A post came over the Web from TheBlackList sharing an article that appeared on the Website NewsMax.com dated October 26, 2002. Roy Innis the head of the assimilationist civil rights organization Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sent a letter to the White House requesting a meeting with the Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to warn about what the article termed "a breeding ground for the perpetrators of the next wave of terror attacks against the U.S." Innis felt it was his appointed duty to warn Ridge, Bush, Rice et al about the "clear and present danger" that terrorists like al-Qaeda may take advantage of anti-AmeriKKKan sentiment within what Innis called "non-spiritual" Muslim communities. 

I have never been an Innis fan, perhaps because unlike Malcolm or Martin Luther King Jr. he was not a spellbinding orator. He seemed clumsy in public and to me he gave off as we used to call "bad vibes". Subsequently CORE fell out of the news and relevancy as the Black Power, Community Control, Black Is Beautiful and Nationalist movements emerged but Innis stayed on as head of the organization and I guess in an effort to reinvent himself and the organization he has flip flopped from the conventional Civil Rights begging for validation and crumbs from the oppressors to being a neo-conservative spokesman. As AmeriKKKa shifted more to the right Innis shifted with it to keep the funds flowing from whites because CORE has lost much of its luster and vitality within the black community.

I think Innis, while being a bit alarmist and self serving may have a point; not so much that black Muslims are a potential fifth column; but given Bush's crusade against Islam AmeriKKKa may very well use this to profile and target Africans in AmeriKKKa who have converted to Islam or non Muslims who wear African style clothing or jewelry thinking they are unpatriotic or potential terrorists. The media promulgated psy-ops the AmeriKKKan public has been subjected to is relentless and it has induced a percolating anxiety, an intellectual numbness which discourages critical thinking and analysis and a passivity that allows the ruling elites and their lackeys to bum rush invasion of privacy and civil liberties limiting legislation that many feel is setting the stage for a Big Brother type scenario. Innis may be afraid blacks will be the unwarranted targets of profiling, arrests and detention. I don't think for a minute Innis believes black Muslims are a potential threat. If he does, it shows just how out of touch with the pulse of the black community he really is. 

But he does have a point, remember The King Alfred Plan and Rex 84, blacks were prime suspects and targets and that was thirty-forty years ago! I think Innis is an opportunist who is using this situation as a way to ingratiate himself with the Bush cabal at the expense of brothers who have converted to Islam. While I am no fan of Islam given Arabs used it to conquer huge tracts of African territory and they were the ones who institutionalized the African slave trade with its mutilation and castration of African men and the rape of African women, which still goes on today, hundreds of years before the arrival of the Europeans; I realize many blacks in AmeriKKKa reject Christianity because they see its hypocrisy, moral and ethical bankruptcy and many view it as "the white man's religion". People choose their religion for a myriad of reasons. 

It is well known that joining the Muslims while in prison is a form of protection against physical attack by other inmates. If that's what a man feels he has to do to protect himself, so be it. If the conversion is based on meditation, study and personal choice, so be it. Who is Roy Innis to pass judgment on anyone's motives or determine who is or who is not "spiritual"? "Ye shall know them by their fruits" and that goes for Roy Innis too. Methinks his motives are more self serving than he lets on.

 The Nation of Islam was critical of AmeriKKKa long before Minister Farrakhan came on the scene. Its founder Elijah Muhammad counseled his followers not to bear arms against another Asiatic nation during WW II. He even went to jail for his convictions. I notice Mr. Innis has not given any major interviews about all the brothers who went to Vietnam or Gulf War and returned traumatized by both the war and the double bind of living in AmeriKKKa after putting their lives on the line so people like Paul Wolfowitz, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney can push their fascist agenda on another generation of unsuspecting citizens. 

I haven't seen him give interviews about the Army spying on the NAACP during its formative years or about COINTELPRO or Operation Chaos during the late '60's and '70's. If Mr. Innis had any real empathy for our people or wasn't blinded by fear or self-interest he would know Muslims aren't the only ones who refuse to go for AmeriKKKa's okie-doke.