So Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 guy to Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, thinks President-elect Obama is a House Negro (slave). Interesting. Barely in the starting blocks, but he is already in the ‘house’. I guess the entire world is not an Obama fan after all. Nevertheless, it is an interesting choice of words and line of attack that this sworn enemy of the US now takes – and worthy of note.As quick background, the pejorative label, historically applied by blacks to other blacks, generally designates un-challenged submission to white authority, and resignation to the pursuit of individual interest, to the detriment of one’s ethnic affiliation.
It is bold, but not unprecedented, for a non-African-American, to take such a familiar name-calling position. Recall that Ralph Nader did a similar thing when he questioned whether Obama was going to be an Uncle Tom, if he succeeded in getting to the White House. As with Nader, al-Zawahiri is attempting to stir an old racial pot to a present-day boil. I think he will fail, as did the irrelevant Ralph.
Neither Nader nor al-Zawahiri has standing to use the term. In fact, the nuance of its use is beyond most people, as assimilation of the factors of power and influence becomes more widely understood and accepted for advancement. See The Field Negro blog. Those who remain wedded to simple labels and tired strategies are tragically stuck. While this group rains violence, drop-outs, drugs, gangs, guilt and absolution onto themselves and the rest of the country, they take a pass on opportunity which immigrants, especially from Africa, leap upon to free themselves.
Now I too have been labeled a House Negro, by some, for having the audacity to call into question some black behaviors, or due to other associations with my country’s majority whiteness, including my time at Harvard. But it is these very associations that allow me and others leverage to reach both out and back. For instance, one of my company’s projects is developing a 400 megawatt power utility for the government of Ghana and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – real black power.
Perhaps al-Zawahiri expects Obama to back down, or that blacks will not support the President-elect cast in this unflattering manner. He is wrong. One America.
James C. Collier
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Technorati Tags: Acting White: House Negro vs. Field Negro, Obama, Al-Qaeda, al-Zawahiri, Osama, Acting White
Judging by what I have seen around the internet, I think that most of us are HIGHLY offended at Al-Zawahiri's racist rant.
ReplyDeleteanonymous what the heck do you mean President-Elect Obama will turn this nation into more of a fascist,communist,socialist,type of nation.Is that what you are implying?That piece of trash gwb had a grand dad named Prescot Bush who was Hitlers'U.S.banker and publicist was a great friend of the Nazis and arranged Nazis to immigrate to the U.S.!
ReplyDeleteIt is evident that Obama is a toadie for the white establishment. Any thinking person can see this simply from where his major contributions come from.
ReplyDeleteToadie equals Uncle Tom.
Obama is black, but he is owned by the white elitists who run this country.
To deny this is to show your blatant ignorance.
I don't know if I buy anything from al-Zawahiri or any of these terrorist organizations that have their roots in our CIA. But taking this at face value, I would say that the guy is expressing honest disgust at the fact that Mr. Change has hitched his administration to the fake war on terror and to radical Zionism. Arab families are being butchered, remember. It doesn't get on your TV, but it's a reality ... American families are losing their homes, savings, freedoms ... Obama has chosen the polar opposite of change in both these areas.
ReplyDeleteObama cares about Blacks, but not only Blacks for the sake of being Black. He's a POLITITIAN not the mesiah. His ability to make any tangible change (regarding race) in his lifetime is overstated.
ReplyDeleteThe election of Obama is an end of an era just like Christ's ministry was an end of an era. The Jews of Christ's time thought that his influence would have a direct impact (possitive) on their lives. What they ended up getting - was killed. Obama just marks an end of a limited groups way of thinking and their expectations. The rest (as it has always been) is up to us.
Not sure I understand, Uglyblackjohn, except that there's a comparison between Obama and Jesus, which is borderline insane if you don't mind me saying so.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how myself and others have slammed Obama here, on the basis of his record and the policies he's endorsing, and nobody is coming to his defense--most notably, Mr. Collier is absent defending his race-based interest in, and obvious enthusiasm for, Obama ...
The man is a media creation, a useful puppet, and he doesn't signify the beginning or end of anything himself--although the excitement that's been created around him may be used as cover as the country is finally destroyed.
You need look no further than the economy and the mechanics of money to understand what I'm driving at. I hope you guys investigate this matter and pay a lot more attention to policies than to personalities ... Go to Google Video and watch The Money Masters, which is the best documentary on the subject, or watch Fiat Empire or Aaron Russo's Freedom to Fascism ... The first half hour or so of the second Zeitgeist film is also a good primer ... Money is, as they say, 50 percent of every transaction. Control of money is therefore control of everything, and our money is controlled by forces separate from, and clearly hostile to, the citizenry. Please forget Obama and the divisiveness he creates and research real issues.
Anon 4:57, I, like the majority who voted for Obama, believe he is the best of those who presented themselves. I choose neither to defend him at this point, or my choice, as that contest is over. What is before us is watching him do the job that we elected him to do, rather than re-hashing the dislikes of people like you who do not know when to take a graceful bow.
ReplyDeleteMr. Collier, I'm not sure you follow my logic. Your graceful bow would refer to someone admitting defeat in a sporting event? Reducing politics to the Ultimate Fighting Challenge is a hell of a way to avoid taking a moral stance on policies that are ruining lives--not to mention ending them.
ReplyDeleteI would argue that the majority who voted for Obama (or McCain) did not think at all, but downloaded their thoughts from their TVs. And this does not just refer to their vote, but to the mass of half-truths and outright lies that their TVs fed into their minds, which led to the Orwellian logic that a candidate is AGAINST what he votes and labors FOR--namely the police state, astounding destruction of lives through manipulation and control of the money, and continued takeover and blood-letting in the Mid East.
The issue is not Obama, or any politician, but policies which, evidently, you've resigned yourself to nonopinions on ... It's always depressing to watch people shy away from actually thinking, trying to fend you off with silly rhetorical swipes so they can continue believing things that they can't verify with their own logic. Things, in fact, that require them to actively deny reality to believe.
All I'm asking you to do, Mr. Collier, is to challenge yourself and strive for understanding. I'm not interested in Obama or McCain, except as vehicles to illustrate mechanical truths of our system so people can resist tyranny. Forget Obama. Research money creation, debt based currency, fractional reserve banking ... Research the nature and patterns of fascism. Don't let other people hand you your opinions on these all-important matters.
Anon 10:38, with every vote comes the opportunity, if so desired, to include a moral influence. Perhaps to your dismay, the weeds of your so-called ruination are not the subject of this blog. Be assured, I do not seek to deny your grumpiness on the state of the country, or world, but rather the appropriateness of this forum as outlet for your intellectual crumudgery. There are better forums to debate facism, Orwellian logic, debt-based currency, and fractional reserve banking - all worthy subjects for sure. Your choice of this blog is curious given it's selected emphasis on issues that hold down black performance, and contribution, beginning and ending with pre-K & K-8 socio-miseducation at the hands of ignorant parents and eduators.
ReplyDeleteMight I suggest you visit my friend Dennis over at Mangan's Miscellany, the place I go when I want to hear smart people talk about arrmagedon, and a place where your angst can achieve full blossom.
Anon 10:38 here ... I thought it was relevant in the context of a discussion on whether or not it was appropriate to call old Barack an Uncle Tom. I was making the case that he couldn't be other than an Uncle Tom (if one chooses to frame the discussion that way) based on how our system is structured.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the topic of the blog, then. Have you ever heard of the work of a guy named Rushton? He's a well-respected, if controversial, scientist who wrote a book called Race, Evolution and Behavior in which he makes a very straightforward case that blacks are evolved in keeping with an entirely different survival strategy than whites or Asians.
I think your answer may lie there. Groups that struck out from Africa had to adopt, over hundreds of thousand of years, different physical *and mental* characteristics in order to survive and ensure the survival of their offspring.
It's infinitely logical, even to the point of being undeniable ... Environmental factors did not require blacks Africans to develop critical and abstract thinking as much as did whites and Asians, who were relentlessly engaged in territorial disputes with their own kinds, as well as being forced to conquer extremely hostile environments ... And the ability for critical and abstract thinking can, arguably, grow exponentially once the process has begun, as the *behavior* is altered by the need to think, and the behavior then becomes a factor encouraging more thought, which in turn encourages more of the behavior conducive to even more thought and so on and so on...
To paraphrase liberally, since it's been a while since I read the book, Rushton argues that behavior patterns evolutionarily hard-wired into blacks are basically the enemies of critical and abstract thought. And the telling effect of this is that blacks, on average, over time, have ended up with limited cognitive abilities compared to other groups.
The best thing you could probably do would be to encourage people to be individuals--to avoid so-called collectivism--since, if Rushton's theory is anywhere near the truth, more intelligent blacks and those inclined toward more productive behavior codes are forever going to be swimming upstream against the tendencies of their group.
I don't say to take this line of thought as gospel, but if we can freely say that different subspecies of dogs have different physical and personality traits, and different intellectual capacities, based on their group's breeding and specific evolution, how can we not assume the same thing of subspecies of humans?
Is this more appropriate for this blog (if not this particular post)?
Anon 3:53 (aka 10:38), I'm bitin'. I buy Rushton as you present (and will check him out), except for the hardwired part. In place of that, research suggest no sub-species, but rather that the normal distribution of intelligence delineated itself in early immigrant problem solving traits (heritable) and fueled exploration to different geographies. With little migration back to Africa, due to a litany of drawbacks beginning with malaria, Socratic thinking took much longer to leap the Africans up with the rest of world. This was exacerbated by no place on the continent to mass produce food except the southern-most tip.
ReplyDeleteSo, I'm not sure I understand, but is what you're saying a chicken before the egg type-thing? That the more intelligent Africans were the ones who went exploring, and then were incapable of returning, or chose not to return? Who knows, maybe they were chased away by stronger tribes ... The end result would still be a relatively isolated human subspecies left in Africa that did not, for whatever reason, develop their thinking abilities as much as the offshoot groups eventually did, correct?
ReplyDeleteTaking humans as another animal, and distinguishable human groups as subspecies evolved to survive in different environments, then measuring each group's intellectual and practical achievements historically and into modern times, is it possible to not draw politically incorrect conclusions?
I think the problem you're seeking to solve with this discussion is indeed a genetic problem and not a social one (although racism via our corrupt system is very real [take the war on drugs that Obama won't touch]; but then, compared with most other groups blacks have proven all but helpless against the system) ... The solution would probably be beginning early in life to adapt black children to an intellectually demanding environment, and forcing a departure from their built-in behavioral tendencies ... That is, if you can accept the premise that blacks are adapted, from way back in time and for what? a couple hundred thousand years? to an intellectually undemanding environment where more impulsive and simplistic behavior was the norm.
Anon 10:38, inasmuch as the normal distribution of human intelligence is estimated to be approx. 60% heritable, and certain Africans above a specific intelligence threshold were able to walk out, thereby becoming physically distinct, yes, ethnicity can be viewed as a partial surrogate for genetic diversity. But that diversity is not driven by race, rather it is visible through an ethnic lens.
ReplyDeleteYeah keep telling yourself that.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_4_curing_diversity.html
Great banter between Mr. Collier and Anon 10:38. Love the expression but misses Al-Zawahiri's intent. He wasn't speaking to blacks in america per say. He was speaking to the muslim populations that my view Obama as one of their own. Populations that may pause in their conditional support of the jihadist. Very clever to weave Malcolm's early words into the presentation.
ReplyDelete