Reports Of Nooses Appearing Across U.S., As Police Investigate Episode At Columbia University, A Rash Of Other Incidents Reporte

Tossing cookies and displaying nooses are not the same thing.  And you know that.

Good comments, phrolen.

The organization "Nation of Gods and Earths" is the flip side of the KKK. AngryIndian, I think that fighting what you believe to be racism with racism is like trying to stop rock-throwing by getting your own rocks.

Will racism ever cease on this planet? A few decades back, I might have said and believed "yes." I was very young, very committed, and very naive. Now I understand that we can never legislate all people everywhere. Will racism ever cease? No. That's a hard cold fact.

So, what to do? In the U.S., we have a history of moving beyond older ways that were wrong, and of working to fix them. I see the U.S. as organic, growing--and like a child, the things that were "the way we do things" in the 1700's and on up through the ages grow and change with maturity and changing times.

Is everything perfect? No. Will it ever be? No. But we do live in a nation that fixes things--and now it seems as though people and systems that have worked to make things better are routinely bullied by those who don't want to give up the cult of professional victimology. (This is a sociological statement, not a personal one.)

I remember segregation. I remember when women couldn't get jobs "meant for men." Now I see a world where blacks, women, and other minorities are routinely at the head of government jobs and doing everything you can imagine, from being astronauts to judges to researchers to doctors to--you name it. I remember days before certain legislations, and OEO and all the legislative and legal safeguards in effect today.

But now we're at risk again, because physics work, even if it's sociological physics. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. When certain groups insist on living as though they are afflicted right now by being actual slaves, or by segregation, and routinely launch large-scale attacks to gain attention and attack those not in their preferred group, they create distrust and hate.

Right now, the groups like "Nations of Gods and Earth" are spinning up racial divides and hate. Why?

Let's grab up the KKK types, the "Nations of God and Earth" and similiar types, the neo-Nazi's, the radical Islamists, and send 'em all to camp together where they can't get away from each other and have to survive together in the wilderness. My bet would be this: they'd find out that they are very much alike. In fact, the nouns in their rhetoric and hate just change according to which divisive, hate group someone advocates.  You can take the rhetoric of any of the group and just change out nouns:  black, white, Jews, Christians, Muslims. 

It's all the same message: hate, division and destruction.  

First off, pretending that pro-Europocentric racism is a thing of the past is painfully disingenuous.  In fact, that suggestion is not even worth addressing when you and I both know that Whites in this country have always sought to maintain social control in their favour and have used violence to do so.  To say that this is not true and has no bearing in the modern day is willing ignorance, much like Japan's denial of the Rape of Naking.

Second, don't assume that I am a democrat or a liberal.  I know full well that the southern democratic party fought hard to maintain slavery, worked night and day to defend Jim Crow and it was a democratic president, LBJ that sold out the the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic convention and called its leader grassroots African activist Fannie Lou Hamer "that illiterate woman".   You aren't telling me anything I don't already know.  Don't make the mistake of jumping to conclusions about my political leanings.  I do not lean left.  I said it before and I will say it again, My political position is Indigenist.  A philosophy that ignores western political definitions in favour of Aboriginal paradigms.

Third, you have been around NP long enough to have learned or at least read by now that I am not a "member" of the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths.  That is a stereotype Phrolen, not my analysis that points out that whether democrat or republican the motive behind the hanging of nooses is a return to unchallenged White Power, in other words, a quite "conservative" perspective that maintains that America was better off when Africans could be extra-judicially murdered.  If you are going to use a revolutionary African Diasporic philosophy as a metaphor to establish an argument that racism is an equal-opportunity affair, sir, you are insulting my intelligence.  And frankly, if you could go beyond the provocative language you would understand that the allegory maintains that all human beings are of African descent and that Europeans are the youngest members of that family.  The "grafting" story is just that, a story.  I have never known a practising 5pct individual who really believes White people are literally "Devils".  But we do recognise that when dealing with our people historically here and elsewhere, White folks have been unabashedly evil and expect us to kiss you arses for the attention.

My acknowledgment of the 5pct'ers is strictly political as that is the basis of the philosophy.  I merely recognise the legitimacy of a movement that provides an allegorical blueprint for African survival in the United States.   How you can view "The Black Man is God and his proper name is Allah" and the struggle for "Black Power" as racist is beyond me.  The last time I went to a Christian church the image of Jesus the Christ was distinctively European, a scientific impossiblity.  And the call for Black Power is not at all the same as the war-cry of "White Power" as typified by Europeans.  We were only seeking to empower our respective communites, White supremacists seek the eradication of all non-Europeans here and elsewhere.  Read their literature.  I do. 

As someone who has grown up with the teachings of Allah the Father, (Clarence 13X) and the unpleasant experience of facing White racism on a visceral level, the 5 percent perspective is a rational and revolutionary African philosophical  response to centuries of murderous colonialist abuse by Europeans who have actively and violently stripped us of knowledge of ourselves, our personal security and our identities in favour of White power and unearned White privilege.  A privilege you are now claiming by demanding that traditional and historical White American racial bias be ignored because you as a self-identified White male are tired of hearing about it.  If enough sincere White people worked to truly eradicate ethnic bias perhaps you would have less to hear from Africans fed up with excuses as to why we should ignore cases like this.  It is not for you or any other non-African to define how we are supposed to feel and respond to what has and continues to happen to us as a people.   We make that choice, not you.

Instead of taking the easy way out by playing the role of a victimised but well-meaning population of purely benevolent-minded and culturally exceptional Euro-Americans who have always fought for liberation and democracy while Indians were killed and our women sterilised and Africans were beaten and killed for trying to enjoy their civil rights to education, employment and the ballot box, admit to America's issues with its racialist history, work to change the sordid relationships between marginalised sectors and the mainstream and stop pretending that when Africans and other non-Whites stand up for themselves it means that we automatically hate you and all other White people.  It is ridicuous and divisive.

If White society is that sensitive, then the mainstream of the Europocentric world needs to get over its outdated delusions of self-importance instead of telling us to cope with your insecurities.  Work to stop the bias, not the people defending themselves against a long-standing tradition of discrimination you do not and will not experience.  Did it ever occur to you that many of us are tired of having to live our lives dictated by White refusal to admit to this country's racist history?  How much more are we supposed to put up with?  How much would you put up with?  You would be surprised how many Africans would be willing to struggle for real justice since you seem to not remember that there was an entire movement in this country to make America change.  To suggest that the White American public was and is as a people wholly supportive and embracing of this goal is revisionist and intentionally misleading.  It is also insulting to the many thousands of people who have given their all and lie in unmarked graves forgotten by a country still living on its unearned reputation for justice and brotherhood regardless of ethnicity.   But then again, we had to argue with White America to simply be recognised as human.  How quickly White American forgets...

Chris, everything you just said was fine, but how many times are we to be reminded that Rev. Jackson said something stupid while I'm told to forget and forgive Imus, Beck, Limbaugh, Horowitz and a whole host of others who do this in national media on a regular basis?  The Brawley incident was infortunate, but pulling that out everytime Africans in this country stand up to White racism is insulting.  And if you are going to despise Rev. Sharpton, I can suggest a list of Zionist rabbi's on Israel National Radio that are ten times worse when they discuss Arabs and activists that oppose Israeli policies.  The Duke case "may" have been a false flag, but they also have a well known reputation for mistreating young women at their parties according to the very same mainstream news agenices that brought  us Tawana Brawley.  I wasn't there during the alleged assault and as far as I know neither were you.  But the fact that the DA felt compelled to announce these men "completely innocent" smacks of institutional American anti-African bias.  How often does a District Attorney tell the public that the accused was without a doubt innocent, leaving themselves open to lawsuits? 

We just had a case of an African woman beaten, raped and tortured by six White racists in West Virginia.  Are you and others here on NP going to hold up "Brawley Lied" signs to say that such treament is equal across the board so we should just forget about it and move on? 

You are so wrong about the Black Panther Party that it is shocking. Jim Crow happened long after the 13th, 14th and 15th consitutional amendments were passed. And since then we have had Jim Crow, the Klan, institutional racial discrimination in schools, (Brown vs. Board of Education) segregated military service, (my Navy father wasn't allowed to work anywhere but the galley) lynching terrorism and the glass wall that kept out all but the White Anglo-Saxons who happened not to be Catholic and in many cases women, of any race. This is just the short list. Black Power was a call for community power in the face of dogs being sicked on African people trying to vote in the United States, or to go to school with White people. What is it that upsets you about African people empowering themselves? Does Zionism bother you as well?

In 2000, the state of Florida violated the voting rights of numerous African men registered to vote democrat by purposefully listing them as felons. The investigation conducted by the state voting commission admitted errors and vowed to never let it happen again. It did in Florida and Ohio in 2004. Where was the U.S. constitution in these cases? Where was justice?

Your lack of knowledge, or wilful ignorance, of these issues is appalling.