Weekly Newsletter • Volume 3, Number 34

Who “Cussed” Minister Farrakhan?By Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

Fruit of IslamBrings a Message of Love

On Sunday, May 27, 2012, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan addressed a packed house at the San Diego, CA, Convention Center. In his address The Minister mentioned that someone had “cussed” him out over the Internet because he had made the statement that Black people were not “productive.” Who would dare “cuss out” Minister Far-rakhan? Who would be so bold as to insult The Minister in such a despicable manner? Well, we all know Negroes like that. Perhaps it was some educated Negro who thought that he or she had “made it” in the white man’s world. This Negro could have been me, before I came into the knowl-edge of myself a long time ago. I am a college graduate with a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Michigan State University. I attended a prestigious prep school in the Northeast and I also attended Columbia University in New York City. If I had not been fortunate enough in the tenth grade to read The Autobiography of Malcolm X while at Phillips Exeter Academy, I may have become another token Negro on the white man’s plantation. I could have been a “house negro” instead of a free Black man.

Maybe our Negro “cusser” does not or did not understand how Minister Farrakhan mea-sures productivity. In his address he clearly explained that there are two types of productive work: work that produces benefits for only your personal self and work that benefits both you and your people. Of those things that you buy with your money, are they productive assets or just con-sumption goods? For instance, is a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz that you use only for personal travel the same as a $60,000 tractor or piece of equipment that not only provides a stream of income for you but also employs others?

What is wealth? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that wealth was not your income, but what you saved out of that income. In other words, wealth is your assets minus your liabilities. If you have a house worth

$250,000, but still owe $200,000 on the mortgage note, then your net worth or wealth is $50,000. For most Black people their home was the major store of their accumulated wealth. Is this house, which has a net worth of $50,000 that generates no income and takes money to maintain, the same as stock in a corporation that provides yearly divi-dends while increasing in value at the same time?

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad also admonished us about conspicuous consumption, where we try to compete with the white people that own the productive assets of this country while we have only wages from our labor. Accord-ing to 1990 census data, the Black worker received just 61

percent of the income of white workers—the same 3/5ths position that the U.S. Constitution dictated over 200 years ago. Even though Blacks receive just three-fifths of what whites receive, Blacks spend nearly one trillion dollars per year, mostly outside of our communities. Now, does our Negro “cusser” use this reduced income to try to live the lifestyle of the whites that make 39 percent more? Or does he live within his means while pooling his resources with the other “61 per-

centers” to establish businesses that will employ others like themselves plus yield dividends? Can this Negro bequeath or pass on to his children the job that he has, or will they have to start from scratch like he did and beg the white man for a job?

The Minister in his San Diego address pointed out how Detroit is suffering economically while the auto industry is on the rebound in other parts of the country. Now, we as Black folk are just supposed to ignore the fact that Detroit is 80 percent Black and that those former Black autowork-ers were in a strong union that forced the auto industry to provide them a “middle-class” income. So Ford, Chrysler and GM management managed to sink the American auto industry, while Japan and Korea began to build manu-

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facturing plants in America. The American auto industry gets a government bailout, but builds new plants outside of Detroit, leaving Detroit to go into some type of receiver-ship program with the state of Michigan and Wall Street bankers. Please, Mr. 61 percenter, wake up! You can’t even promise your children that they will find a decent job on any of America’s remaining corporate plantations after they complete college.

As stated earlier, income is not wealth. When we com-pare the wealth between white people and Black people, the differences become astronomical. Although Blacks received 61 percent of the income of whites, according to 1990 census data, they owned just 12 percent of the net worth of whites on a per capita basis. However, by 2009 that gap had widened, with Blacks having a net worth of only 5 percent of whites. In other words, for every dollar of net worth that a Black family owns, the white family owns 20 times more.

For those who think that Blacks in general gained from integration, a report published in 2010 by Frank W. Sweet detailing “The U.S. Black/White Net-Worth Gap” provides a crushing indictment of integration/civil rights. This research goes all the way back to the early colonial period by comparing what fraction of African Americans owned land and slaves to the fraction of European Americans who owned land and slaves. Estimated in this way, the Black/White net-worth ratio was 61 percent in 1660.

African-American net worth then fell for the next two centuries, as the slave system took hold, bottoming out at about 4 percent in 1860. After slavery ended, Black families’ net worth as measured by property and stock ownership rose steadily. The improvement continued throughout the Jim Crow era of segregation, but began to plunge right after the 1964 Civil Rights Act legislation, which ushered in “integration.” The past four decades have witnessed the col-lapse of the wealth of African-American families to levels prior to the Jim Crow era.

We live in a capitalist country where citizens are allowed to own the major means of production through stock own-ership, partnership or sole proprietorship. How much stock and other financial assets do Black people own in compari-son to white folk? According to 1990 census data, Black people owned 1.4 percent of the financial assets of whites. So in terms of capital ownership, Black people are the “1.4 percenters.”

Recent cost of living studies report that the cost of transportation required to get to work is more than the cost of housing. Housing costs include mortgage payments, operating costs and utilities for homeowners, and contract rent and utilities for renters; transportation costs include the cost of owning and operating a vehicle and the cost of public transit. So basically Americans are working just to be able to get to work. Sounds like a slave to me.

So what is the definition of a slave? According to Web-

ster, a slave is “one bound in servitude to a person or household as an instrument of labor.” This sounds like the majority of Black people in America. We are bound to work and be productive for someone else as an instrument of labor, yet own no capital and have no real wealth at the end of our lives. Money passes through our hands to increase the wealth of our employers and their families.

And like slaves we like to brag about the wealth of our masters. “Oh, I work for IBM, one of the largest corpora-tions in the world. And I live in the ‘404’ or the ‘212,’ which has some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world.” Of course we also like to brag about which college we attended the same way that the slave sellers used to brag about where we were bred.

America ended the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in 1808 because the local slave breeders did not want outside competition. In the book Jews Selling Blacks is a newspaper advertisement where a Jewish slave trader took offence at someone claiming that he was selling “Kentucky slaves” instead of purebred “Virginia slaves.” I am sure that the Vir-ginia breed of slaves was known to be both very productive and docile—that is, not prone to running away. So we must conclude that Minister Farrakhan’s Negro “cusser” has been well bred for his role as a well-trained and selfishly produc-tive instrument of labor for white people, while producing nothing for the long-term improvement or well being of his people. Of course our Negro “cusser” may not consider himself “Black”—until he is beaten for “mistaken” identity and then runs to some Black organization for help. And when he does, The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan will be there to speak up in his defense, as he has done for countless others for over fifty-seven (57) years.

(Source: Frank Sweet, “The U.S. Black/White Net-Worth Gap,” July 18, 2010)

(Dr. Ridgely A. Mu’min Muhammad, Agricultural Economist, National Student Minister of Agricul-ture, Manager of Muhammad Farms. He can be

reached at drridge@bellsouth.net)

The Congo of America: The Slave Trade of Washington, D.C.BY TINGBA MUHAMMAD

The first president with an African name, Barack Obama, lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washing-ton, D.C. But the fact is Africans have always been in and around the District of Columbia for many generations before the first Obama came to America. In fact, the area where he took the oath of office in 2009 is the location of the tent city that housed the builders of the capital. And more than four hundred of the six hundred carpenters, masons, artisans and skilled laborers—more than two thirds—were enslaved Black Africans. The building of Washington required the importation of so many highly skilled Black crafts-men, that the District be-came known as “the Congo of America.” And as they toiled to erect the home of their oppressors, includ-ing the Capitol—the seat of the most corrupt body of misleaders in the annals of time—could these Black builders have contemplated an Obama as the future head of such a government?

A close reading of the newspaper advertisements placed by American slave traders shows that Blacks were skilled craftsmen at the highest level. It is easy to find ads by White people selling “engineers,” “carpenters,” “mechanics,” “brick masons,” “nurses,” “blacksmiths,” and “bakers.” Blacks so dominated these trades that after the so-called emancipation in 1863, it was said that if a White man were seen doing ANY of this kind of work, it would draw a crowd of gawking onlookers. Blacks built America—just as they built the pyramids in Egypt and then gave civilization to Europe.

The U.S. Constitution forbade the trans-Atlantic slave trade after 1808. This gave rise to the false assumption that there was significant anti-slavery sentiment among America’s leaders. The fact is that the internal trade in Blacks bred by White Americans, such as those 350 slaves on George Washington’s plantation, provided such a large profit that White America would not permit any

foreign competition in slaves from Africa. This prohibi-tion only accelerated the domestic slave-breeding trade, which only increased and intensified the unceasing hell Black women suffered as “breeders.” The District trade was small until this point, but when cotton planters of the Deep South could no longer get field hands from Africa, the trade in Black human beings swelled expo-nentially in Washington.

An assortment of White slave traders operated from the many tavern barrooms in Washington, D.C., includ-ing the slave-trading firm that became the largest in the

country for an eight-year period, Franklin & Arm-field. By 1830, the capital city served as a depot for the wholesale traders who marched their chained and shackled Africans right past the Capitol, even while the Congress sat in session. One observer wrote, “The auction block, the lash, and the manacled gangs on their way to the Deep South were as much a part of Washing-ton as the steamy climate, the malaria, the marshes, and the dust.”

The United States government not only condoned the slave trade in the District but also afforded the traders every public accommodation. For 34¢ per day the federal jails could be rented by the traders to house the slaves headed for market. White criminals would sometimes have to wait for accommodations in favor of the more lucrative traffic in Black slaves. In one five-year period in the 1820s, 742 Blacks had been kept at the jails in Wash-ington, not one of whom had been accused or convicted of a crime.

In the Christmas season of 1837, a “free” Black wom-an and her four young children were torn from their husband and father and locked in the District jail to be held for shipment to the South. Distraught and afraid, she resolved that her babies would not grow up as slaves and proceeded to kill them with her bare hands. Two of her children died before she could be restrained. She was

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tried for murder and acquitted on grounds of insanity. Her White enslaver returned her to her previous owner for breach of warranty—she had been “warranted sound, mind and body.”

The privately owned slave pens, called “Georgia Pens,” were no less revolting. These jails were the scenes of end-less tragedies and gruesome horrors—with full govern-ment sanction. One of those dungeons was known as Williams Private Jail (a.k.a. The Yellow House). It was between 7th and 8th Streets, just south of the Smithson-ian Institution grounds, not far from the site of the 1995 Million Man March.

Owned by William H. Williams, the jail was described as a three-story brick dwelling, covered with plaster, painted yellow and standing in full sight of the Capitol. (Ever wonder why so many Blacks today are named Williams?) The “Yellow House” enjoyed “a virtual mo-nopoly of the private-jail business.” Williams’ success was so rapid that before the end of 1836 he had purchased two slave ships, named “Tribune” and “Uncas.” In 1841, trader James H. Birch kidnapped and drugged Solomon

Northrup, a “free” Black man, before stowing him at the Yellow House and shipping him to New Orleans. In 1850, one observer found a number of children, “kept here for a short time to fatten.” Shortly after, the Yellow House was sold and the purchaser found staples driven into its walls where Blacks were “chained like wild animals.” This horrifying reality repre-sents the true nature of this nation’s origins—and the unfortunate lot of those great Black build-ers of this nation’s capital who are the very source of the wealth and power of today’s rulers.

(For more on this secret history, see The Hidden History of Wash-ington, D.C.: A Guide for Black Folks at noirg.org)

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The Curse of Ham“It will not do to grant them to be men,

lest it appear that the whites are not.”

—Montesquieu, French political philosopher

The philosophical foundation for nearly all of America’s most destructive acts and policies has been a religious one—from the doctrines of “just wars” and “manifest destiny” used to justify the Holocaust against the Indians, to the cross-burning violence of the “Christian” Ku

Klux Klan. At one time slavery victimized all races and peoples, until medieval rabbis sought to justify the targeting of African human be-ings for the burgeoning trade in slaves. They actually altered the prophecies of the Bible, reinterpreting the story of Noah to make it appear that God cursed ALL BLACK PEOPLE with black skin, marking them forevermore to be the permanent slaves of white people!

All major religions adopted this racist motif and liberally used it to justify the most profit-able Caucasian enterprise in the history of the planet—the African slave trade. ALL white wealth can be traced to this profoundly evil and persistent religious doctrine.

from the book How White

Folks Got So Richhttp://noirg.org/store/

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George Washington enslaved 350 Africans.

His home state of Virginia was the prime breeder of

Black people for the domestic slave trade, and at one point the

state exported at least 6,000 Black people

annually—its biggest “cash crop.”

Thomas Jefferson enslaved 200 Africans.

He wrote in 1812 that the Indians

“will relapse into barbarism and mis-ery, lose numbers by war and want, and we shall be obliged to drive them, with the beasts of the for-

est, into the Stony mountains.”

Theodore Roosevelt believed that Blacks’ reli-gions had no ethical basis

and that the Africans were “ape-like, naked

savages, who dwell in the woods and prey on crea-tures not much wilder or lower than themselves.”

Abraham Lincoln“I have no purpose,

directly or indirectly, to interfere with the insti-tution of slavery in the States where it exists. I

believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

What Does it Take to Be On Mount Rushmore?The National Memorial was carved into the granite face of

Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota.

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www.noirg.org