Yolanda,I didn't start a revolution at The Kitchen Table while you were in class, but Al-Qaeda was clearly tripping while I was teaching. After my long seminar yesterday I came back to my office to a phone call from a Saudi newspaper. They wanted to talk with me about the fact that Ayman al-Zawahri accused Obama of being a "House Negro."
When I first heard the message I thought one of my friends was teasing me. A Saudi newspaper is reporting on Al-Qaeda calling Barack a House Negro? Doesn't that sound like some kind of twisted practical joke that my overly intellectual friends would perpetrate? But the story is true and I find this latest Al-Qaeda video truly fascinating.
It demonstrates a certain sophisticated engagement with American racial politics. As I chatted with the reporter I realized that I have no idea how to lob an equally devastating cultural insult at Ayman al-Zawahri. I am not sure how to suggest that he is inauthentically Muslim. What is the Al-Qaeda equivalent of a house Negro? Infidel? So there is a part of me that appreciates the fact that people around the world have read Malcolm X, that they know something about the history of American slavery, and that they understand the continuing cultural significance of this kind of insult. In a twisted way, this is an indication of cosmopolitan blackness.
It is an interesting strategy because it might be based in a particular blip in the public opinion polls. A recent Pew survey shows that while a substantial majority of foreign born Muslims (63%) hold negative opinions about Al-Qaeda, the African American Islamic community has generally been less harsh in their attitudes. Only 36% of African American Muslims hold a very negative view of Al-Qaeda. Maybe this charge of racial inauthenticity was an attempt to generate a wedge issue for black Muslims so that they might see their interests as tied more closely to Al-Qaeda than to Barack.
That would be quite a strategy! Barack did leave himself open to criticism by failing to visit any Mosques during his campaign. I have a student here at Princeton writing a smart senior thesis about the tensions between foreign-born and African American Muslims and the ways that these tensions were reconciled (or not) during the campaign. Maybe Al-Qaeda was hoping to take advantage of these anxieties.
On one of my new favorite blogs, Ishrad Manji says that Barack should consider this insult to be a badge of honor. Being hated by extremists is normally a good sign.
I wonder what Malcolm himself would think of Barack Obama. I have no doubt that he would be a critic, but somehow I doubt he would have labeled Obama a House Negro. I have written about the transformational narrative that underlies Malcolm's personal journey and I think his criticisms would have been more nuanced. I suspect he also would have felt deep love and admiration for Barack and for his family of girl children. What do you think Yolanda,what would Malcolm say to all this?
And by the way, the House Negro comment is based in a deeply flawed understanding of American slavery. Brother Malcolm was a brilliant leader, but he was actually a pretty poor historian. Enslaved black people who worked in the homes of their enslavers did not necessarily live a better or easier life. Often in the course of one man or woman's life they would work multiple kinds of tasks including field and domestic labor. Often those who worked in closest proximity to enslavers had less autonomy, were more constantly under racist surveillance, had less opportunity to form social relationships with other enslaved people, were separated from their own families, and were vulnerable to unique and horrible forms of sexual, verbal, and physical abuse. There is certainly no evidence that these domestic slaves felt more attachment to their white enslavers.
So let's stop denigrating the history of our people who suffered under intergenerational human bondage. The choices that men and women made in those circumstances were about survival and resistance in situations so grotesque that we have little right to judge them from our positions of relative privilege.
And note to Al-Qaeda: watch your mouth about my duly elected President.
Melissa
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