — for this writer is now going to cross a major red line of American journalism by liberally using the “n-word.” Sorry. Consider the following paragraphs to be rap lyrics in prose. There are two kinds of niggers: the house nigger and the field nigger. For those of you who don’t know the difference, just punch up an interview with Malcolm X on your google device of choice. The current occupant of the White House is the former. As the first black president of the US, he claims to be the beneficiary of the Martin Luther King and civil rights legacy. Only the naive expected the “president of change” to employ the principles of that legacy in the way he would go about making critical decisions that affect the lives of millions of people around the world. Quite apart from his manicured and starched rhetoric, to be sure, his policies are no different than the racist predecessors who occupied the same office before him. But because he is black, and because he was the one who claimed to ride into the White House on the wings of that legacy, he is the one person who has singularly cheapened the lives of the dark-skinned people around the world (and yes, here at home as well) more than any other in the last 300 years. Indiscriminate murder of dark-skinned people all over the world in trials by stereotype has its domestic analog.
Let’s take a look not at his words, but at the record and the resulting takeaways. This president presided over and sped up the dismemberment of Sudan into three countries (two officially) — Darfur, North Sudan, and South Sudan. The first official act of the newly formed South Sudan was to formalize relations with the racist occupiers of the Holy Land. Is this president cognizant of the antipathy between blacks and Jews in his own country? Takeaway: did dem niggers actually b’lieve oil in de ground b’long to dem? We chop up dere country to teach dem; whoz yer master now, boy?
This president authorized the occupation of Libya in the same way Hitler occupied Poland at the start of WWII — at least 80,000 innocent civilians killed, most of them dark-skinned Arabs and Africans. Education-wise, healthcare-wise, literacy-wise, and economy-wise, Libya was one of the most advanced countries in Africa, despite its decades long dictatorship. After its “liberation” by Mr. Obama and NATO, with its infrastructure in ruins, and with the medieval salafis in charge, Libya’s people live in daily fear of kidnappings, murder, and extortion. Today Libya, despite its oil wealth, is one of the poorest countries in the world. And what were the first acts of the new “government”: to create a centralized bank whose accounts are overseen by the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland, and to exclude all black Libyans from public life, business opportunities, and housing allocations. Takeaway: did dem niggers actually b’lieve dey could have dere own currency? We da ones who own da dollar and we da ones who da masters: you gots to be in debt to our dollar.
Tuareg prisoners languishing in Qaddafi’s detention centers were freed upon the NATO occupation of Libya. They spilled over into Niger and Mali, leading to the crisis that precipitated the naked reoccupation of North Africa by the French, with full support by this “African” president of the US and his military base in the country. Mali is the second- or third-largest exporter of gold in the world, yet it is one of the 10 poorest countries insofar as actual per capita income and GDP are concerned. In addition to that, it is one of the largest storehouses of silver, uranium, cobalt, and a whole host of other minerals that are important to the information age. Rabid al-Qaeda-style salafis, who are supposed to be America’s public enemy number-one, were once again instrumental in the occupation of another country. Takeaway: look at dem niggers, dey thought dere resources were deres to do with as dey like. We da ones who rape and ‘nslave dem 200 years ‘go, because we da masters, and we da ones who rape dem of dere resources t’day.
This president and his “Hamans” (Pharaoh’s chief deputy) organized and executed a coup against the only representative and elected government the country of Egypt has ever seen. After the coup, the contrived food and fuel shortages, endemic to Mursi’s government for over a year, miraculously and immediately disappeared. Mursi and the other influential members of the Ikhwan, who have committed no crime and who haven’t even heard a whisper of charges, are back in prison from whence they emerged for a brief stint during the people’s revolution there. This president was too gutless to utter the word coup, as this would have made the billions in handouts to his coup-handlers “look bad.” As if this is a bad tape that keeps repeating, the salafis played a key role in stabbing the elected government in the back — on behalf of their Anglo-Wahhabi-US sponsors. Israel still has a compliant patsy in Cairo. Takeaway: dem niggers thought dey could have a gov’mint independent of us? We da masters, we da ones who rule, we da deciders. You da ones who were born in prison: go back to being our slaves.
This president has continued the use of depleted uranium ordnance in the theater of war: Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen. By all accounts, except for technicalities concocted by the sycophants of the powerful, who desire to escape accountability, these are war crimes, punishable in most cases by the death penalty. The incidence of cancer and congenital deformities due to radiation poisoning far exceeds incidence of the same in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the first atomic bombs were tested — again on dark-skinned people. This president has continued the expansion of IMF structural adjustment programs and World Bank loans for the development of fossil fuel resources in recipient countries where the most virile industries are whorehouses for foreign oil company workers. Takeaway: dem nigger women is whores and dem nigger babies is trash. We da masters, we da purebloods.
This president sat idly by, as he was about to assume office, when Israel bombed the bejeezus out of a defenseless Gaza (Operation Cast Lead), using banned weapons (white phosphorus, cluster bombs, and DIME munitions) to bomb ambulances, hospitals, schools, UN safe houses and apartment buildings. The result: over 1,400 dead, most of them civilians, women and children. Today he is escalating the conflagration in Syria by giving heavy weapons and training to cannibals, beheaders, and rapists, all of whom are expected to form a new Syrian government “approved” by Washington. The result (so far): over 100,000 dead, mostly civilians, and millions displaced and dislocated. And now take a wild guess: who are Washington’s shock troops of choice? The salafis. Takeaway: Israel’s our dog; we don’t shed no tears for no niggers, one of our dogs is worth more’n a million niggers. We da masters, we da ones to decide who lives and who dies.
This is just a glimpse of the first black president from the eyes of his victims. There are many more examples; this writer leaves it up to the reader to fill in the blanks. What binds all of these events together — the dislocations, the disruptions, the wars of aggression, the mass killing fields, the coups — is that none of them are happening to the majority white populations of the world (Europe, North America, Israel, Australia, etc.). They are all happening to Africans, Asians, Middle Easterners, and Hispanics, all of whom are dark-skinned people. All Africans are dark-skinned people, not by complexion, but by experience and upbringing; and therefore, all dark-skinned people are Africans given that their experiences with oppression, tyranny, colonialism, and imperialism are the same.
Obama claims to be an admixture of Indonesian, Hawaiian, Kenyan, and American. This makes him a dark-skinned person — by experience and by genetics. Forget about the nonviolent legacy he avows: his administration has made death into an industry, a corporate enterprise; by his hand, death has become virtual, digital, and mobile. The numbers are racking up like lottery winnings. Trial and conviction by stereotype has replaced trial by evidence, and there are institutions and policies (Dept. of Justice, NDAA) that drive this into the public consciousness as “normal” behavior. Surveillance of dark-skinned people across the world, not just at home, has multiplied a thousand times over during this first administration of a black president. So if it is so easy for a dark-skinned president to press a button and terminate the innocent and unarmed lives of thousands of “his own,” and not give it a second thought as he flashes a cheshire grin for his fawning courtiers, why should it be so difficult to understand that one of his average citizens takes the law into his own hand, similary conducts a conviction by stereotype, and then kills an innocent and unarmed dark-skinned teenager? The weeds that were cultivated in the backwater parts of the world are casting their fruits back at their gardeners. Terror against the aggressor is the least of the winds of blowback: what gusts more wildly is the toxic brew of domestic violence and racial disenfranchisement that together threaten to tear up a society at the very seam.
There is a subtext: the one least often mentioned is that North American Hispanics (e.g. George Zimmerman) are qualitatively different from their South American counterparts. Enough of the North American ones, not all, have drunk the Kool-Aid of America’s race narrative, crafted as it is by the racists themselves, and they have imbibed the stereotypes into their attitudes. Just ask a troop of Mexican workers who are doing odd jobs for the affluent (roofing, gardening, etc.), “Hey, why don’t you have any black people working with you?”
“They’re lazy and they complain too much.”
“Have you worked with any black people before?”
“No, it’s just what I’ve heard.”