The execution of Troy Davis and the Divine Logic of Separation

By Robert Muhammad -Guest Columnist- | Last updated: Oct 13, 2011 - 1:22:54 PM

“We want freedom for all Black men and women now under death sentence in innumerable prisons in the North as well as the South.”
—The Muslim Program, “What the Muslims Want,” Point No. 5

“If we want freedom, justice, and equality, we must look for it among ourselves and our kind, not among the people who have destroyed and robbed us of even the knowledge of ourselves, themselves, our God and our religion.”
—The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, “Message to the Blackman in America,” page 233

(FinalCall.com) - At 11:08 p.m. Eastern time on the evening of September 21, 2011, the state of Georgia carried out the execution of Black death row inmate Troy Davis, for the murder of White Savannah, Ga. police officer Mark MacPhail.

This execution was carried out despite the fact that there was no DNA evidence, and no physical evidence that linked Mr. Davis to the murder; and despite the fact that seven out of the nine eyewitnesses who identified Mr. Davis as the murderer, later recanted their testimony.

It appears that the lack of evidence, and calls for clemency from members of Congress, Amnesty International, the NAACP, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former President Jimmy Carter, or even the Pope of Rome himself, could persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to step in to stop this miscarriage of justice, which can only be viewed as a 21st Century lynching.

There are several tragic historical ironies that connect the execution of Troy Davis to the long legacy of racial oppression that Black people have had to endure since we were forcibly brought to the shores of America in chains. For instance, consider the fact that the town in which Troy Davis was executed; Jackson, Ga., is named after the racist, slave owning, seventh President of the United States, Andrew Jackson, who was also responsible for the genocidal “Indian Removal Act,” that led to the forced migration of Native Americans to the Western side of the Mississippi River, and the stealing of their lands.

It is also instructive to consider that the same judicial institution; the U.S. Supreme Court, that failed to hear Mr. Davis on appeal, is the same institution that over 100 years earlier, in the famous Dred Scott case of 1857, ruled that a Black man appealing for his freedom from the horrors of slavery, had no rights that a White man was bound to respect.

This same institution that informed a 19th Century Black man (Dred Scott) that he had no rights that they were bound to consider, has informed a 21st Century Black man (Troy Davis) that he had no rights that they were bound to consider, even if it involved his very life!

The death of Troy Davis, at the hands of the so-called justice system of America, again highlights the 400-year-old historical legacy of unjust treatment of Black people in this country. It also raises the question of whether or not Black people will ever receive true justice in America, or if it is even logical to expect it, from a nation who's very economic foundation was built on the enslavement and exploitation of generations of people of African decent.

In order to shed some light on this dilemma, consider the following:

According to Black scholar, Dr. Claud Anderson in his book, “More Dirty Little Secrets,” “In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, free Blacks owned ½ of 1 percent of the nation's wealth; in 2004 over a century later, Blacks still owned only ½ of 1 percent of the nation's wealth.”

According to a September 25, 2007 Chicago Tribune report, based on U.S. Department of Education data, “America's public schools remain as unequal as they have ever been when measured in terms of disciplinary sanctions such as suspensions and expulsions.” The report goes on to state, “on average across the nation, black students are suspended and expelled at nearly three times the rate of white students. Yet black students are no more likely to misbehave than other students from the same social and economic environments.” The report concludes, “This clearly reflects racial injustice and inequality in the public school system.”

In a Cambridge-based National Bureau of Economic Research study, by Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago, and Sendhil Mullainathan of MIT, entitled, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal?”; it is documented that a Black-sounding name can be an impediment in securing employment in the American job market. According to Mullainathan, even with employers who specified or claimed to be “equal opportunity employers” there was bias in giving callbacks to job applicants with Black-sounding names. So as long as Black people rely on others to provide employment for us, we are faced with the dilemma of having to possibly alter or change a fundamental expression of our culture, such as what and how we name ourselves! This alone should call into question the logic and value of the integrationist or assimilationist model of struggle for Black people in America.

These, and numerous other intractable racial contradictions that continue to exist in America, clearly point to what the late-great pioneer and Black psychologist Dr. Bobby E. Wright called, “The Psychopathic Racial Personality.”

In his short book, under the same above title, Dr. Wright stated, “in their relationship with the Black race, Europeans (Whites) are psychopaths and their behavior reflects an underlying biologically transmitted proclivity with roots deep in their evolutionary history. The psychopath is an individual who is constantly in conflict with other groups. He is unable to experience guilt, is completely selfish and callous, and has a total disregard for the rights of others.”

To some people this assessment of the racial behavior of Whites may sound harsh and itself somewhat racist; but it is totally consistent with the historical record of the interaction of White people, in general terms, with the masses of people of color all over the world. It is also consistent with what the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad has taught us about this same history.

It is also interesting to note that on page 9 of his book, Dr. Wright made this relevant, insightful observation on the historical relationship of Black people to the U.S. Supreme Court: “For Blacks in the United States to place their destiny in the hands of Supreme Court Justices is an extreme form of psychological blindness and a pathological rejection of history. The Supreme Court of the United States has always used the prevailing White political climate as the criterion for dealing with questions of race.”

It is past time for Black people in America to make a sober, unemotional accounting of our historical condition under this system of White supremacy and the pathological anti-Black behavior patterns of its people and institutions.

Any serious, critical analysis of the history of oppression of Black people in America will invariably lead us to consider the divine logic in the program of separation as presented by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

The call for the separation of Black people into a state or territory of our own—either on this continent or elsewhere, might at first sound like a radical extremist position to some, and a unrealistic pipe dream to others; but when one considers 400 years of savage, psychopathic, racial hatred endured by Black people at the hands of the White supremacist institutions of America; that continues even up to this day; the option of separation may be the only option that insures our survival.

The program of separation as presented by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and his best student, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, is a divinely guided program, that is not only consistent with the prophecies and histories of both the Bible and the Holy Qur'an, that describe the separation of the righteous from the wicked, but it also can be said that its divine logic stems from five irrefutable, historically sound, premises, that lead to one inescapable conclusion.

The five irrefutable premises, and the one inescapable conclusion, that one is forced to confront, in any challenge to the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad's program of separation for the Black man and woman in America, are as follows:

Irrefutable premise No.1- No people, White or otherwise, will, or can, ever love us (Black people) more than we love ourselves.

Irrefutable premise No.2- No people, White or otherwise, will provide land, food, clothing, and shelter for us before they will provide these things for themselves, or to the degree that we can provide these things for ourselves.

Irrefutable premise No. 3- No people, White or otherwise, will provide jobs, businesses, and over-all economic development for us, before they will provide these things for themselves, or to the degree that we can provide these things for ourselves.

Irrefutable premise No.4- No people, White or otherwise, will provide a proper education for us and our children before they will provide it for themselves, or to the degree that we can provide it for ourselves.

Irrefutable premise No. 5- No people, White or otherwise, will give us justice according to law, or protect our political and cultural interest before they will do these things for themselves, or to the degree that we can do these things for ourselves.

The inescapable conclusion- To insure our continued existence as a people, we must have some land or territory of our own, in order to build our own independent nation.

The above five premises and the one inescapable conclusion that they lead to, are based on sound historical analysis, and the laws and logic of nature, and self-preservation; and I would challenge anyone to refute the truth contained in any of them.

This logic that stems from the teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad is iron-clad, divinely inspired, and cannot be defeated.

We are currently witnessing by most accounts, the economic disintegration of both Europe, and America, and the collapse of their respective currencies, just as the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad predicted.

We, as Black people in America, currently find ourselves in the basement of a house that is on the verge of free fall collapse. If we are to survive the fall of America, we must separate, go to our own, and do-for-self!

(Robert Muhammad is a Chicago-based freelance writer, and can be contacted at [email protected].)

The Final Call