...
Louis Farrakhan is a walking, talking oral tradition, a rousing orator of a testimonial narrative many would forget, minimize or disregard as irrelevant to the present-day timeline ... being aware that mere mention of his name will alienate some readers gives me momentary pause, but won't inhibit my parsing the content and context of his message as it swung by me last week ...
Quote:-
"(black people) spiritually we are sick"... "until we heal ourselves spiritually nothing will happen economically"
... the newspaper article said he'd be giving a
free address the next day at the multi-purpose Cultural Center, not far from where I reside when I'm in
Antigua ... characters like Paulinaire in the dynamite Dominican historical novel
Pharcel: Runaway Slave (Alick Lazare) came quickly to mind, prototypical abolitionist agitators travelling the Caribbean furtively fomenting resistance to, and uprising against, the oppressive slave-driven plantation systems of the time ...
Quote:-
"you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free"
... but there was nothing clandestine about this visit in this century ... the local brass was welcoming and hospitable, right down to the
security-'pon-top-a-security which goes everywhere with this man, giving some suggestion of the passions stirred when he calls attention to the way these territories were populated and socialized ... institutionalized
racism and proselytizing
religion were primary building-blocks of these western societies, and, pre-industrial revolution Europe itself ...
Quote:-"they cannot educate you to free you from them"
... U.S.A. based
Nation Of Islam (NOI), led by
Minister Farrakhan, is an organization which looks to the East while continuing the pushback against a past which has shaped our current realities as descendants of colonial families ... what comes across to some as anti-European and anti-Semitic can instead be viewed as pro-African and pro-Islam, a way to recognize people building something out of disadvantage rather than acquiescing to mutually exclusive polarities ...
Quote:-
"I am a Christian, I am a Muslim, I am a Jew."
... notorious for ruffling the feathers of Jewish groups and slamming entrenched European privilege, this Calypsonian turned motivational-preacher knows which notes to hit in this sankey ...
Farrakhan at the lectern opened with "
salaam alaikum" juxtaposed to "
shalom aleichem,"... taken at face-value, this was an olive branch from a firebrand forced recently to cut back his workload for personal health reasons ... here, hailing peace goes hand-in-hand with humor aimed at local tastes ...
Quote:-
"peace" is a better greeting than the English "hello," because hell has always been low" ...
...
Louis Farrakhan's father was
Jamaican ... his maternal roots are in
St. Kitt's and
Nevis, islands I can see in the distance from the front deck of my home, and on this evening there was no doubting his
Caribbean flava ... in the auditorium, where I occupied my standing-room-only spot at the balcony railing, near-flawless accents, replete with regional nuance, spoke of a man who clearly enjoyed being received like a son of the soil ...
Quote:- "you can't let America tell you that you can't have a relationship with Cuba ... to hell with you!"
... namechecks for Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm X and particularly Muhammed Ali were sparks to tinder, but every mention of Allah was met with sotto voce murmurs of "Selassie I" from the Rastafarian contingent, noticeably not acknowledged as afrocentric allies despite much in the way of shared interest ...
Quote:- "all of us are sons and daughters of Africa"
... powerful, pokerfaced, palookas, dressed in the de rigeur NOI tailoring, eyeballed the crowd and Mustapha Farrakhan (a son of) took the Minister's back ... the brother on his right rescued the Holy Qur'an which would go flying during fiery passages, memorably those outlining a connect-the-dots assessment on the spread of HIV in black populations and poverty-cycles which lead people of color to poor nutrition and hard drugs ...
Quote:- "there's a plot against the black male" ... "they are killing us with our taste-buds and our love for sex"
... as for the females, Farrakhan showed he has personally witnessed a Carnival or two by shifting the theatre to comic relief, even Mustapha curled his lips when Pops let his hips do some talkin', but some women in the crowd were no doubt waiting for the speech to get back to the big picture ...
Quote:- "if a man regards what you show him, your bosom, your behind, he never gets acquainted with your mind"
... the new Burger King downtown got pink-slimed and Trayvon Martin got solemnized (en passant, to his credit) in a show of familiarity with the stories-of-the-day ... references to Haitian-hero Boukman (actually a man from Jamaica) and Antiguan father-of-the-nation V.C. Bird suggests scholarship and reflects research but Farrakhan always has some special indictment reserved for Churches High and Low ...
Quote:- "Jesus was Jehovah's witness but he never called himself a Jehovah's Witness" ... "if a man treated you as bad as we were treated, would he give you a God that would free you from his whip?"
... more rumblings 'round the room ... "Rastafari, Selassie I!" ...
