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Black SupremacyBlack supremacy is the belief that blacks are racially superior to members of other races. Black supremacy vs. white supremacy It its simplest form, black supremacy is the belief in the inherent superiority of the "black race." Unlike many white supremacists, who generally embrace the label, many black supremacists reject the term, as they do not regard their belief in black supremacy as being equivalent to white supremacy, which is far more widespread, and which historically has been reinforced and sustained worldwide by instruments of Western economic, political and military power. By comparison, there is no powerful, far-reaching nexus of instruments under black control that have a corollary effect on whites. Historically, black supremacy has manifested itself among various religions or cults as an ideological tool in framing a kind of liberation theology for the societally marginalized and oppressed. In neither its intellectual nor its political context, however, is black supremacy -- as many nonblacks are inclined to believe -- mere sophistry; it is a strongly held notion. Even so, it is little more than an intellectual construct according to noted author and social commentator bell hooks (1995, p.154): ...it is the system that promotes domination and subjugation. The prejudicial feelings some blacks may express about whites are in no way linked to a system of domination that affords us any power to coercively control the lives and well-being of white folks. That needs to be understood. As bell hooks understands power and ethnicity "Black supremacy," per se as a corollary of white supremacy, does not exist. Blacks generally lack sufficient military, economic and political power to systemically oppress whites. Yet black supremacy as a core belief in the inherent superiority of indigenous peoples of or from Sub-Saharan and West Africa has been a thriving, if marginal, notion among blacks for 75 years or more in the modern era. Rastafari Rastafarianism is a religion that was originally founded on principles that included a belief in the inherent wickedness of the white race and the superiority of the black race, though these beliefs rapidly evolved into a more universalist approach which accepts converts from all ethnicities. One of the three major Rastafari orders, the Bobo Ashanti Order of Rastafari, however, continues to adhere to a black supremacist doctrine. Marcus Garvey is a Rasta prophet who believed that white achievements were due to white children being taught that they are superior. By the same token, he held that if black children are taught that they are superior, then there is a greater chance that they will suceed in life. Along with the Holy Piby, the Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy, written during the 1920s by proto-Rastafarian preacher Fitz Balintine Pettersburg, is recognized as one of the root documents of Rastafarian thought. It influenced Jamaican Garveyite leaders of the 1920's, and was promulgated by early Rasta leader Leonard Howell, who adopted some of Garvey's black supremacist tenets. Howell used the Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy as the basis for his book The Promised Key (also published under the Hindu name Gangunguru Maragh which means "teacher of famed wisdom"), which he wrote during his imprisonment in 1934-36. Nation of Islam In the 1930s, the Nation of Islam emerged, coming to prominence during the 1960s, when charismatic minister Malcolm X became a spokesman for the movement. It was during the time of the American Civil Rights Movement when a number of African American organizations became more militant in their demands for equality. The Nation of Islam teaches that white people were genetically engineered "devils", created to be liars and murderers. They are held to be the enemies of all black people. The group's founder, Elijah Muhammad, preached the "Doctrine of Yakub," which held that the Original Man, was an "Asiatic black man." White people, it contended, were "grafted" from black people 6,000 years ago by a mad scientist named Yakub. Additional to the Yakub doctrine, it's the teaching of the Nation of Islam that Allah, (God) himself is the original and supreme black man and that all black men today are a part of this God-race and the black race is thus divine and superior to all other races. It's also the teaching of the Nation of Islam that some time in the future, Allah will bring a spaceship into the earth's atmosphere and bomb the cities of the world so that the unconverted white race will be purged from the world. Elijah Muhammad also preached black self-reliance, black separatism, cooperative economics, strict moral and physical discipline, and opposed black-white miscegenation. Since its founding, the NOI has gone through reorganizations, internal conflicts, doctrinal shifts and schisms; and the black supremacist rhetoric of the NOI has waxed and waned with these changes. Some mosques have remained stridently anti-white in posture. Other masjids with more moderate leadership have chosen to remain within the NOI because of its black nationalist foundations, while moving toward more mainstream Islamic practice. In part due to this inconsistency in dogma over time, most historians and social scientists classify the Nation of Islam as simply a black nationalist, or black separatist, organization. Recently, however, the Southern Poverty Law Center headed by Morris Dees placed the Nation of Islam on its list of hate groups. Tom Metzger, the former Grand Dragon of the California KKK and the head of the White Aryan Resistance, said of the Nation of Islam after attending one of their rallies, "They are the black counterpart to us." Some black supremacist organizations have joined forces with white supremacist organizations. Garvey invited a KKK spokesman to speak at one of his rallies, and the Nation of Islam has ties to George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party. The NOI also has estabalished ties with a number of organizations across racial and ethnic lines, including the Unification Church; and has a working relationship with the organization of wealthy right-wing economist and outsider politico Lyndon LaRouche, widely considered a neo-fascist by the mainstream media. In 2001, the NOI publicly joined forces with an Afrocentric Baptist church and the LaRouche organization in a highly publicized, protracted struggle to prevent the controversial closing of D.C. General Hospital in Washington, D.C.. Melanin and Melanin Theory Black supremacists believe that, because human beings first evolved in Africa with darkly pigmented skin, blacks are more advanced than other peoples of the planet. They claim that the early, powerful black civilizations of Nubia and early dynastic Egypt are proof of inherent black superiority (see Afrocentrism). This contention, known generally as "Melanin Theory", is founded upon a combination of scientific information and pseudo-scientific claims, and has been a subject of interest in the African-American community since the discovery of melanin as an organic semiconductor in the early 1970s. The purported qualities of melanin, some accurate, many based on distortions of scientific facts or pure speculation, are used to justify black supremacist assertions. The central idea of "Melanin Theory" is that, with higher levels of melanin in the skin such as those that occur in people of black African descent, athleticism, intelligence and emotional, psychic and spiritual sensitivity likewise are naturally enhanced. They also claim that melanin is a semiconductor of sound and heat energy and a superconductor of electromagnetic radiation. Some claim melanin can convert light and magnetic fields to sound, that it can process information without reporting to the brain, and that it is the chemical basis for what is commonly called "soul". One of the most common contentions is that whites are "mutants" and that white skin is an aberration, a form of albinism. Melanin theorist Wade Nobles takes this notion even further, stating that only blacks are fully human because of their higher levels of skin melanin: "That in the evolution of the species, in what some people call the ontogenetic evolution of humankind, that in the evolution of the species the human family separated in a sense that one branch of the family stopped its evolutionary path and simply depended upon the central nervous" system as the total machinery for understanding reality. Whereas, the root of the family continued its path and not only evolved a central nervous system but developed what I called at that time an essential melanic system. And that I even went so far as to try to develop a little formula and suggested that CNS + EMS = HB. CNS (Central Nervous System) + EMS (Essential Melanic System) = HB (Human Being). That the central nervous system combined with the essential melanic system is what makes you human. That, in fact, to be human is to be Black. To be human is to be Black. (Nobles 1989)." Others, such as psychiatrist and writer Frances Cress Welsing, express the same idea by their use of the term "hue-man" instead of "human," the implication being only people of color are truly human. Welsing is the author of the Cress Theory of Color Confrontation, which in predominant part ascribes certain purported, inherent and behavioral differences between blacks and whites to a "melanin deficiency" in whites. Welsing also claims that the prevalence of high blood pressure among African Americans is due to the fact that melanin exchanges "black photons" with other electrons and, therefore, picks up the negative energy vibrations from white people. Melanin theorist Carol Barnes argues that white scientists deliberately create drugs, such as cocaine, that are specially structured to chemically bind with melanin. Barnes claims that melanin and cocaine have a high affinity for each other because both are alkaloids, and that blacks get addicted faster, stay addicted longer, can test positive for cocaine even a year after its most recent use, and suffer more from these drugs because cocaine co-polymerizes into melanin. Yet, melanin is not an alkaloid, and there is no evidence that melanin co-polymerizes with cocaine in vivo. Scientific research indicates that melanin plays a role in the transmission of neuronal impulses, with melanin deficiency or melanin deterioration being a distinctive etiological factor in certain disease states affecting neuromotor functioning in humans, such as Parkinson's disease. Further, albinism and vitiligo, both forms of melanin deficiency, are strongly implicated in deafness in mammals, including humans. Research into the properties and possible commercial applications of melanin is ongoing in the biotech fields of organic electronics and nanotechnology; however, there is no scientific evidence to support the key assertions of Melanin Theory. It is considered pseudoscience and has no credibility in mainstream medicine or science. Black supremacist organizations See also External Links CSICOP article on melanin theory and associated pseudoscience
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