Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other.
That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions.
In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X, letter written following the Hajj.I saw this earlier. Some idiot "Conservative" law professor calling Black people a "Non-Western group" that harbors "Resentment, shame and envy towards [White] people for their outsized achievements and contributions." Like I said concerning the guy who's feed I saw it on "If you were born and raised in the USA, served in the Navy and have never known anything but Western Culture, how the fuck are you not Western?"
The only reason there are such a thing as African American or Afro-Caribbean peoples is because of White people who wanted other people do do their hard labor for them for free. How come these racists never take responsibility for that?
There's this guy I used to know. (He's unfortunately no longer with us.) You know, not too long after we'd met we had this conversation, I still remember it. Terms like "Afro-American" and "African American" were just at the time gaining wide acceptance and we were talking about that kind of stuff. I have to admit, dude got a little bit annoyed. He said "Man, I ain't never been to no Africa, I'm an American and I'm Black. That ain't a Nigerian flag on my uniform." Dude was an Airman, and a Black American convert to Islam, and when he left active duty and became an Air National Guardsman he took a job as a computer guy for an Islamic center by where he lived. He went on to get his degree, become an officer and be wounded in Iraq. He was medically retired after 13 years, and he went on to become an actual no-shit
scholar and community college professor with degrees in history and Islamic studies writing about stuff like how the Muslims preserved...wait for it...
Western Civilization by translating Classical Greek and Roman texts into Arabic. And then those texts became available, through plunder or trade, to Western Crusaders and thus later fed into the beginnings of the renaissance.
How the hell do you get any more "Western Civilization-y" than that?
Of course I realize none of that matters worth a damn to this old bag, who's just using "Western" as shorthand for "A specific sort of 'Conservative' White Person." Nor would she give a damn that my dude (like many US Muslims) voted Republican until 2004 only switching to Democrats because of the Global War On Terror...a war my friend, then still serving, fought in...when she's throwing in some "Great White Father" type racism on top of that. And my late friend's (He died in 2020 of COVID-19) son is still serving...though as an officer in the United States Navy.
But Amy Wax says he's "Resentful?"
You know, I don't know that I've ever in my life met a Black person in this country who ever spewed the kind of anti-American crap I've been hearing from White Conservatives lately.
And it's kind of interesting, too, you know; Every Indian person that I've ever met speaks better English (though most frequently of the British sort) than most Americans do...but they're "Ungrateful?"
As if Colonialism is a thing that people should somehow be grateful for? Clearly, a lot of that cultural exchange clearly benefited one group more than the other one. You're telling me when people's ancestors might have been lashed to cannons and blown apart, or subjected to decades or centuries of oppression by foreigners in their own country, that they should be "Grateful" for that? What about Slavery?
Bitch, there's places in Africa (for example) where there's still statues of whatever European "Discovered" this place or that one. There were people who'd already lived there for thousands upon thousands of years, ain't nobody discovered shit. And some of those imposed, foreign place-names still remain. Among them is Victoria Falls on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe...or as it's known locally Mosi Oa Tunya "The Thundering Smoke."
I used to work with this little old Black guy from Zimbabwe at my old job. His name was Henry. Him and his wife Virginia were just the coolest people, and I've written about them before. I still miss that dude.
I think of them whenever I see bullshit like this, and it just makes me even more angry.
But you know the whole Amy Wax/Tucker Carlson revival of John Wayne-like Great White Father-ism still isn't the most fucked up thing I saw today. Some asshole Republican official in Virginia called Secretary Of Defense Lloyd Austin racial slurs and said he should be lynched. That man is a retired United States Army General who served in the Cold War and fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And lynching is a Federal hate crime, these days. It should have been that a long, long time ago.
"Support The Troops" my hairy ass.
I don't give a damn if this Virginia GOP official got fired or resigned or whatever the fuck. He never should have said it in the first goddamned place, and the culture of his Party should never have made him feel as if it were permissible to hold such views or say such things.
Sure as fuck wasn't when I was a Republican.
But that's not the world we live in anymore.
And the whole goddamned reason for the Republican Party's slouching toward Authoritarianism and abandoning its responsibilities to govern or to lead becoming first a walk, then a run, then a bat-out-of-hell sprint is because of two things, lust for power and racism. And one absolutely does inform the other at all levels.
Anybody who tells you anything else at this point is a goddamned fool, or a fucking liar and you can tell them I said that. "Fear Of The Other" and the hate that goes with it is the whole damn reason These Fucking People want some culture-warring or shit-talking goon to be their "Leader" and "protect" them.
How did that work out, assholes? And the worst part is a lot of these fuckers, during the height of COVID-19 went out and
got infected and died on purpose, because of conspiracy theories and Trump.
These people aren't afraid because they know they have something to fear, no matter how much genuine bad blood there may be. Most of the time, other people just move on.
Not these shitheads. They're afraid of losing whatever social status they think they have. They work themselves up on this fear that they'll be treated the same way they treat others, because in their minds it justifies whatever fucked up shit they want to do. And they'll make up whatever stupid shit they think sounds good to try and make themselves feel righteous.
If even their fear is in bad faith, what does that say about their religion?
At the rate they're going, White Conservatives are going to destroy themselves. The key is, they want to take the rest of us with them. Why the fuck else do you think they love Vladimir Putin and the Second Coming, not of Christ, but of the Soviet Union?
And they love the death, destruction, genocide and war because the cruelty is the goddamned point.
Most of the people in Ukraine look pretty white to me, and most of them are Christians of one sort or another, too. Also, based on what I've seen of them and the several Ukrainians and other people from former Soviet states that I've met I'd say a lot of them come off as pretty basic type conservative...though not usually the American kind...or at least not what it's turned into.
And it's kind of funny how none of that matters, Ukrainians aren't "White Enough" just because the American Right embraces Putin and his Neo-Soviet Communism-without-the-social-welfare.
Reagan Fucking Wept.
A lot of Ukrainians embraced the West, hell, fought and died during the Euromaidan revolution so they might even get a chance to do that. And it's not good enough for so many Republicans, because they decided they liked Vladimir Putin better than the economics, politics or values that their ideological forerunners propagated for 70 years?
And because America rejected Trump, some of these dumb shits seem to openly want Putin to be their leader.
Nothing will ever, in the end, be good enough for these fucking people until they've either destroyed or subjugated everybody else in the world. They're coming right out and talking about their fellow citizens like we're some kind of ungrateful colonial subjects. You cannot reason with that. We cannot live with people who don't think others have a right to exist.
If we don't stand up and start doing something about this now, these fucking people will try to do in America what Putin is doing in Ukraine...and then they'll try to inflict their hate and their wars on Europe and anybody else who doesn't bow down before their hateful, idolatrous world-view.
Being Christian or conservative or white isn't the point. That's not
really what they want from people. It's just an excuse.
And I'm here to tell you, the time is coming when these fools will abandon all pretense of Christianity or "Conservatism" and go wherever or bow to whatever idol gets them the biggest hit of cruelty and hate or satisfies their lust for power and wealth.
If that means worshiping demons, and bowing down before Altars of Abaddon and Dis Pater and Mammon, Well. I think These Fucking People would do it and I'm not sorry.
And I think they'll sacrifice anyone and everyone they can to these foul gods.
All any of these demonic entities would ever have to do is possess some Old White Man in a nice suit with a bunch of money first to tell them a bunch of lies they wanted to hear.
A swarthy Middle Eastern Jesus with kinky black hair and a big thick beard, in desert robes with a dozen other guys...or in a carpenter's coveralls and driving a pickup truck with a toolbox on the back but speaking the Truth either way wouldn't even register as anything but a threat to them.
Especially if He tried to cleanse the Temple of all the White Idols these motherfuckers have filled it with.
But the whole idea of the White Jesus is itself a lie. Jesus was a Brown Middle Eastern Jew and I'd have told you that when I was a Conservative Republican and an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist.
That's the difference between me and them.
Racism basically is These Fucking People's god.
Go ahead and try to prove me wrong. They're telling us this shit themselves.
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For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27
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