On Monday, March 13, 1996, Howard University hosted a forum on the ongoing enslavement of Black Africans in Mauritania and Sudan. More accurately, Howard University hosted a forum on the 1400-year-long Arab Islamic Trans-Saharan Slave Trade of Black Africans. The event was presented by The American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG). The panel included:
Dr. Charles Jacobs, then the research director of AASG
The late journalist Sam Cotton.
The late Dr. Augustine Abulu Lado, and
Sheikh Anwar McKeen, a Sudanese Muslim and direct descendant of the last Nubian king before Sudan was…solely (an) Arab dominion.
The panel experts shared firsthand, detailed accounts of the jihadist atrocities happening in their countries. They also shared photos and articles to corroborate their stories. In 1975 (over 20 years before the Howard forum), Black Americans to Support Israel Committee (BASIC) co-founder Bayard Rustin spoke of the same humanitarian crisis in Sudan in his article, The PLO: Freedom Fighters or Terrorists.
From the AASG YouTube post:
During the panel, [Sam] Cotton would answer a sympathetic black undergrad…who wanted advice on how to counter the arguments of powerful black deniers like Louis Farrakhan (whose influence in the community had likely scared Howard into not endorsing any “view” of the issue.
(It should be noted that Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, had recently led the Million Man March in Washington, DC just five months earlier — September 1995 — and his status among many Black Americans had never been loftier.)
It is clear from the video that the “sympathetic black undergrad” who “wanted advice on how to counter the arguments of powerful black deniers like Louis Farrakhan” was now-famed author Ta-Nehisi Coates, an HU student from 1993 to 1999. In March 1996, Coates was 20 years old. Below is a transcript of his question for the panel:
All of the panelists mentioned…that they would like African-Americans to play a role in the fight against slavery in the Sudan. But recently, in his trip {to Sudan], Louis Farrakhan, who’s emerged as an African-American leader…made the comment that slavery did not exist, or that it was at a minimal level in the Sudan. Now, the majority…of African-Americans…don't really have a knowledge of slavery in Mauritania and the Sudan. I know I'm a college student and it was definitely a surprise to me. So, what would be the effect, or how can we combat such a comment by such a leader with such a high standing among African-American people?
That young Coates framed his question in this way meant that not only did he believe the testimonies of Islamic slavery in Africa, he was keenly aware that Louis Farrakhan denied it. This also means that Coates, who recently published his latest book entitled The Message in which he falsely accuses Israel of being an apartheid state, has known about the real plight of Africans enslaved, displaced, raped, and slaughtered under Arab Islamic rule for nearly 30 years, and has remained silent. Whereas Farrakhan’s Islamist betrayal of Africa is a sin of commission, Coates’s is a sin of omission — but just as bitter a betrayal.
After Coates’ latest book was released, Africa-Israel Weekly published the article, Ta-Nehisi Coates joins the Black4Palestine Deception. From the piece:
Coates did not travel to and comment on Sudan. He did not “[feel] the warmth of solidarity of ‘conquered peoples’” under any Arab imperialist regime. He was not “interested in patterns of domination, [or] how oppression replicates itself in different contexts” when it came to the…Arab enslavement of Africans. Like the misled who have come before him, his sympathies have been manipulated toward what he perceives as anti-colonial, anti-Western, or anti-White movements. This is how Yasser Arafat and the PLO repackaged the Nazi-inspired determination to destroy the Jewish state of Israel. Recast the Israeli Jews as White settler colonizers and Western imperialists; never mind the fact that Zionism is the liberation movement of the Jewish people or the fact that over 50% of Israel’s Jewish population fled the Arabized/Islamized countries of North Africa and the Middle East.
Episode 24 of Truth to Power Live is entitled, How Black American Leaders Ignored Africa for 'Palestine'. On the podcast, I make the case that neither Coates nor Farrakhan is the point. They are but objects of a much more important lesson. Since the 1990s, there has been virtually no Black American collective, demonstrable concern for Africa. After the genocide in Rwanda (1994) many Black political and civil rights leaders took then-President Bill Clinton to task, feeling he could have done more to help stop the bloodletting. Of course, the entire world was watching the fall of apartheid in South Africa and the subsequent election of Nelson Mandela as the first Black post-apartheid President (also 1994). Those events were 30 years ago, and much has happened in Africa since:
Genocide in the Congo, 1995-2005
Darfur genocide in Sudan, 2003-2004
Nigeria, Boko Haram, and #BringBackOurGirls, 2014, to name a few.
What geopolitical issue has dominated Black academic and political spaces in the US? The Palestinian-Israeli conflict. From leftists like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornel West to conservatives like Candace Owens and Glenn Loury (who has praised Coates’s The Message), ‘Palestine’ (or bashing Israel and the Jews) has long since become the exercise one must undertake to assert his/her ‘intellectual adeptness.’ The fact that this growing list of Israel critics are ill-informed and that they willfully ignore the true, enormous problems in the Middle East and Africa show the universal destructiveness of the oldest ethnic hatred known to man: Antisemitism. This brand of antisemitism gives cover to the Islamic terrorists who are guilty of what Jew-haters are accusing Israel of, and much, much more. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah…the many terrorist proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran could not ask for better PR than people like Coates and Farrakhan are providing. Groups like Boko Haram and the Janjaweed and governments like Libya, Algeria, and Mauritania are enslaving Black Africans while powerful Black Americans tell the world to look the other way. Or even worse, tell the world to attack Israel.
One of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s favorite themes is reparations for slavery. He has written and spoken passionately on the United States’ obligation to financially atone for its involvement in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Yet, Coates ignores (or excuses) the current enslavement of Africans in a trade that goes back 14 centuries — an injustice he’s known about since his days as a college undergrad. He heard the pleas for help from the very Africans who suffered these atrocities while attending the most prestigious HBCU in the country. What’s more, for decades, Coates has had a world stage to give voice to the African voiceless who asked for his help before he was famous. Coates is a symbol for the most powerful Africans in the diaspora, Black Americans — a potential Joseph in Egypt to his Hebrew brothers during the famine. Unlike Joseph, however, Coates et al sent his brothers away with nothing knowing they would soon starve to death.
God is watching what Black American leaders do next.
Frustrating knowing that Coates has jumped on the Israel-bashing bandwagon just to make a buck and elevate his status among those who don’t know any better.
Thank you for your brilliant observations. I look forward to reading more of your work.