AN ORIGIN STORY

"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." — Albert Einstein

I was telling my friend Ben the story that Malcolm X relates in his autobiography about the Nation of Islam’s origin story of the white man. Malcolm sought refuge with the Nation of Islam when he first came out of prison. He became a minister and one of their most effective national spokespeople during the time of the Nation’s greatest growth. By 1963 he had said too much and argued to vehemently, taking the reclusive Nation of Islam into the political part of the world and he was asked to leave the organization. His views on the black/white dynamic in the United States evolved quickly after he performed Haj and went to Mecca. He converted to Sunni Islam and stopped preaching that the black race should separate itself entirely from the white race. After his split from the Nation of Islam he would not have espoused this story of the origin of the white man. Although, he justifiably remained cautious and wary when dealing with white people until the day he was assassinated in 1965, sixty one years ago this past February 21st.

According to the Nation of Islam 6000 years ago a brilliant black scientist, named Yakub from Mecca, went with some of his followers to what is now the Greek Island of Patmos. For 600 years he experimented by “grafting” genes together, working always to develop a lighter skin color in human beings. Eventually he came up with a white person, a person of “no color.” He continued to grow more and more of them. They were found to have a very hostile temperament, be prone to violence, and had an antipathy toward authority. And thus they overthrew their overlords and took over, spreading north through the western part of Asia, which at the time meant Europe, and then on throughout the world spreading their nihilistic doctrine of greed and the worship of Mammon.

I doubt that very many people believed this origin story to be factual. Like most of the stories in the Christian bible, or the Torah, or the Bhagavad Gita, it is a parable designed to teach a lesson and to explain why things are the way they are. White people are evil and violent and bent on destruction because a brilliant mad black scientist made them that way. The story went on to say that the white people would rule for 6000 years which means that any day now they are going to lose control of the world and it can revert back to its natural state. In some ways it sets up the time of the Rapture when the son of god will return to earth and smite the devil and all true believers will ascend to heaven. Only in the Nation of Islam’s version Jesus is not white, as the white race has always pictured him, but a brown skinned Sephardic Jew as the historical figure undoubtably was. From the point of view of a black person living in the United States any time since 1619 when slaves from Africa were first brought here, chained together as cargo in the bottom of ships, this story goes a long way to explaining why the white man is so crazy mean and brutally violent and bent on actively hating the black and brown people he pretends to own and be superior to. The story, like most good stories, has a happy ending when justice arrives and the evil villain is smote dead and the people can live in peace and harmony.

Certainly what the white westerner has done as they carved up and mined the African continent for people, diamonds, gold and other precious metals and what they have done by drawing borders for their own convenience, militarizing the desert and disrupting the flow of a generally nomadic people in the Middle East, all in their lust for oil, constitutes an evil that is now consuming itself as it consumes the planet. Donald J. Trump, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, and all the people who stand behind them blowing smoke up their collective derrieres are a perfect illustration of the power mad, crazed degenerates that the brilliant black scientist, Yakub, created lo these six thousand years ago. And with a new crisis being thrown at a perfect world every day from the Oval septic tank in the middle of the White House it is easy to conceive of these being the end days, Armageddon, Judgement Day, the end of the world, the apocalypse.

Is it fate, destiny, “as it was written,” or do we have enough collective will to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice by ourselves and not wait for someone else to do it for us? Join us and the millions of others on 28 March as we turn the tide of the tsunami that threatens to sweep away our democracy, our freedom, and our beautiful blue marble of a planet.