This weekend has been filled with hot takes by mainstream media black nationalists like Shaun King racesplaining the appeal of the Nation of Islam.
The racesplaining all involves the "good things" that the racist hate group does in the black community.
And?
Most cults and hate groups do some good things in the community they're based on. Even the mafia did. So did the KKK.
That's not a defense of black leaders associating with Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam. It's an indictment.
"Many black people have had either direct or indirect interactions with the Nation of Islam at some point in their lives. They’re the brothas walking down the street selling the Final Call on Nostrand Avenue in New York City’s Brooklyn borough or selling bean pies on 125th Street in Harlem. They are our cousins, friends and the dude at the barbershop,"Terrell Jermaine Starr writes in the Root.
And Klan members were the guys white southerners saw in the barbershop and were also their cousins. But they were still expected to disavow them.
No one is asking black leaders to disavow the KKK or asking white leaders to disavow the Nation of Islam (though apparently white lefties have to be asked to do this). People get asked to disavow the hate groups that cater to their own community.
The Nation of Islam is a racist supremacist organization. Of course it does some good things for black people. (While terrorizing, murdering and oppressing others.) The Nazi Party and its leader (whom the Nation of Islam's leader has praised) did some good things for Germany (until they set it on fire and wiped out much of the population to maintain their socialist pyramid scheme.)
The whole point of anti-racism is to reject the racial supremacist organizations of your own race. If you don't do that, even if you're not a racist, you're a collaborator.
It's funny that all the intersectional lecturers on the structural power of white supremacist refuse to grasp this simple point when it applies to them. If you collaborate with racists of your race, you're just as bad as they are.
And you don't get to lecture anyone else on racism.
The CBC, Obama, Ellison, the intersectional movement leaders, etc can have it one of two ways.
They can disavow the NOI and mean it. (Instead of meeting with Farrakhan secretly.) Or they can stop lecturing us on racism. Instead they've taken a break from lecturing us on white racism with hot takes justifying the racist hate group they hang out with.
No.
Either you disavow racism or you normalize it. All these hot takes of "The Nation of Islam is racist, but we hang out with them and they do some good things" do is normalize racism. And show that the anti-racist lobby is very eager to take on white racists, but won't take on its own racists.
That's not anti-racism. That's black supremacism. And the only difference between it and the Nation of Islam is that Calypso Louie Farrakhan may be a racist, but at least he isn't a hypocrite.