JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE: BLACK YOUTH IN PERIL -PART 1
By the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan
FinalCall.com, IL
Nov 15 2007
[Editor’s note: With the attacks and wholesale killings of primarily
Black, Red and Brown youth increasing in the United States, the
Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered a message of guidance and
instruction to youth in cities across America on Sunday, October 28,
2007 via live webcast from Mosque Maryam in Chicago, Illinois.
The following is the first installment of excerpts of that address.
Click here for full message via Webcast or CD/DVD.] In the Name of
Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan Lately, there has been a great
display of anti-Black hatred in the United States of America. There
have been many nooses placed in different cities and in different
institutions to let Black people know that there still is a great
deal of hatred for us in this society. We thank Allah (God) that
Genarlow Wilson, the little Brother in Georgia, has been set free;
he should never have been jailed in the first place. We are, again,
saddened that Mychal Bell has been re-arrested on something flimsy,
just for the judge over his case to say to the Black people that
came to Jena, La. to see about the Jena 6 that your protest means
nothing. And, as this increase in violence and bloodshed and police
murder of Black people is beginning to mount again, I thought that
I should take a subject that I hope you will be patient with me on,
called "Justifiable Homicide: Black Youth in Peril."
The recent arrest of rap artist T.I., some flimsy set up, and the fact
that it took $3 million to bail the young man out-and he murdered no
one-are types of messages I want us to reflect on. Our young people
pose a threat to the society, and I am not sure that our young people
understand why Black youth are, in fact, a threat. The sad thing about
our young people is that we, as their parents, have not shared with
them the horror of what we and their grandparents have come through
in order to give birth to this present generation.
In that sense, as parents, we have failed our children because they
are not aware, not only of an ancient struggle, but are unaware of
a price that so many have paid so that these youth can go to fine
universities; can go to a restaurant of their choice or stay in a
hotel of their choice. They don’t understand the price.
I recently had a conversation with the legendary Harry Belafonte,
who many young people probably don’t even know. Brother Harry was
lecturing at Howard University, and he said the thing that hurt him
was that our young people did not even know the recent struggle in
the Civil Rights Movement. And that is why a movie could come out
called Barber Shop, and Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
could be made light of, shocking the older people in the audience while
the younger people laughed. It is not their fault; the youth have not
been informed. The sad thing is that we expect the enemy to inform
them when it is our duty and our responsibility to, but we are so busy
chasing a dollar. We are so fascinated by the material strength of
America that we have failed to sit down with our children and teach
them the horror of what Black people have suffered in America and
throughout the world at the hands of a wicked oppressor.
There are no Armenians who don’t know the horror of what happened to
their people from the Turks in the Ottoman Empire. There are no people
who have suffered indignity that are not aware of the road that they
have trod to get where they are. There is no Jewish child that does not
know about the Holocaust. It is incumbent upon a Jewish parent to tell
their children what makes the Jew the strong person that he or she is
today and what they came through. They not only tell their children,
but because of their control of media and their power, it is we who
also have to learn about their suffering so we can have sympathy for
them. But when we know nothing about our own suffering, this is the
reason why we have no sympathy for ourselves and for one another.
I do not want you to think that I am trying to teach hatred; that is
beneath the dignity of a Muslim, or a Christian or a believer in God.
But to teach the truth that might produce hatred, that is not my
fault. If the truth of something makes you dislike it, then that is
not "teaching hate"-that is teaching truth.
***
According to the dictionary, the term "justifiable homicide" means
whatever is justifiable is excusable. It is excusable because it is
justified by the principle of justice. The term "homicide" means the
murder of one human being by another.
Whenever you put these two words together, "justifiable homicide,"
there has to be a body of persons in a deliberative process that
determines on the basis of fact, that the murder of a human being is
excusable by the principle of justice.
Since we have been in America, we have been under the domination of a
power that during slavery did not have to justify the murder of our
fathers. They didn’t have any group of people to look at facts. The
slave-master had the power of life and death on every Black person
outside of the principle of justice, with no regard for the life of
the Black male or female that was being put to death.
Black progress, White intimidation
The period of time right after President Abraham Lincoln issued
the Emancipation Proclamation was called the Reconstruction era,
wherein Black people made tremendous progress. The whole idea in that
period-from those who benefited from our enslavement-was to put our
people back into slavery and to drive deeper into our hearts the fear
that was in us during our 300 years of chattel slavery. In the 12-year
period from 1865 to 1877, the enemy could see that if the so-called
Negro was set free and given the material to build an independent
existence, he could become a serious challenge to White superiority.
Under this so-called emancipation, the freed slaves then had to be made
to be afraid to make a free step. Those freed slaves who would want to
make a free step; those that would challenge their former slave master
by wanting to vote, purchase land, pursue education or striving to do
anything but plantation labor-these kinds of Black Brothers and Sisters
would be dealt with harshly by the former slave-masters, and there
was no deliberative body that would judge our affairs with justice.
Therefore, every killing of a Black man or woman; every lynching
of a Black man or woman was excusable. No matter what was done by
White people to set the Black man at naught was excusable, because
anything that was done to us to maintain White supremacy was in fact
an unwritten law. The killing of every Black human being during the
300 years of chattel slavery and even now, 150 years up from slavery,
at the hands of White people is generally considered "excusable."
One White historian wrote: "It was almost impossible to convict a
White man of a crime against a Black person." In one Louisiana town,
two White men were convicted of murdering a Black man. After they
were convicted, they rose and walked out of court after the verdict
was announced and no effort was made to stop them. Just think about
that. In 1890, a White man was convicted for the murder of a Black
man and was fined $5 for the crime-and the judge let it be known
that he would not press for collection. That is how little our lives
have meant in this society. White people will pick a dog up on the
highway and have the dog sit down at the dinner table, but a Black
human being will be sent to prison for mistreating dogs, while White
people mistreat Blacks every day and there is no penalty.
Lynching: White freedom to kill-at-will
During this Reconstruction period, White America began to engage more
frequently in a monstrous form of public homicide called "lynching."
This ritualized community murder masqueraded as crime fighting,
but it was actually a strategy to instill terror in the hearts and
minds of the Black population. It was done to eliminate economically
successful, politically active Black people and generally to reinforce
Black peoples’ roles as plantation laborers. As W.E.B.
DuBois stated what the Whites feared more than "Negro dishonesty,
ignorance, and incompetency," was "Negro honesty, knowledge, and
efficiency." So, after slavery, Black people could be destroyed
without harming a White person’s wealth, and made lynching increasingly
popular and widespread.
Now, this atmosphere is beginning to spread again in America. I
want to really make it clear to you today what we are going to face,
what we are facing, as it will increase in the days ahead.
The typical lynching became no less than a Caucasian celebration;
a public bonding across class and ethnic lines with veteran lynchers
egging on the younger ones. White women incited their men to horrific
cruelty, while children cheered on the medieval proceedings as all
reveled in unity to eye witness the dreadful tortures inflicted upon
Black men, women and children. White women dressed up, White men
chartered trains and newspapers announced the event of a lynching
in advance. And if you could see the pictures of the faces of the
lynching of our ancestors, the smiling faces in the photographs of
the spectators, as one scholar points out, "These are not the faces
of people who have seen justice fulfilled, but rather, these are the
faces of those who have experienced a pleasurable event."
The numerous slaughtered Black bodies mounted to such an extent that in
one Texas county, a newspaper reported that vultures became a nuisance.
***
In some White peoples’ minds, there was also a civic necessity
for these bloody public murders, which was outlined by University
of Alabama Professor Clarence Caisson: "This conviction that the
Black man must now and then be intimidated in order to keep him from
forgetting the bounds which southern traditions have set for him."
Even now, in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Georgia,
back in these rural areas and in the north as well, Black people
still are intimidated, and they keep within the bounds that White
people have set for them. We are 150 years up from slavery, but fear
still grips a lot of our people. So unquestioned is this philosophy of
intimidation that at times, lynchings are planned and carried out, not
under the fierce compulsion of mob hysteria, but by men who have calmly
resigned themselves to the performance of a painful-but delightful-duty
which they deemed as necessary for the good of society. One Arkansas
sheriff said that innocent Blacks were "hung, sort of on general
principles." The sheriff said that "We kill five or six of them every
year, and that makes the others behave tolerably well."
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad saw all of this in his growing up. He saw
lynchings in Georgia and he said in his speech at the Uline Arena in
1959, "America allows our sons to be lynched and then adds salt to the
wound by concealing the identity of the lynchers. More, the government
seeks out the lynchers, then turns them over to their fellow men, their
brothers who share the lynchers’ cause and motives." This means that
once you catch the people who did us in, you turn them over to their
brothers, who let them go and call it justifiable homicide. As of 2007,
there is no law on the books that White Supremacists feel they need
to respect, particularly if that law would lead to our acquisition
of strength or power to remove an impediment to our pathway of success.
White Supremacy reigns in American society
Every attempt that was made to legally give some relief to Black
people, other White people came and thwarted that effort. Right now,
we praise Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP for the historic landmark
decision of Brown vs. The Board of Education in 1954, which struck
down "separate but equal" and said that Blacks were entitled to
equal education, but not segregated. Fifty years later, there is no
such thing as integrated education any more. They tried to force us
into their schools with busing and busing brought White folks out,
stoning our little children who were just on a bus trying to go get an
education. They had to bring out the National Guard in Little Rock,
Arkansas to integrate a school. Fifty years later, it is as though
nothing happened.
We can go to public places now; eat in restaurants; sleep in hotels
and motels-that law has been passed. We have the right to vote, but
check out how they handled us: If you’ve got the right to vote Brothers
and Sisters, that is potential power in your hand. Well, what is your
inclination? Your inclination is to vote for one of your own to serve
you. The minute you vote one of your own in, the federal government
starts plotting, sending people to these weakly paid city councilmen,
mayors, offering them "this for that." And then, at the appropriate
moment when they are about to rise, the FBI comes with a charge and
many of them have gone to prison for very little or nothing except
that they were Black and they love Black, and they were in a position
of power. But the government itself moved to destroy that person.
For what purpose? To make Black people who had the right to vote
now, feel that voting for a Black person is of no value because when
we vote for the Black man look at what he does. But the Black man
is doing nothing more than what White people have been doing ever
since they have been in power. White Supremacy still rules in every
sphere, in medicine, in law, in insurance, in education, in science,
in technology, in art, in culture, in trade and commerce. Whatever
it is, White supremacy makes excusable whatever is done to keep the
Black man and woman from attaining the joy of justice that makes
freedom a happy experience. There is no joy in being free if there
is no justice accompanying that freedom.
The present-day lynch mobs
I want Black youth to hear this message, because police authorities
are the same today as they were during slavery. In fact, this is
how policing began. Police were formed to catch runaway slaves,
bring them back to their masters and make examples of them to throw
fear into other slaves. It’s the same today. Police authorities are
trained to kill, as well as to protect. But where Black people are
concerned, police legitimize their mob attacks under the name of
"back up." Police back up is often no different than the lynch mobs
100 years ago. The killing of our people, shooting them with many
bullets when one would have done the job. And then, that deliberative
body which is to discuss the brutal murder of our people by looking
into the facts, comes away calling it justifiable homicide.
In Chicago recently, a young, Black Brother was shot down by the
police and the parents are aggrieved. The police said the young
Brother was running and he had something in his hands, but the
witnesses will tell you, "He didn’t have anything in his hands;
he was just shot down." And the body of persons in a deliberative
process to determine the facts that is supposed to address this,
just says, "Well, we’re looking into it." But when they look into it,
the verdict comes back as "Another dead Negro-justifiable homicide."
***
Injustice, as I said in the Holy Day of Atonement speech from Atlanta
on Oct. 16, brings its natural response no matter how long it takes.
Injustice has to be answered by justice, and justice demands that
what a man sows, he must eventually reap. Jesus said it well-Did he
say those who live by the sword will die by marches? He didn’t say
that. Did he say those who live by the sword will die by massive
protest?; that those who live by the sword will die by prayers in
front of public buildings and kneeling and begging and pleading? Did
he say that? What did he say? Jesus said those who kill by the sword
will die by the very sword that they used to kill others.
Is there sacredness and value to human life? Listen to me carefully,
young Brothers and Sisters. Is there only sacredness and value to White
life, and not Brown, Red and Black life? Is there value to a dog in
this society, and yet no value on the life of a human being such that
people can go to jail for mistreating a dog, and the same person who
kills a Black youth can go home to dinner with his children with no
feeling of having done something wrong, because in his own heart and
mind, he did society a favor by killing another Black person?
What do you think God has to say about this?
To be continued
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