Earlier in 2006 the New Black Panther Party regained the media spotlight by interpolating itself into the 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal, organizing marches outside of Duke University and made numerous media appearances where they demanded that the jury organized by District Attorney Nifong convict the accused lacrosse players.[21] Malik Zulu Shabazz met with the DA and asserted repeatedly that the DA's answers meant he was supporting the claims made by the NBPP, a point that was widely disputed. On April 12, 2007, after District Attorney Nifong's case collapsed and the Duke Lacrosse players were exonerated, Malik Zulu Shabazz appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and declared that he would not apologize for his actions in the leadup to the Duke University lacrosse rape scandal, stating that he did not know whether or not anything happened to the young accuser. He stated his beliefs that the rich, white families of Duke had placed political pressure on the investigation and forced the charges to be dropped. When questioned by guest host Michelle Malkin, he labeled her a "political prostitute" and "mouthpiece for that racist Bill O'Reilly." In response, Malkin stated that "the only whore present is you." Malik Zulu Shabazz replied, "You should be ashamed of yourself for defending and being a spokesman for Bill O'Reilly."
Khalid Abdul Muhammad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Khallid Abdul Muhammad (born Harold Moore Jr.; January 12, 1948–February 17, 2001) was a black nationalist and supremacist. Muhammad came to prominence as the National Assistant to Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam (NOI), a position he held until 1993. He served as the National Chairman of the New Black Panther Party from 1993 until his death in 2001.
Contents[hide]
1 Early life
2 Nation of Islam
3 New Black Panther Party
4 References
5 See also
6 External links
//
[edit] Early life
Muhammad was raised by his aunt, Carrie Moore Vann in Houston, Texas, where he attended Bruce Elementary School, E.O. Smith Junior High School, and all-black Phyllis Wheatley High School. He was an Eagle Scout.[1] After graduating high school, Muhammad went to Dillard University in Louisiana, where he was known as Harold Vann, to pursue a degree in theological studies. At this time he ministered at Sloan Memorial Methodist Church. In 1967, he was initiated into the Theta Sigma Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
[edit] Nation of Islam
In 1970, while attending Dillard, Muhammad joined the Nation of Islam (a 20th century American movement distinct from traditional Islam[2]), which was then under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad. He changed his name to Harold Smith, became Minister Louis Farrakhan's protégé, and was active as a recruiter within the organization. In 1978 Muhammad was appointed Western Regional Minister of the Nation of Islam and leader of Mosque #27. In 1983, Minister Farrakhan named him Khalid after the Islamic general Khalid ibn al-Walid, a follower of Muhammad, calling him "the Sword of Allah".
By 1985, Muhammad had become one of Louis Farrakhan's most trusted advisors in the Nation of Islam. He traveled to Libya on a fund-raising trip, where he became well acquainted with leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Muhammad's dedication to Farrakhan and to the message of the NOI eventually secured him the title of national spokesman and he was named one of Louis Farrakhan's friends in 1981. He served at Nation of Islam mosques in New York and Atlanta throughout the 1980s. Muhammad was convicted of fraud in 1988.[3] In 1991 he became Farrakhan's personal assistant.
Muhammad was notably featured by the hip-hop group Public Enemy on the introduction to its 1988 track "Night of the Living Baseheads", from the album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back:
“
Have you forgotten that once we were brought here, we were robbed of our name, robbed of our language. We lost our religion, our culture, our god...and many of us, by the way we act, we even lost our minds.
”
He also appeared in rapper Ice Cube's albums Death Certificate (1991) and Lethal Injection (1993) as a guest. In Death Certificate, Muhammad appeared in the tracks "Death" and "The Birth". In Lethal Injection, he appeared in the song "Cave Bitch", a song rediculing white women. His appearance in this song caused controversy. Ice Cube was affilated with the Nation of Islam at this time.
Muhammad's new position involved public speaking engagements, where he became known for his inflammatory anti-white, antisemitic and anti-homosexual speeches along with notions of black self-empowerment and black separation. Muhammad's condemnation of whites and Jews extended to conservative blacks, whom he criticized for what he perceived as their self-subjugation:
“
When white folks can't defeat you they'll always find some Negro, some boot-licking, butt-licking, bamboozled, half-baked, half-fried, sissified, punkified, pasteurized, homogenized Nigger that they can trot out in front of you.[4]
”
In 1993, following a speech at Kean College in Union Township, New Jersey, in which Muhammad referred to Jews as "bloodsuckers"; labeled the Pope a "no-good cracker"; and advocated the murder of any and all white South Africans who would not leave the nation subsequent to a warning period of 24 hours, the United States Senate voted 97-0 to censure Muhammad, and the United States House of Representatives in a special session passed a House Resolution. When he was also reprimanded by the NOI he left the organization. There is some question as to whether Muhammad was removed from the organization by Louis Farrakhan or if his departure was voluntary. In 1994, Muhammad appeared on The Phil Donahue Show in an appearance that featured Muhammad in heated arguments with Jewish audience members amid an explanation of his racist remarks.
Muhammad was shot by James Bess, a former NOI member, after he spoke at the University of California at Riverside on May 29, 1994. Muhammad believed the shooting was a part of a conspiracy against him.
[edit] New Black Panther Party
After being stripped of his position as NOI spokesman, Muhammad became the national chairman of the New Black Panther Party. On May 21, 1997, he delivered a heated speech at San Francisco State University in which he criticized Jews, whites, Catholics and homosexuals and said they should be killed. He endorsed a Holocaust denial position, asserted Jewish control over U.S. policy, and alleged Jewish involvement in various conspiracies.[5]
In 1998 Muhammad organized the Million Youth March in New York City. The march was controversial from its inception as New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani denied organizers a permit, calling it a "hate march". A court ruled that the event could go on, but scaled back its duration and size. At the conclusion of the rally, just as Muhammad appeared on the stage to speak, the demonstration was interrupted by a low-flying police helicopter that acted as a signal for more than 3,000 police in riot gear, including some mounted on horseback, to come in and disperse the crowd. In response, Muhammad exhorted the rally participants to attack the oncoming police and to attack and beat them with rails and to shoot them with their own guns. Dozens were arrested and 30 officers and five civilians were injured.[6] [7] Mayor Giuliani said the march turned out to be precisely what he predicted, one "filled with hatred, horrible, awful, vicious, anti-Semitic and other anti-white rhetoric, as well as exhortations to kill people, murder people. ... The speeches given today should not occur anyplace."[6] In subsequent activism, Muhammad convened a second march in 1999 that drew roughly 90 participants and no incidents with the police, even though beforehand he made threats that his speech would include all his beliefs including the assertion that all whites should be murdered.
In 2000, Muhammad's beliefs were introduced to a completely new demographic when it was revealed that one of the contestants on the American version of the Dutch television show Big Brother, William Collins (Hiram Ashantee), was a follower of his. He also appeared in an episode of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends.
In 2001, Muhammad died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 53.
Since Muhammad's death, the organization has been headed by Malik Zulu Shabazz. Members of the original Black Panther Party—particularly founder Bobby Seale—have insisted that this party is illegitimate and have vociferously objected that there "is no new Black Panther Party."[8]
[edit] References
^ "Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad". New Black Panther Party. http://www.newblackpanther.com/drkhallid.html. Retrieved 2008-12-31.
^ "Chart: Nation of Islam and Traditional Islam". Beliefnet. http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2002/10/Chart-Nation-of-Islam-and-Traditional-Islam.aspx. Retrieved 2008-12-31.
^ Smith, Vern E.; Sarah Van Boven (September 14, 1998). "The Itinerant Incendiary". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/113381. Retrieved July 25, 2009.
^ The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 3 (Spring, 1994), pp. 84-85
^ ADL Alerts Nation's Academic Leadership About Virus of Bigotry Being Spread by Khalid Abdul Muhammad
^ a b Million Youth March Ends in Clash
^ village voice > news > The Hunt for Khallid Abdul Muhammad by Peter Noel
^ "There is No New Black Panther Party: An Open Letter from the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation" [1]
[edit] See also
Nation of Islam and antisemitism
Black separatism
[edit] External links
Khallid Abdul Muhammad: In His Own Words
The Hunt for Khalid Abdul Muhammed
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Khalid Abdul Muhammad
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Abdul_Muhammad"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Khallid Abdul Muhammad (born Harold Moore Jr.; January 12, 1948–February 17, 2001) was a black nationalist and supremacist. Muhammad came to prominence as the National Assistant to Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam (NOI), a position he held until 1993. He served as the National Chairman of the New Black Panther Party from 1993 until his death in 2001.
Contents[hide]
1 Early life
2 Nation of Islam
3 New Black Panther Party
4 References
5 See also
6 External links
//
[edit] Early life
Muhammad was raised by his aunt, Carrie Moore Vann in Houston, Texas, where he attended Bruce Elementary School, E.O. Smith Junior High School, and all-black Phyllis Wheatley High School. He was an Eagle Scout.[1] After graduating high school, Muhammad went to Dillard University in Louisiana, where he was known as Harold Vann, to pursue a degree in theological studies. At this time he ministered at Sloan Memorial Methodist Church. In 1967, he was initiated into the Theta Sigma Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
[edit] Nation of Islam
In 1970, while attending Dillard, Muhammad joined the Nation of Islam (a 20th century American movement distinct from traditional Islam[2]), which was then under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad. He changed his name to Harold Smith, became Minister Louis Farrakhan's protégé, and was active as a recruiter within the organization. In 1978 Muhammad was appointed Western Regional Minister of the Nation of Islam and leader of Mosque #27. In 1983, Minister Farrakhan named him Khalid after the Islamic general Khalid ibn al-Walid, a follower of Muhammad, calling him "the Sword of Allah".
By 1985, Muhammad had become one of Louis Farrakhan's most trusted advisors in the Nation of Islam. He traveled to Libya on a fund-raising trip, where he became well acquainted with leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Muhammad's dedication to Farrakhan and to the message of the NOI eventually secured him the title of national spokesman and he was named one of Louis Farrakhan's friends in 1981. He served at Nation of Islam mosques in New York and Atlanta throughout the 1980s. Muhammad was convicted of fraud in 1988.[3] In 1991 he became Farrakhan's personal assistant.
Muhammad was notably featured by the hip-hop group Public Enemy on the introduction to its 1988 track "Night of the Living Baseheads", from the album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back:
“
Have you forgotten that once we were brought here, we were robbed of our name, robbed of our language. We lost our religion, our culture, our god...and many of us, by the way we act, we even lost our minds.
”
He also appeared in rapper Ice Cube's albums Death Certificate (1991) and Lethal Injection (1993) as a guest. In Death Certificate, Muhammad appeared in the tracks "Death" and "The Birth". In Lethal Injection, he appeared in the song "Cave Bitch", a song rediculing white women. His appearance in this song caused controversy. Ice Cube was affilated with the Nation of Islam at this time.
Muhammad's new position involved public speaking engagements, where he became known for his inflammatory anti-white, antisemitic and anti-homosexual speeches along with notions of black self-empowerment and black separation. Muhammad's condemnation of whites and Jews extended to conservative blacks, whom he criticized for what he perceived as their self-subjugation:
“
When white folks can't defeat you they'll always find some Negro, some boot-licking, butt-licking, bamboozled, half-baked, half-fried, sissified, punkified, pasteurized, homogenized Nigger that they can trot out in front of you.[4]
”
In 1993, following a speech at Kean College in Union Township, New Jersey, in which Muhammad referred to Jews as "bloodsuckers"; labeled the Pope a "no-good cracker"; and advocated the murder of any and all white South Africans who would not leave the nation subsequent to a warning period of 24 hours, the United States Senate voted 97-0 to censure Muhammad, and the United States House of Representatives in a special session passed a House Resolution. When he was also reprimanded by the NOI he left the organization. There is some question as to whether Muhammad was removed from the organization by Louis Farrakhan or if his departure was voluntary. In 1994, Muhammad appeared on The Phil Donahue Show in an appearance that featured Muhammad in heated arguments with Jewish audience members amid an explanation of his racist remarks.
Muhammad was shot by James Bess, a former NOI member, after he spoke at the University of California at Riverside on May 29, 1994. Muhammad believed the shooting was a part of a conspiracy against him.
[edit] New Black Panther Party
After being stripped of his position as NOI spokesman, Muhammad became the national chairman of the New Black Panther Party. On May 21, 1997, he delivered a heated speech at San Francisco State University in which he criticized Jews, whites, Catholics and homosexuals and said they should be killed. He endorsed a Holocaust denial position, asserted Jewish control over U.S. policy, and alleged Jewish involvement in various conspiracies.[5]
In 1998 Muhammad organized the Million Youth March in New York City. The march was controversial from its inception as New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani denied organizers a permit, calling it a "hate march". A court ruled that the event could go on, but scaled back its duration and size. At the conclusion of the rally, just as Muhammad appeared on the stage to speak, the demonstration was interrupted by a low-flying police helicopter that acted as a signal for more than 3,000 police in riot gear, including some mounted on horseback, to come in and disperse the crowd. In response, Muhammad exhorted the rally participants to attack the oncoming police and to attack and beat them with rails and to shoot them with their own guns. Dozens were arrested and 30 officers and five civilians were injured.[6] [7] Mayor Giuliani said the march turned out to be precisely what he predicted, one "filled with hatred, horrible, awful, vicious, anti-Semitic and other anti-white rhetoric, as well as exhortations to kill people, murder people. ... The speeches given today should not occur anyplace."[6] In subsequent activism, Muhammad convened a second march in 1999 that drew roughly 90 participants and no incidents with the police, even though beforehand he made threats that his speech would include all his beliefs including the assertion that all whites should be murdered.
In 2000, Muhammad's beliefs were introduced to a completely new demographic when it was revealed that one of the contestants on the American version of the Dutch television show Big Brother, William Collins (Hiram Ashantee), was a follower of his. He also appeared in an episode of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends.
In 2001, Muhammad died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 53.
Since Muhammad's death, the organization has been headed by Malik Zulu Shabazz. Members of the original Black Panther Party—particularly founder Bobby Seale—have insisted that this party is illegitimate and have vociferously objected that there "is no new Black Panther Party."[8]
[edit] References
^ "Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad". New Black Panther Party. http://www.newblackpanther.com/drkhallid.html. Retrieved 2008-12-31.
^ "Chart: Nation of Islam and Traditional Islam". Beliefnet. http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2002/10/Chart-Nation-of-Islam-and-Traditional-Islam.aspx. Retrieved 2008-12-31.
^ Smith, Vern E.; Sarah Van Boven (September 14, 1998). "The Itinerant Incendiary". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/113381. Retrieved July 25, 2009.
^ The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 3 (Spring, 1994), pp. 84-85
^ ADL Alerts Nation's Academic Leadership About Virus of Bigotry Being Spread by Khalid Abdul Muhammad
^ a b Million Youth March Ends in Clash
^ village voice > news > The Hunt for Khallid Abdul Muhammad by Peter Noel
^ "There is No New Black Panther Party: An Open Letter from the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation" [1]
[edit] See also
Nation of Islam and antisemitism
Black separatism
[edit] External links
Khallid Abdul Muhammad: In His Own Words
The Hunt for Khalid Abdul Muhammed
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Khalid Abdul Muhammad
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Abdul_Muhammad"
videos-
THE EARLY YEARS
Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad, born Harold Moore, Jr. by his parents, blessed this earth on January 12th, 1948 in Houston, Texas. He was the second? of six children to the late Harold Moore, Sr. and Lottie B. Moore. His Aunt Momma Carrie Moore Vann in Houston, Texas reared him. Minister Khallid Muhammad, affectionately known as "butch" by the family attended Bruce Elementary School, E.O.Smith Junior High School and all Black Phyllis Wheatley High School in Texas. At Phyllis Wheatley, Brother Khallid was an esteemed member of Stagecrafters, a group of exceptional students where he developed debate and drama skills under direction of Ms. Vernell Lillie. Minister Khallid as a young man would preach to cars from his porch as they passed by on the highway and was president of Houston Methodist Youth Fellowship. Khallid was a star quarterback, team captain of his high school football team, an eagle scout, a class officer and a star debater.
THE CONVERSION
Upon graduating high school, our bold and shining Black prince won a scholarship to Dillard University in Louisiana to pursue his degree in theological studies. At this time he ministered at Sloan Memorial Methodist Church. While at Dillard University young Khallid first heard Minister Louis Farrahkan, the National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He had a big Afro and a huge medallion of Malcolm X around his neck. After hearing Minister Farrakhan speak Khallid Abdul Muhammad joined the Nation of Islam under the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Immediately Brother Harold X, as he was known at that time became renown as a top recruiter in the south for the Black Muslims. Dr. Khallid continued his studies and graduated from Pepperdine University in Los Angeles California. He then was the recipient of an academic fellowship, and matriculated to do "Intensive Studies" at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia Universities. The skills of higher education as well as his fighting spirit made Minister Khallid a valuable weapon to the Nation of Islam and the Black Nation in general.
THE EVOLUTION
When the Messenger of Allah, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad departed from amongst us in 1975, Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad kept on fighting. At this time he was known as Dr. Malik Rushaddin. He traveled throughout Africa and trained in revolutionary movements with a focus on freeing apartheid ridden South Africa (Azania) from white oppression. When Minister Farrakhan decided to rebuild the Nation of Islam in 1978. Minister Khallid was right there with him when there were just a few. Minister Khallid Muhammad served as western regional minister of the Nation of Islam and leader of Mosque #27, which made lightning progress under his leadership. In 1983 Minister Louis Farrakhan named him Khallid, which has the historical interpretation of "great warrior" after the great follower of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) Khallid ibn Walid. Like this great Islamic general Khallid Muhammad was called the "sword of Allah".
Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad was soon appointed as Supreme Captain over the military in the Nation of Islam. In 1985 Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad was appointed National Spokesman and Representative of Minister Louis Farrakhan, following in the footsteps of Minister Farrakhan and Malcolm X. At other points he also served the posts of Southern Regional Minister, Minister of Mosque #7 in Harlem, New York City, and National Assistant.
A true Pan Afrikanist, Minister Khallid Muhammad has traveled on research and fact-finding missions to Kemet (Egypt) Jerusalem, South Afrika and throughout the African sub continent. He made his sacred pilgrimage to the Holy City, Mecca, numerous times. He has earned the title El Hajj Khallid Abdul Muhammad. Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad was the creator and founder of The New African Cultural Holiday alternative to Thanksgiving called "GYE NYAME (G-NY-MAY). Black youth and "gang" members loved Dr. Khallid. You have heard this dynamic soldier on rap albums from Tupac Shakur, Ice Cube, Sista Souljah, X-Clan, Public Enemy, Scar-Face, Shaquille O'Neill, Erica Badu, Lauren Hill, Dead Prez, Capone N' Noriega and the Black Lyrical Terrorist. Dr. Khallid was known as dynamic fiery, explosive, electrifying, spellbinding! He has fired up and inspired audiences at over 100 universities in the United States, Africa, Europe and the world. He spoke at many churches and served as a minister at the 1st Afrocentric Temple in Atlanta, Georgia before his transition to the ancestors.
Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad, born Harold Moore, Jr. by his parents, blessed this earth on January 12th, 1948 in Houston, Texas. He was the second? of six children to the late Harold Moore, Sr. and Lottie B. Moore. His Aunt Momma Carrie Moore Vann in Houston, Texas reared him. Minister Khallid Muhammad, affectionately known as "butch" by the family attended Bruce Elementary School, E.O.Smith Junior High School and all Black Phyllis Wheatley High School in Texas. At Phyllis Wheatley, Brother Khallid was an esteemed member of Stagecrafters, a group of exceptional students where he developed debate and drama skills under direction of Ms. Vernell Lillie. Minister Khallid as a young man would preach to cars from his porch as they passed by on the highway and was president of Houston Methodist Youth Fellowship. Khallid was a star quarterback, team captain of his high school football team, an eagle scout, a class officer and a star debater.
THE CONVERSION
Upon graduating high school, our bold and shining Black prince won a scholarship to Dillard University in Louisiana to pursue his degree in theological studies. At this time he ministered at Sloan Memorial Methodist Church. While at Dillard University young Khallid first heard Minister Louis Farrahkan, the National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He had a big Afro and a huge medallion of Malcolm X around his neck. After hearing Minister Farrakhan speak Khallid Abdul Muhammad joined the Nation of Islam under the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Immediately Brother Harold X, as he was known at that time became renown as a top recruiter in the south for the Black Muslims. Dr. Khallid continued his studies and graduated from Pepperdine University in Los Angeles California. He then was the recipient of an academic fellowship, and matriculated to do "Intensive Studies" at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia Universities. The skills of higher education as well as his fighting spirit made Minister Khallid a valuable weapon to the Nation of Islam and the Black Nation in general.
THE EVOLUTION
When the Messenger of Allah, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad departed from amongst us in 1975, Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad kept on fighting. At this time he was known as Dr. Malik Rushaddin. He traveled throughout Africa and trained in revolutionary movements with a focus on freeing apartheid ridden South Africa (Azania) from white oppression. When Minister Farrakhan decided to rebuild the Nation of Islam in 1978. Minister Khallid was right there with him when there were just a few. Minister Khallid Muhammad served as western regional minister of the Nation of Islam and leader of Mosque #27, which made lightning progress under his leadership. In 1983 Minister Louis Farrakhan named him Khallid, which has the historical interpretation of "great warrior" after the great follower of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) Khallid ibn Walid. Like this great Islamic general Khallid Muhammad was called the "sword of Allah".
Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad was soon appointed as Supreme Captain over the military in the Nation of Islam. In 1985 Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad was appointed National Spokesman and Representative of Minister Louis Farrakhan, following in the footsteps of Minister Farrakhan and Malcolm X. At other points he also served the posts of Southern Regional Minister, Minister of Mosque #7 in Harlem, New York City, and National Assistant.
A true Pan Afrikanist, Minister Khallid Muhammad has traveled on research and fact-finding missions to Kemet (Egypt) Jerusalem, South Afrika and throughout the African sub continent. He made his sacred pilgrimage to the Holy City, Mecca, numerous times. He has earned the title El Hajj Khallid Abdul Muhammad. Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad was the creator and founder of The New African Cultural Holiday alternative to Thanksgiving called "GYE NYAME (G-NY-MAY). Black youth and "gang" members loved Dr. Khallid. You have heard this dynamic soldier on rap albums from Tupac Shakur, Ice Cube, Sista Souljah, X-Clan, Public Enemy, Scar-Face, Shaquille O'Neill, Erica Badu, Lauren Hill, Dead Prez, Capone N' Noriega and the Black Lyrical Terrorist. Dr. Khallid was known as dynamic fiery, explosive, electrifying, spellbinding! He has fired up and inspired audiences at over 100 universities in the United States, Africa, Europe and the world. He spoke at many churches and served as a minister at the 1st Afrocentric Temple in Atlanta, Georgia before his transition to the ancestors.
National Chairman - New Black Panther Party (NBPP)Founder/Spokesman - Black Lawyers for Justice (BLFJ)
Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz, Esq. is a national figure and key representative of the new leadership that has emerged from the Black Liberation and Islamic movements. Shabazz has guided the New Black Panther Party since 2001 and Black Lawyers for Justice since 1996. What makes Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz unique and effective today is the depth of his knowledge, professional organizing skills, potent legal advocacy, and dynamic speaking skills. Malik Zulu Shabazz continues to draw comparisons between himself and his revolutionary prototype- Minister Malcolm X. Malcom X (Al Hajj Malik Shabazz) wanted to be a lawyer as a child but was cut short by racist forces.
Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz is freedom fighter, activist, attorney operating on the world stage today. The New Black Panther Party has 27 Chapters operating across the United States, United Kingdom, Caribbean and Africa. Shabazz has been involved in a plethora of major political and legal causes and struggles that pertain to Black peoples in America, African peoples worldwide, and the causes of the Muslim world. Shabazz can be seen and heard periodically on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN and OTHER major national and international media outlets. He is a credible articulator and debater on major political and legal newsworthy matters.
Malik Zulu Shabazz graduated from Howard University and Howard University School of Law. While in Law School he founded and led the Progressive Student Movement/Unity Nation, a Black Nationalist student organization closely affiliated with the Nation of Islam leadership. While at Howard University, Shabazz came under the influence of Minister Louis Farrakhan and Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad. During these period seminal scholars such as Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannon, Professor Ron Walters, Dr. Ashra Quesi, Dr. Tony Martin, and other African- Centered scholars of the movement would also touch and influence Shabazz.
Minister Louis Farrakhan and Dr. Khallid Muhammad had a heavy influence on the young Shabazz while an undergraduate and law student. As an activist, Malik Zulu Shabazz organized students and stirred up the campus of Howard University as never before- making the campus a beacon light of Black Consciousness and student revolution. He was called “one of the greatest student leaders of all time,” by Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad.
Upon graduation from law school in 1995, Shabazz immediately passed his bar exam and founded Black Lawyers for Justice (BLFJ), a legal-political advocacy organization where conscious attorneys can pool their talents and resources to advocate in and out of the courtroom in order to counter the many attacks on the human and civil rights of our peoples. Black Lawyers For Justice believes that because Black professionals and lawyers hold unique places of respect in the community, they must exert strong and effective leadership within the profession and in the political and social order. Attorney Shabazz practices in the area of civil litigation with a focus on wrongful death, personal injury and victims rights and also handles criminal matters and entertainment law. Shabazz has also been a part of some key international legal causes.
Some of Malik Zulu Shabazz’ organizing/legal highlights include:
Organizing for the 1995 Million Man March and the pre Million Man March Black Holocaust Conference
Served as National Youth Director over the controversial 1998 Million Youth March in New York
Co Counsel for the Million Youth March vs. the City of New York, who sued, and won, in Federal Court over Constitutional battles relating to the Million Youth Marchers legal right to march in 1998 and 1999
Voted ‘Young Lawyer of the Year’ in 1998 by the National Bar Association, America’s largest Black legal organization
Won several high profile settlements for D.C. School Children victimized on D.C. Jail tours
Won high-profile settlements for victims of consumer racism.
Has organized countless boycotts, efforts and actions to achieve justice for victims of wrongful conduct
Became Leader of the New Black Panther Party in 2001 after serving as National Spokesman and National Minister of Justice, succeeding the Hon. Minister Khallid Muhammad- his revolutionary mentor and ally for 13 years.
Organized the infamous “War on Terrorism” Islamic Conference in Washington D.C. on 10/31/2001 which shook the nation and the government after the events of September 11, 2001
Spearheaded an emergency search and rescue team that rescued hundreds of trapped New Orleans’ victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Served as National Co-convener and National Executive Committee Member of the Hon. Louis Farrakhan’s 2005 Millions More Movement
In 2008, Shabazzinitiated the Black Power Movement, a broad based movement for Black People who believe in Black Power.
As guide and leader of the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz, Esq. has spread the size, influence and respect of the NBPP since being appointed as National Chairman in 2001. Throughout the nation and the world the New Black Panther Party is rapidly gaining respect. Shabazz is a principled helper in the cause of the rise of Black people and a solid ally in the world wide complete constructive change (revolution) that is taking place across the globe. The New Black Party is filled with young, new leaders and is very active in the community. Liberation schools, free food programs, anti-violence efforts, self-defense training, police accountability, mass rallies, advocacy for the homeless, advocacy for political prisoners, Black male mentoring, political education, fighting racism, and bringing in a new political, economic, and spiritual world order are all on the New Black Panther Party national agenda. Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz as the revolutionary and visionary leader of the New Black Panther Party has defied critics and is making the New Black Panther Party a great witness to the validity of the works of the Original Black Panther Party for Self Defense, which was founded October 15, 1966 in Oakland California. Dr. Malik Shabazz regularly speaks on college campuses throughout America, as well as addressed audiences in Churches, Mosques, and other Community and Academic venues. Shabazz possesses a grip on a wide range of subjects not limited to: Law, Islam, Politics, Black History in America, African/ World History, International Affairs, Real Estate and Land investments, Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, Community Organizing and Religion in general.To contact Mr. Shabazz email Shabazzlaw@aol.com
Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz, Esq. is a national figure and key representative of the new leadership that has emerged from the Black Liberation and Islamic movements. Shabazz has guided the New Black Panther Party since 2001 and Black Lawyers for Justice since 1996. What makes Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz unique and effective today is the depth of his knowledge, professional organizing skills, potent legal advocacy, and dynamic speaking skills. Malik Zulu Shabazz continues to draw comparisons between himself and his revolutionary prototype- Minister Malcolm X. Malcom X (Al Hajj Malik Shabazz) wanted to be a lawyer as a child but was cut short by racist forces.
Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz is freedom fighter, activist, attorney operating on the world stage today. The New Black Panther Party has 27 Chapters operating across the United States, United Kingdom, Caribbean and Africa. Shabazz has been involved in a plethora of major political and legal causes and struggles that pertain to Black peoples in America, African peoples worldwide, and the causes of the Muslim world. Shabazz can be seen and heard periodically on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN and OTHER major national and international media outlets. He is a credible articulator and debater on major political and legal newsworthy matters.
Malik Zulu Shabazz graduated from Howard University and Howard University School of Law. While in Law School he founded and led the Progressive Student Movement/Unity Nation, a Black Nationalist student organization closely affiliated with the Nation of Islam leadership. While at Howard University, Shabazz came under the influence of Minister Louis Farrakhan and Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad. During these period seminal scholars such as Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannon, Professor Ron Walters, Dr. Ashra Quesi, Dr. Tony Martin, and other African- Centered scholars of the movement would also touch and influence Shabazz.
Minister Louis Farrakhan and Dr. Khallid Muhammad had a heavy influence on the young Shabazz while an undergraduate and law student. As an activist, Malik Zulu Shabazz organized students and stirred up the campus of Howard University as never before- making the campus a beacon light of Black Consciousness and student revolution. He was called “one of the greatest student leaders of all time,” by Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad.
Upon graduation from law school in 1995, Shabazz immediately passed his bar exam and founded Black Lawyers for Justice (BLFJ), a legal-political advocacy organization where conscious attorneys can pool their talents and resources to advocate in and out of the courtroom in order to counter the many attacks on the human and civil rights of our peoples. Black Lawyers For Justice believes that because Black professionals and lawyers hold unique places of respect in the community, they must exert strong and effective leadership within the profession and in the political and social order. Attorney Shabazz practices in the area of civil litigation with a focus on wrongful death, personal injury and victims rights and also handles criminal matters and entertainment law. Shabazz has also been a part of some key international legal causes.
Some of Malik Zulu Shabazz’ organizing/legal highlights include:
Organizing for the 1995 Million Man March and the pre Million Man March Black Holocaust Conference
Served as National Youth Director over the controversial 1998 Million Youth March in New York
Co Counsel for the Million Youth March vs. the City of New York, who sued, and won, in Federal Court over Constitutional battles relating to the Million Youth Marchers legal right to march in 1998 and 1999
Voted ‘Young Lawyer of the Year’ in 1998 by the National Bar Association, America’s largest Black legal organization
Won several high profile settlements for D.C. School Children victimized on D.C. Jail tours
Won high-profile settlements for victims of consumer racism.
Has organized countless boycotts, efforts and actions to achieve justice for victims of wrongful conduct
Became Leader of the New Black Panther Party in 2001 after serving as National Spokesman and National Minister of Justice, succeeding the Hon. Minister Khallid Muhammad- his revolutionary mentor and ally for 13 years.
Organized the infamous “War on Terrorism” Islamic Conference in Washington D.C. on 10/31/2001 which shook the nation and the government after the events of September 11, 2001
Spearheaded an emergency search and rescue team that rescued hundreds of trapped New Orleans’ victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Served as National Co-convener and National Executive Committee Member of the Hon. Louis Farrakhan’s 2005 Millions More Movement
In 2008, Shabazzinitiated the Black Power Movement, a broad based movement for Black People who believe in Black Power.
As guide and leader of the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz, Esq. has spread the size, influence and respect of the NBPP since being appointed as National Chairman in 2001. Throughout the nation and the world the New Black Panther Party is rapidly gaining respect. Shabazz is a principled helper in the cause of the rise of Black people and a solid ally in the world wide complete constructive change (revolution) that is taking place across the globe. The New Black Party is filled with young, new leaders and is very active in the community. Liberation schools, free food programs, anti-violence efforts, self-defense training, police accountability, mass rallies, advocacy for the homeless, advocacy for political prisoners, Black male mentoring, political education, fighting racism, and bringing in a new political, economic, and spiritual world order are all on the New Black Panther Party national agenda. Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz as the revolutionary and visionary leader of the New Black Panther Party has defied critics and is making the New Black Panther Party a great witness to the validity of the works of the Original Black Panther Party for Self Defense, which was founded October 15, 1966 in Oakland California. Dr. Malik Shabazz regularly speaks on college campuses throughout America, as well as addressed audiences in Churches, Mosques, and other Community and Academic venues. Shabazz possesses a grip on a wide range of subjects not limited to: Law, Islam, Politics, Black History in America, African/ World History, International Affairs, Real Estate and Land investments, Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, Community Organizing and Religion in general.To contact Mr. Shabazz email Shabazzlaw@aol.com
Malik Zulu Shabazz, national chairman of the radical New Black Panther
Party, refused to confirm or deny to WND whether he visited the White House
since President Obama took office, despite his name appearing on a recent administration disclosure.
Shabazz's namesake was among the 110 names and 481 visits released by the White House on Friday as part of the Obama administration's so-called volunteer disclosure policy. The names were just a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who have gone through the White House's doors since January.
Among the famous names that stood out on the brief list were Shabazz, Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers.
The White House blog claimed all three names were "false positives" – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else.
Added the official blog: "In September, requests were submitted for the names of some famous or controversial figures (for example Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly, and Malik Shabazz). The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House. Nevertheless, we were asked for those names, and so we have included records for those individuals who were here and share the same names."
Other famous names confirmed to have visited the White House include Oprah Winfrey and George Soros.
Asked by WND to confirm or deny he had visited the White House, Shabazz replied by e-mail "no comment on that one."
There is no known record of Shabazz visiting the White House.
since President Obama took office, despite his name appearing on a recent administration disclosure.
Shabazz's namesake was among the 110 names and 481 visits released by the White House on Friday as part of the Obama administration's so-called volunteer disclosure policy. The names were just a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who have gone through the White House's doors since January.
Among the famous names that stood out on the brief list were Shabazz, Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers.
The White House blog claimed all three names were "false positives" – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else.
Added the official blog: "In September, requests were submitted for the names of some famous or controversial figures (for example Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly, and Malik Shabazz). The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House. Nevertheless, we were asked for those names, and so we have included records for those individuals who were here and share the same names."
Other famous names confirmed to have visited the White House include Oprah Winfrey and George Soros.
Asked by WND to confirm or deny he had visited the White House, Shabazz replied by e-mail "no comment on that one."
There is no known record of Shabazz visiting the White House.
WND previously broke the story that Shabazz's New Black Panther Party, or NBPP, endorsed Obama on its own page of the presidential candidate's official site, which allowed registered users to post their own blogs.
The NBPP labeled itself on Obama's site as representing "freedom, justice and peace for all of mankind." It linked to the official NBPP website, which contains what can be arguably regarded as hate material.
Shabazz's NBPP is a controversial black extremist party whose leaders are notorious for their racist statements and for leading anti-white activism. Shabazz has given scores of speeches condemning "white men" and Jews.
His NBPP's official platform stated, "White man has kept us deaf, dumb and blind," referred to the "white racist government of America," demanded black people be exempt from military service and used the word Jew repeatedly in quotation marks.
Shabazz has led racially divisive protests and conferences, such as the 1998 Million Youth March, in which a few thousand Harlem youths reportedly were called upon to scuffle with police officers and speakers demanded the extermination of whites in South Africa.
The NBPP chairman was quoted at a May 2007 protest against the 400-year celebration of the settlement of Jamestown, Va., stating, "When the white man came here, you should have left him to die."
He claimed Jews engaged in an "African holocaust," and he has promoted the anti-Semitic urban legend that 4,000 Israelis fled the World Trade Center just prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
When Shabazz was denied entry to Canada last May while trying to speak at a black action event, he blamed Jewish groups and claimed Canada "is run from Israel."
Canadian officials justified the action, stating he has an "anti-Semitic" and "anti-police" record, but some reports blamed what was termed a minor criminal history for the decision to deny him entry.
He similarly blamed Jews for then–New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's initial decision, later rescinded, against granting a permit for the Million Youth March.
In a 1993 speech condemned by the U.S. Congress and Senate, late NBPP chairman Khallid Abdul Muhammad, lionized on the NBPP site, referred to Jews as "bloodsuckers," labeled the pope a "no-good cracker" and advocated the murder of white South Africans who would not leave the nation subsequent to a 24-hour warning.
All NBPP members must memorize the group's rules, such as that no party member "can have a weapon in his possession while drunk or loaded off narcotics or weed," and no member "will commit any crimes against other party members or black people at all."
The deceased chairman of the NBPP, Khallid Abdul Muhammad, is a former Nation of Islam leader who was once considered Louis Farrakhan's most trusted adviser. Muhammad gave speeches referring to the "white man" as the devil and claiming that "there is a little bit of Hitler in all white people."
The NBPP labeled itself on Obama's site as representing "freedom, justice and peace for all of mankind." It linked to the official NBPP website, which contains what can be arguably regarded as hate material.
Shabazz's NBPP is a controversial black extremist party whose leaders are notorious for their racist statements and for leading anti-white activism. Shabazz has given scores of speeches condemning "white men" and Jews.
His NBPP's official platform stated, "White man has kept us deaf, dumb and blind," referred to the "white racist government of America," demanded black people be exempt from military service and used the word Jew repeatedly in quotation marks.
Shabazz has led racially divisive protests and conferences, such as the 1998 Million Youth March, in which a few thousand Harlem youths reportedly were called upon to scuffle with police officers and speakers demanded the extermination of whites in South Africa.
The NBPP chairman was quoted at a May 2007 protest against the 400-year celebration of the settlement of Jamestown, Va., stating, "When the white man came here, you should have left him to die."
He claimed Jews engaged in an "African holocaust," and he has promoted the anti-Semitic urban legend that 4,000 Israelis fled the World Trade Center just prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
When Shabazz was denied entry to Canada last May while trying to speak at a black action event, he blamed Jewish groups and claimed Canada "is run from Israel."
Canadian officials justified the action, stating he has an "anti-Semitic" and "anti-police" record, but some reports blamed what was termed a minor criminal history for the decision to deny him entry.
He similarly blamed Jews for then–New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's initial decision, later rescinded, against granting a permit for the Million Youth March.
In a 1993 speech condemned by the U.S. Congress and Senate, late NBPP chairman Khallid Abdul Muhammad, lionized on the NBPP site, referred to Jews as "bloodsuckers," labeled the pope a "no-good cracker" and advocated the murder of white South Africans who would not leave the nation subsequent to a 24-hour warning.
All NBPP members must memorize the group's rules, such as that no party member "can have a weapon in his possession while drunk or loaded off narcotics or weed," and no member "will commit any crimes against other party members or black people at all."
The deceased chairman of the NBPP, Khallid Abdul Muhammad, is a former Nation of Islam leader who was once considered Louis Farrakhan's most trusted adviser. Muhammad gave speeches referring to the "white man" as the devil and claiming that "there is a little bit of Hitler in all white people."
Who could have imagined the 2008 presidential campaign?
Commentators, media people, and especially politicians fell all over themselves proclaiming that the 2008 election had, “nothing at all to do with race.” And yet every event, every speech and comment, every debate and appearance had race written all over it. Stephen Colbert, the brilliant satirist, hit it on the head when he asked a Republican operative, “How many euphemisms have you come up with so far so that you won’t have to use the word ‘Black?’” Everyone laughed good-naturedly.
It turns out that they and everyone else had plenty. When Senator Hillary Clinton spoke of “hard-working American workers,” everyone knew who she meant, but just in case anyone missed it, she added, “white workers.” The invisible race talk was about “blue collar” or “working class” or “mainstream” or “small town” or “hockey mom” or “Joe the plumber,” but we were meant to think “white.” All the talk of Senator Barack Obama’s exotic background, all the references to him as “unknown,” “untested,” a “stranger,” or a “symbolic candidate,” or “alien,” a “wildcard,” or an “elitist,” which one Georgia congressman admitted meant “uppity,” all the creepiness packed into the ominous “what do we really know about this man?,” and all the questioning of his patriotism, the obsession with what went on in his church (but no other candidate’s place of worship)—all of it fed a specific narrative: he’s not a real American, he’s not reliable, he’s the quintessential mystery man. The discourse was all about race, us and them, understood by everyone in the United States even when the words African American, black, or white are not spoken. Anyone who dared to point to these proxies and to call them euphemisms for race was promptly accused of being a racist, and, of course, of playing the ever-useful race card.
In this carnival atmosphere throbbed the omnipresent and not so clandestine campaign drumbeats that the senator from Illinois is a secret Muslim, that because his father was a Muslim, the son is forever a Muslim—assuming, of course, that faith in Islam is disqualifying. In a year of loopy ironies, it took a conservative Republican, retired general, and disgraced Bush secretary of state Colin Powell, to vigorously call the question, movingly insisting that it should be perfectly fine to be an American Muslim, and a president. In a perfect storm, Powell was immediately accused by white commentators of siding with his race.
Then there was the lethal mix of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. In the wake of Obama’s primary win in the “heartland” (white) state of Iowa, the Clinton campaign escalated. Gloria Steinem’s Op Ed in the New York Times on primary eve in New Hampshire, “Women are Never Front-Runners,” laid down the gauntlet, asserting a hierarchy of oppression, claiming that it was women who were the most despised, vilified, and unfairly treated by the media and by history—compared to the (supposed) deference to black men. “Why,” she wrote, “is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one?” Steinem’s intervention made a dichotomy of race and gender, and instead of a complex analysis of the breakthroughs of discriminatory barriers, here was an assertion of superior victim status on the part of white, powerful women. It obliterated the half of African Americans who are women, and the half of women in the United States who are women of color. Intending to highlight the real river of misogynist venom unleashed against Clinton, it posed and perpetuated racial division rather than intersection and unity—the popularly recognized hallmarks of the Obama campaign.
Hillary and Bill Clinton seized on this framing of feminism as a white women’s concern with escalated race talk. Hillary proclaimed on Fox News, “I don’t think any of us want to inject race or gender in this campaign.” But the Clintons promptly resorted to the well-worn “Southern strategy” in South Carolina and the border states. They dismissively referred to Reverend Jesse Jackson’s historic campaigns of 1984 and 1988 as purely race-based, rather than recognizing the unique “rainbow” coalition that included white workers, farmers, and professionals and was to be a harbinger of the Obama campaign. Clinton flagrantly appealed to white voters’ identity as “workers” or “women”—offering white people any reason to vote against Obama without saying he’s black—and followed the ancient and dismal road of racial discourse that appeals to white supremacy, fear, and anxiety. In fact, the prolonged Democratic primary served to chart the Rovian path the Republicans would later hone and utilize in the general election against Obama. Combined with their brazen strategies of voter suppression, demagoguery, and hate, the defense of the color line would become the core of the McCain/Palin convention and subsequent attack machine. dfsFabricated issues of “character,” values, and patriotism dominated the discourse, appeals were floated to white voters’ racial resentments and fears, and the deliberate marketing of the Republican Party—our kids used to call them “Repulsicans”—as the bastion of white peoples’ interests saturated targeted states across the land.
On March 18, 2008, Barack Obama delivered an epic, masterful speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on race and identity. Senator Obama’s talk was called, “A More Perfect Union,” and it tapped a deep longing to be free from the racialized straightjacket of anxiety, fear, and separation. The comedian Jon Stewart got it right when he said, “He treated the American public as if we were adults!” Obama managed to frame the discussion of racial justice in terms of broad American unity.
The speech was designed to redeem his campaign momentum in the wake of relentless, replaying videos of a line delivered by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor, after September 11. In it Wright challenges Americans to question the nation’s sense of exceptional goodness, and the refrain “God bless America” in light of our history. It was an edgy sermon to be sure, and apparently most dangerous of all, it was delivered by an angry black man. Using a technique honed by the far right over thirty years, the media seized upon and de-contextualized a sentence from Wright’s lifetime work, characterizing him as “ranting,” “raving,” and “divisive.” Liberals joined the discrediting party, referring to him as that “loony preacher,” spewing “bigoted and paranoid rantings.” In reality Reverend Wright’s sermons were no more incendiary than everyday conversations when white people aren’t looking or listening, or than Dr. Martin Luther King’s sermons a generation before.
In contrast Senator McCain’s active association with the Reverends Hagee, Parsley, and Robertson and the remarks by Governor Sarah Palin’s Pentacostal “spiritual warfare” and “prayer warriors” ministry remained unmemorable and apparently unremarkable. Hagee’s political preaching remained in the realm of the acceptable, including his assertions that AIDs is an incurable plague, God’s curse against a disobedient nation, until an audio clip surfaced in which he preached that what Hitler did in the Holocaust was God’s plan to drive Europe’s Jews back to the land of Israel. Only then, did McCain disassociate himself from his insidious religious flock.
Nothing stopped the McCain and Palin campaign from agitating, encouraging, or at the very least tolerating shouts of “Kill him!” when Obama was verbally attacked by the candidates from the stump. The candidates’ failure to aggressively disassociate themselves from such threats appeared to have lost them a significant part of the independent electorate, and all moral credibility—an encouraging development. The right-wing attack on Congressman John Lewis’s mild rebuke, however, comparing these white crowds to segregationist supporters of Governor Wallace forty years previously, again illuminated the incendiary role of race.
As soon as Barack Obama began winning primary battles, Michelle Obama, the senator’s brilliant, accomplished wife, became a target for the far right-wing haters. Brazen commentators mixed up a bitter brew of misogyny and racism, and sloshed it generously throughout the blogosphere: she’s anti-American; she’s a disgruntled and hectoring black nationalist seething with unresolved racial rage; she’s Reverend Wright but with estrogen and even more testosterone; she’s a ball-breaker who wears the pants in the family. Maureen Dowd referred to the attacks as “Round Two of the sulfurous national game of ‘Kill the witch.’”
Demonizing Michelle Obama began in earnest when, in February 2008, she said that because of her husband’s campaign, hope was sweeping the nation, and that, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” Those fifteen words were played over and over in a stuttering loop of outrage on right-wing cable, and stood as absolute proof that she (and he) came up fatally short in the “real American” department. In this narrative, uncritical pride-in-country is assumed to be a given, the default of all the good people; anyone who can separate affection for people, a land, an ideal from the actions of a state or a government is a de facto traitor. There’s absolutely no room here for refusal or resistance, for criticism, skepticism, doubt, complexity, nuance, or even thought. Citizenship equals obedience. Right-wing “commentator” Bill O’Reilly’s first reaction to Michelle Obama’s proud-of-my-country comment was to say, “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.” Interestingly, almost no one remembers her joy in the expanding and participatory electorate she was seeing, in contrast to her relatively mild critique, because the “first time” never stopped repeating. And almost no one recalls O’Reilly’s racialized threat of personal violence because it conveniently disappeared from the media’s discourse without a trace.
Fox News called her “Obama’s baby mama,” derogatory slang for an unwed mother. (Fox later apologized.) The National Review featured her on its cover as a scowling “Mrs. Grievance,” and referred to Trinity United Church of Christ as a “new-segregationist ghetto of Afrocentric liberation theology.” It is always black people who have to clarify an unstated assumption (as if John and Cindy McCain’s church, like George Bush’s and Ronald Reagan’s, are models of “post-racial,” integrated America). Take a look. It’s like the famous question: “Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” The white kids never explain why they sit together.
On the night Barack Obama claimed the nomination, he walked on stage with Michelle and she turned and gave him a pound or a dap, a playful and affectionate little fist bump. It flew around the Internet like topsy—reviewed, debated, photo-shopped, commented upon—until E. D. Hill called it a “terrorist fist jab” on Fox News and that proved to be one step too far—Hill was ridiculed and scorned and eventually apologized. Simultaneously, of course, it was seized upon and imitated by new waves of young admirers.
But Michelle Obama had become an established, larger-than-life target for racial and gender animus on conservative blogs. Where were the (white) feminists to defend her and decry the rot? And the liberals seemingly can’t help themselves either—the New York Times ran a positive puff piece on her in which they noted that compared to her husband, “Michelle Obama’s image is less mutable. She is a black American, a descendent of slaves and a product of Chicago’s historically black South Side. She tends to burn hot where he banks cool, and that too can make her an inviting proxy for attack.” So much racialized and racist craziness packed into three short sentences.
In the aftermath it’s time to remember that President Lyndon Johnson, the most effective politician of his generation, was never involved in the Black Freedom Movement, although he did pass far-reaching legislation in response to a robust and in many ways revolutionary movement in the streets. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not a labor leader, and yet he presided over critical social and pro-labor legislation in a time of radical labor mobilization in shops and factories across the land. And Abraham Lincoln was not a member of an abolitionist political party, but reality forced upon him the freeing of an enslaved people. Each of these three responded to grassroots movements for social justice on the ground.
And it’s to movements on the ground that we must turn as we think beyond this election or the next, and consider—in the midst of massive economic calamity—the problems and possibilities of building a future of peace and love and justice. We may not be able to will a movement into being, but neither can we sit idly waiting for a social movement to spring full grown, as from the head of Zeus. We have to agitate for democracy and egalitarianism, press harder for human rights, link the demands that animate us, and learn to build a new society through our collective self-transformations and our limited everyday struggles. We must seek ways to live sustainably; to stop the addiction to consumption and development and military power; to become real actors and authentic subjects in our own history.
It is surely a unique, awe-inspiring moment. The Obama campaign offered up a new paradigm, activated young people under thirty who have not heretofore exercised the franchise, and illustrated that substantial numbers of white people and Latino people and Asian-American people would indeed vote for a black man. A new generation has learned the tools of campaigning, community organizing, and political discourse and debate. Now their experience can be put to use mobilizing those same people to insist on the changes they imagined. Within the context of cultivating the tacit myth of being a post-racial society, the Obama campaign inspired and mined a deeper longing for humanizing racial unity—even racial unity based on justice. There is change in the air—evidence that the population has travelled some distance—as well as the familiar stench of a racist history.
Our favorite moment came in the heat of the primary battle when now President Obama was asked who he thought Martin Luther King Jr. would support, Clinton or himself. Without hesitation, he responded that Reverend King would be unlikely to support or endorse either of them, because he’d be in the streets building a movement for justice. That seems exactly right.
Commentators, media people, and especially politicians fell all over themselves proclaiming that the 2008 election had, “nothing at all to do with race.” And yet every event, every speech and comment, every debate and appearance had race written all over it. Stephen Colbert, the brilliant satirist, hit it on the head when he asked a Republican operative, “How many euphemisms have you come up with so far so that you won’t have to use the word ‘Black?’” Everyone laughed good-naturedly.
It turns out that they and everyone else had plenty. When Senator Hillary Clinton spoke of “hard-working American workers,” everyone knew who she meant, but just in case anyone missed it, she added, “white workers.” The invisible race talk was about “blue collar” or “working class” or “mainstream” or “small town” or “hockey mom” or “Joe the plumber,” but we were meant to think “white.” All the talk of Senator Barack Obama’s exotic background, all the references to him as “unknown,” “untested,” a “stranger,” or a “symbolic candidate,” or “alien,” a “wildcard,” or an “elitist,” which one Georgia congressman admitted meant “uppity,” all the creepiness packed into the ominous “what do we really know about this man?,” and all the questioning of his patriotism, the obsession with what went on in his church (but no other candidate’s place of worship)—all of it fed a specific narrative: he’s not a real American, he’s not reliable, he’s the quintessential mystery man. The discourse was all about race, us and them, understood by everyone in the United States even when the words African American, black, or white are not spoken. Anyone who dared to point to these proxies and to call them euphemisms for race was promptly accused of being a racist, and, of course, of playing the ever-useful race card.
In this carnival atmosphere throbbed the omnipresent and not so clandestine campaign drumbeats that the senator from Illinois is a secret Muslim, that because his father was a Muslim, the son is forever a Muslim—assuming, of course, that faith in Islam is disqualifying. In a year of loopy ironies, it took a conservative Republican, retired general, and disgraced Bush secretary of state Colin Powell, to vigorously call the question, movingly insisting that it should be perfectly fine to be an American Muslim, and a president. In a perfect storm, Powell was immediately accused by white commentators of siding with his race.
Then there was the lethal mix of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. In the wake of Obama’s primary win in the “heartland” (white) state of Iowa, the Clinton campaign escalated. Gloria Steinem’s Op Ed in the New York Times on primary eve in New Hampshire, “Women are Never Front-Runners,” laid down the gauntlet, asserting a hierarchy of oppression, claiming that it was women who were the most despised, vilified, and unfairly treated by the media and by history—compared to the (supposed) deference to black men. “Why,” she wrote, “is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one?” Steinem’s intervention made a dichotomy of race and gender, and instead of a complex analysis of the breakthroughs of discriminatory barriers, here was an assertion of superior victim status on the part of white, powerful women. It obliterated the half of African Americans who are women, and the half of women in the United States who are women of color. Intending to highlight the real river of misogynist venom unleashed against Clinton, it posed and perpetuated racial division rather than intersection and unity—the popularly recognized hallmarks of the Obama campaign.
Hillary and Bill Clinton seized on this framing of feminism as a white women’s concern with escalated race talk. Hillary proclaimed on Fox News, “I don’t think any of us want to inject race or gender in this campaign.” But the Clintons promptly resorted to the well-worn “Southern strategy” in South Carolina and the border states. They dismissively referred to Reverend Jesse Jackson’s historic campaigns of 1984 and 1988 as purely race-based, rather than recognizing the unique “rainbow” coalition that included white workers, farmers, and professionals and was to be a harbinger of the Obama campaign. Clinton flagrantly appealed to white voters’ identity as “workers” or “women”—offering white people any reason to vote against Obama without saying he’s black—and followed the ancient and dismal road of racial discourse that appeals to white supremacy, fear, and anxiety. In fact, the prolonged Democratic primary served to chart the Rovian path the Republicans would later hone and utilize in the general election against Obama. Combined with their brazen strategies of voter suppression, demagoguery, and hate, the defense of the color line would become the core of the McCain/Palin convention and subsequent attack machine. dfsFabricated issues of “character,” values, and patriotism dominated the discourse, appeals were floated to white voters’ racial resentments and fears, and the deliberate marketing of the Republican Party—our kids used to call them “Repulsicans”—as the bastion of white peoples’ interests saturated targeted states across the land.
On March 18, 2008, Barack Obama delivered an epic, masterful speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on race and identity. Senator Obama’s talk was called, “A More Perfect Union,” and it tapped a deep longing to be free from the racialized straightjacket of anxiety, fear, and separation. The comedian Jon Stewart got it right when he said, “He treated the American public as if we were adults!” Obama managed to frame the discussion of racial justice in terms of broad American unity.
The speech was designed to redeem his campaign momentum in the wake of relentless, replaying videos of a line delivered by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor, after September 11. In it Wright challenges Americans to question the nation’s sense of exceptional goodness, and the refrain “God bless America” in light of our history. It was an edgy sermon to be sure, and apparently most dangerous of all, it was delivered by an angry black man. Using a technique honed by the far right over thirty years, the media seized upon and de-contextualized a sentence from Wright’s lifetime work, characterizing him as “ranting,” “raving,” and “divisive.” Liberals joined the discrediting party, referring to him as that “loony preacher,” spewing “bigoted and paranoid rantings.” In reality Reverend Wright’s sermons were no more incendiary than everyday conversations when white people aren’t looking or listening, or than Dr. Martin Luther King’s sermons a generation before.
In contrast Senator McCain’s active association with the Reverends Hagee, Parsley, and Robertson and the remarks by Governor Sarah Palin’s Pentacostal “spiritual warfare” and “prayer warriors” ministry remained unmemorable and apparently unremarkable. Hagee’s political preaching remained in the realm of the acceptable, including his assertions that AIDs is an incurable plague, God’s curse against a disobedient nation, until an audio clip surfaced in which he preached that what Hitler did in the Holocaust was God’s plan to drive Europe’s Jews back to the land of Israel. Only then, did McCain disassociate himself from his insidious religious flock.
Nothing stopped the McCain and Palin campaign from agitating, encouraging, or at the very least tolerating shouts of “Kill him!” when Obama was verbally attacked by the candidates from the stump. The candidates’ failure to aggressively disassociate themselves from such threats appeared to have lost them a significant part of the independent electorate, and all moral credibility—an encouraging development. The right-wing attack on Congressman John Lewis’s mild rebuke, however, comparing these white crowds to segregationist supporters of Governor Wallace forty years previously, again illuminated the incendiary role of race.
As soon as Barack Obama began winning primary battles, Michelle Obama, the senator’s brilliant, accomplished wife, became a target for the far right-wing haters. Brazen commentators mixed up a bitter brew of misogyny and racism, and sloshed it generously throughout the blogosphere: she’s anti-American; she’s a disgruntled and hectoring black nationalist seething with unresolved racial rage; she’s Reverend Wright but with estrogen and even more testosterone; she’s a ball-breaker who wears the pants in the family. Maureen Dowd referred to the attacks as “Round Two of the sulfurous national game of ‘Kill the witch.’”
Demonizing Michelle Obama began in earnest when, in February 2008, she said that because of her husband’s campaign, hope was sweeping the nation, and that, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” Those fifteen words were played over and over in a stuttering loop of outrage on right-wing cable, and stood as absolute proof that she (and he) came up fatally short in the “real American” department. In this narrative, uncritical pride-in-country is assumed to be a given, the default of all the good people; anyone who can separate affection for people, a land, an ideal from the actions of a state or a government is a de facto traitor. There’s absolutely no room here for refusal or resistance, for criticism, skepticism, doubt, complexity, nuance, or even thought. Citizenship equals obedience. Right-wing “commentator” Bill O’Reilly’s first reaction to Michelle Obama’s proud-of-my-country comment was to say, “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.” Interestingly, almost no one remembers her joy in the expanding and participatory electorate she was seeing, in contrast to her relatively mild critique, because the “first time” never stopped repeating. And almost no one recalls O’Reilly’s racialized threat of personal violence because it conveniently disappeared from the media’s discourse without a trace.
Fox News called her “Obama’s baby mama,” derogatory slang for an unwed mother. (Fox later apologized.) The National Review featured her on its cover as a scowling “Mrs. Grievance,” and referred to Trinity United Church of Christ as a “new-segregationist ghetto of Afrocentric liberation theology.” It is always black people who have to clarify an unstated assumption (as if John and Cindy McCain’s church, like George Bush’s and Ronald Reagan’s, are models of “post-racial,” integrated America). Take a look. It’s like the famous question: “Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” The white kids never explain why they sit together.
On the night Barack Obama claimed the nomination, he walked on stage with Michelle and she turned and gave him a pound or a dap, a playful and affectionate little fist bump. It flew around the Internet like topsy—reviewed, debated, photo-shopped, commented upon—until E. D. Hill called it a “terrorist fist jab” on Fox News and that proved to be one step too far—Hill was ridiculed and scorned and eventually apologized. Simultaneously, of course, it was seized upon and imitated by new waves of young admirers.
But Michelle Obama had become an established, larger-than-life target for racial and gender animus on conservative blogs. Where were the (white) feminists to defend her and decry the rot? And the liberals seemingly can’t help themselves either—the New York Times ran a positive puff piece on her in which they noted that compared to her husband, “Michelle Obama’s image is less mutable. She is a black American, a descendent of slaves and a product of Chicago’s historically black South Side. She tends to burn hot where he banks cool, and that too can make her an inviting proxy for attack.” So much racialized and racist craziness packed into three short sentences.
In the aftermath it’s time to remember that President Lyndon Johnson, the most effective politician of his generation, was never involved in the Black Freedom Movement, although he did pass far-reaching legislation in response to a robust and in many ways revolutionary movement in the streets. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not a labor leader, and yet he presided over critical social and pro-labor legislation in a time of radical labor mobilization in shops and factories across the land. And Abraham Lincoln was not a member of an abolitionist political party, but reality forced upon him the freeing of an enslaved people. Each of these three responded to grassroots movements for social justice on the ground.
And it’s to movements on the ground that we must turn as we think beyond this election or the next, and consider—in the midst of massive economic calamity—the problems and possibilities of building a future of peace and love and justice. We may not be able to will a movement into being, but neither can we sit idly waiting for a social movement to spring full grown, as from the head of Zeus. We have to agitate for democracy and egalitarianism, press harder for human rights, link the demands that animate us, and learn to build a new society through our collective self-transformations and our limited everyday struggles. We must seek ways to live sustainably; to stop the addiction to consumption and development and military power; to become real actors and authentic subjects in our own history.
It is surely a unique, awe-inspiring moment. The Obama campaign offered up a new paradigm, activated young people under thirty who have not heretofore exercised the franchise, and illustrated that substantial numbers of white people and Latino people and Asian-American people would indeed vote for a black man. A new generation has learned the tools of campaigning, community organizing, and political discourse and debate. Now their experience can be put to use mobilizing those same people to insist on the changes they imagined. Within the context of cultivating the tacit myth of being a post-racial society, the Obama campaign inspired and mined a deeper longing for humanizing racial unity—even racial unity based on justice. There is change in the air—evidence that the population has travelled some distance—as well as the familiar stench of a racist history.
Our favorite moment came in the heat of the primary battle when now President Obama was asked who he thought Martin Luther King Jr. would support, Clinton or himself. Without hesitation, he responded that Reverend King would be unlikely to support or endorse either of them, because he’d be in the streets building a movement for justice. That seems exactly right.
What Race Has to Do With It - by:Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn
OBAMA ENTERTAINS AND GIVES CREDIBILITY TO THE MOST EXTREME ELEMENTS IN OUR SOCIETY YET THESE EXTREMISTS ARE HELL BENT ON DESTROYING THE VERY SOCIETY THAT SPAWNED THEM.
THE US IS IN UNCHARTED WATERS AND MUST PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION.
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