Folks.
Here's another burning issue on racism.I wonder why this is still happening in the
arab world and some parts Africa.
Fye
By Gregory Kane
Special to BlackAmericaWeb.com
Flapdoodle trumps truth in any war. The current
U.S.-Iraq conflict is no exception.
For some African Americans, Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein is our brown, Third World brother fighting
against the forces of racism and white supremacy,
manifested by President Bush and crew. That view
belies the truth: for years, perhaps centuries, Arabs
in the Middle East and Africa have had a white
supremacy agenda of their own.
Sunni M. Khalid is an African American journalist and
Muslim who's lived in Egypt and traveled extensively
in the Middle East. He's commented on the situation
there and pulls punches about as often as his boxing
hero, Joe Frazier, did - which is to say not at all.
Seven years ago he found himself on assignment in Iraq
when he noticed that the principal of a Baghdad
elementary school looked just like his aunt back home
in Detroit. After noticing other Iraqis who might be
considered black here in the states, Khalid asked from
whence they hailed.
Most said they came from Basra, a town in southern
Iraq. Africans got to Basra in pretty much the same
way they arrived in the Americas: on slave ships.
"Basra was the entrepot for Africans who were enslaved
by the Arabs," Khalid said last week. He estimates
that 10 to 15 percent of Iraq's population is
Afro-Arab, but you'd never know it to look at
Hussein's inner circle of advisors and leaders. Are
there any? The question was put to Khalid.
"Not at all," he said. Iraqi Afro-Arabs, according to
Khalid, "have been marginalized like all the other
people of African descent in the Arab world. The
treatment that Africans have historically received at
the hands of Arabs is not very good, especially in the
last 30 years."
Our "brown Third World brothers" in Arab countries
haven't got a thing on Bush and Co. in the white
supremacy department. Khalid remembers living in Cairo
and talking to Muslims from sub-Saharan African
countries. "They told me they were stoned, harassed
and mistreated on the streets of Cairo everyday,"
Khalid recalled. "They told me they were Muslims in
spite of the Arabs, not because of the Arabs."
Khalid's wife is a dark-skinned Somali woman. He
remembers the glares he got from Arab women when he
took his wife to dinner. (Khalid is a caramel-colored
African American who looks Arab in the Middle East.)
One woman even asked how he could shame himself by
being seen with such a woman.
Similar incidents occurred when his wife went grocery
shopping. Lighter-skinned women would cut ahead of her
in line, a practice Mrs.. Khalid ended quickly.
Khalid's stepfather, a Nubian, was in line at a bank
one day when a light-skinned Arab walked up beside him
and was immediately waited on by the teller. "I've
been going through this my whole life," he told Khalid
afterwards. White Europeans received more deference
and better treatment from Arabs than darker Afro-Arabs
do, Khalid said.
"A lot of African American Muslims don't want to deal
with that," Khalid said. There is racism in the Arab
world directed against black people."
It is a racism that closely parallels that practiced
against blacks in this country. Most, if not all,
African Americans have had similar run-ins with
racism, or know someone else who has. While America's
white media are often chided by African Americans for
ignoring stories important to blacks, Khalid noticed
the same thing in the Arab world.
"You can pick up any newspaper in Egypt and there will
not be one word about the Arab treatment of, and
genocide against, Africans in the Sudan," Khalid said.
So bash Bush for starting what you may consider an
unjust war if you must, but spare me the notion that
Hussein or any other Arab is a Third World brown
brother.
The history just doesn't support the notion.
"...What has been cast abroad is not a thousandth of Our history,
even if its quality were truth. The people called Our people are
not the hundredth of Our people. But the haze of this fouled
world exists to wipe out knowledge of Our way, The Way. These
mists are here to keep Us lost, the destroyers' easy prey."
-2000 Seasons, Ayi Kwe Armah
_________________________________________________________________
Hela veckans väder http://www.msn.se/vader
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