Linked above is a map showing the location of officially recognized "hate groups" as listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
I would dispute the inclusion of the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party as "black separatist groups" on this list. The NOI has toned down it's separatist rhetoric, though black nationalism is still a theme. It is rare that you will hear a Nation minister refer to white folks as devils like they did 40 years ago.
The New BPP is probably on this list because it was chaired by the late Khalid Muhammad, a former NOI minister who made many of the NOI's most recent "hate" speeches (receiving condemnation from Clinton andGore in 1993). Khalid died from a suspicious illness in 2001. Most of the New BPP's activities have centered around community activism and videotaping police patrols in several urban cities.
The United Nuwabian Nation is a strange cult-like organization that mixes a philosophy of radical Islam, black separatism and outer space mythology in their creed. Weird folks indeed, but dangerous? Well, they were stockpiling guns in their rural Georgia headquarters until the police raided a few years ago. I can't vouch for those cats.
5 comments:
The NOI says some ugly things, but they pose no threat to anybody, except those who try to leave their cult.
The black panthers also pose no threats to anybody, though their members can make ugly comments. That's one important difference between these groups and the white racist groups. Black-on-white acts of racism only take the form of street crimes, where some black thugs perceive a white person as an easy mark, and one that probably has more cash than a black mark. You won't find whites in a black neighborhood getting racist graffiti on their house, or notes from organized groups; but they might get burglerized more often than their black neighbors (who are also getting burgled, by the way). Whites in a nice black neighborhood will never get harrassment of any sort, except maybe a comment by some jackass. But nothing organized.
Robbery negates the "hate crime" aspect. White folks generally don't get robbed because they are white. They get robbed in black neighborhoods because the perception is they have more stuff. That isn't "hating" per se.
Which is often an argument used by some people who say blacks can't be racist because they can offer no real threat to a white person. Since blacks are not part of the power structure, their racism has a diminished effect.
I think this is horse hockey, but that argument is heard often. This is why ugly words like "cracker" and "redneck" don't have the venom of "the N-word". There is no history of oppression behind them.
Nadir: I'm mostly agreeing with you here. The black burglers in many cases do target whites, but not in order to intimidate them into moving and to keep other crackers from moving in; I agree with you here about the term "hate". These crimes are motivated by greed, not hate.
I also agree that in our society, the terms "cracker" and "honkey" have no historical heft, whereas the analagous black terms do. But if we start going into specific white terms -- patty, wop, dego, kike -- we can muster some similar heft, though not as much. You disagree with me that one way forward is to reduce the heft of the black terms by using them, and rendering them heftless for the next generation.
I'm pleased to learn that you share my rejection of the notion that "blacks can't be racist because they have no power." For one thing, that's an invented definition of racism, and one that not only violates the dictionary definition, but is a veiw that -- according to the dicitonary -- is racist itself! Also, in many circumstances blacks do have power over whites. For example, if a cracker walks through a black neighborhood and encounters some black thugs; or goes to the Coleman Young building downtown and tries to get some papers approved; or is a defendant in many area courthouses.
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