Deaths, Denial and America’s DNA

By Richard B. Muhammad | Last updated: Aug 6, 2019 - 1:35:25 PM

It was a bloody and profoundly American weekend as almost two dozen people lost their lives in mass shootings in Texas and Ohio.

The deaths of 22 people, at Final Call press time Aug. 5, mowed down at a Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas, and another nine people slaughtered in Dayton, Ohio, was painful and disheartening.

Nearly as disheartening is the All-American tendency to deflect, deny and disassociate itself from crisis. The crisis is a growing active, intentional and murderous rampage by White males intent on protecting White lives in the United States and a society whose perverse love for guns is driving it further into an abyss.

Eleven-year-old Leilani Hebben puts her head on her mother Anabel Hebben’s shoulder as they visit the scene of a mass shooting at a shopping complex Aug. 4, in El Paso, Texas. Photo: AP/John Locher

The two issues are separate but related and are etched into the DNA of the United States of America, which leads the world in gun deaths and mass killings, and leads the world in inaction.

What is happening here? Tragically it is fulfilment of scripture and prophecy related to the fall of a world, or way of life, that sprang from murder in the beginning. That is the story of the Adamic Race told in Genesis, as the Hon. Elijah Muhammad teaches, which begins with rebellion and ends in brother killing brother.

From that root has been widespread violence used by the Caucasian to dominate and rule the earth and master the Western hemisphere.

Mourner Amanda Luke holds a sign at vigil following a mass shooting, Aug. 4, in Dayton, Ohio. Photo: AP John Minchillo

Coupled with violence is the commitment to always preserve, protect and defend the lives, the rights and sensibilities of White people. Protecting White rights and White feelings are of paramount importance in this nation.

It is so paramount that the rantings and the reasoning of a clearly racist president can be debated and denied out of fear of making already besieged Whites feel more aggrieved, while the targets of the president’s dangerous language and scapegoating haven’t taken anything from White people.

There is an acceptable level of White hatred and White outrage categorized as “free speech,” and therefore labeled untouchable. And there is government denial that angry White men with guns, who preach murder and death, are a threat.

It doesn’t matter what the facts say, or that FBI Director Christopher Wray said in July that the majority of domestic terrorism-related arrests since last October were linked to White supremacy.

“Donald Trump has spent the entirety of his short political career singling out immigrants as reasoning of a clearly racist president can be debated and denied out of fear of making already besieged Whites feel more aggrieved, while the targets of the president’s dangerous language and scapegoating haven’t taken anything from White people. There is an acceptable level of White hatred and White outrage categorized as “free speech,” and therefore labeled untouchable. And there is government denial that angry White men with guns, who preach murder and death, are a threat. It doesn’t matter what the facts say, or that FBI Director Christopher Wray said in July that the majority of domestic terrorism-related arrests since last October were linked to White supremacy. “Donald Trump has spent the entirety of his short political career singling out immigrants as one of the biggest threats to the country, endearing him to White supremacists, like self-described White nationalist Richard Spencer and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, who celebrated his election. The man who murdered 49 people at two mosques in New Zealand, and who reportedly inspired the shooter in El Paso, called Trump a ‘renewed symbol of white identity.’ And the president famously said there were ‘very fine people on both sides’ following the 2017 White-supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump’s willingness to ignore, and at times encourage, the threat of White nationalist violence is providing a politically challenging environment for law enforcement agencies, according to the Washington Post. Speaking to the Post, Dave Gomez, a former FBI supervisor specializing in terrorism cases, said he believes FBI officials are wary of wading into what looks like a political fight:

“‘I believe [FBI Director] Christopher A. Wray is an honorable man, but I think in many ways the FBI is hamstrung in trying to investigate the white supremacist movement like the old FBI would,’ Gomez said. ‘There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base. It’s a no-win situation for the FBI agent or supervisor,’ ” GQ magazine online noted Aug. 5. But while Mr. Trump may be the facilitator in chief, he is not the architect of White supremacy, he is simply its loudest and, perhaps, most unrepentant proponent—despite his talk of ending hatred and coming together. And, history makes us question whether the FBI itself has any real desire to tackle this problem.

America’s race warriors are part of a global rise in White violence unleashed in Europe and elsewhere, places onetime Trump political guru Steve Bannon found open to a White rights agenda that the White media loves to simply call political populism. That’s another part of the problem: White refusal to call things and people what they truly are.

Consider 19-year-old Dylann Roof and his cold blooded murder of nine Black parishioners in a South Carolina church in 2015. Consider the murder of two Black people at a Kroger store in the parking lot in a Louisville, Ky., suburb last year by a White male.

Consider White supremacist Russell Courtier, who rammed his Jeep into the body of 19-year-old Lance Bruce in an ISIS-style attack on a young Black man in Oregon in 2016 and killed him.

Texas relatively recently executed John William King, 44, who murdered James Byrd Jr., two decades ago in Jasper, Texas, chaining him to a truck and dragging him along a bumpy Lone Star State road. The Black man was decapitated.

Consider the words of onetime Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa, who was excoriated for honestly asking, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?”

He was eventually isolated and pushed out for using the wrong racial buzzwords, but it was not his first time and reflects the president’s disdain for a Brown invasion from the Mexico border, “shithole” countries in the Caribbean and Africa, the sons of bitches who protested during NFL games, the need for immigrants from nice, White Scandinavian nations and need to ship loud-mouthed non-White women back where they came from—never mind that the women are American citizens and federal lawmakers.

This intersection between White supremacy, White philosophy White identity and White solidarity even seeps into the politics of the Democratic Party in the name of “electability”—which is another name for doing something that appeals to and appeases White voters.

Belief Whites are superior and should be in the superior position is ingrained in America’s DNA and the political DNA of both major political parties.

As Newsweek noted last year, “Republican Richard Nixon referred to black people as ‘Negro bastards’ who live like ‘dogs.’ … Nixon’s bigotry was manifested in his policies. In a 1994 interview, John Ehrlichman, who served as Nixon’s chief domestic advisor, said the administration launched the war on drugs to go after the ‘antiwar left and black people.’ ”

Republican Ronald Reagan “painted black women as ‘welfare queens.’ … Reagan has been widely been attributed with racializing the debate over welfare in the U.S. This continues to impact both perceptions and policy regarding welfare, which has had a detrimental impact on communities of color, research shows,” it added.

Remember Republican George Herbert Walker Bush and his infamous Willie Horton 1988 presidential campaign ad? It used crimes committed by a Black man on furlough to win an election by using racial paranoia to court White votes.

Tackling White Nationalism and White domestic terrorists are not the priority in America, which has focused on so-called Islamic Jihadist movements, Black congressman Andre Carson of Indiana noted earlier this year. Yet most terrorist deaths in America over the last 10 years have been committed by White nationalists and White supremacists.

White supremacy only becomes a problem when expressed in its most extreme form. Like Patrick Crusius allegedly driving hours from a Dallas suburb to kill Brown people on the Texas border and publishing a manifesto against the Hispanic “invasion” of Texas.

Regardless of what the president and others may try to say, these American race warriors aren’t crazy, they are committed.

Federal law enforcement is loath to go after White domestic terrorists for fear of trampling on the rights of “good” Americans—and because it is not White supremacy that is rejected. It is a certain expression of White supremacy that is the problem.

Richard B. Muhammad is editor in chief for The Final Call newspaper. Find him on Facebook and follow @RMfinalcallon Twitter.

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