Black youth: Organize and defend your community

By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Jan 23, 2018 - 12:01:01 PM

[Editor’s note: The following text is excerpted from an article that appeared in Vol. 12, No. 3, December 14, 1992.]

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

The idea of mothers and political leaders fearing the gangs and crying out to bring in the National Guard and military troops is because the parents fear that their sons or daughters will be killed in gang conflict. Parents are saying, “For God’s sake, politicians, can’t you do something about the gangs?” Mothers, Black politicians and Black intellectuals who are at their wits end to know how to deal with our young people are being used to call for the government to bring in the soldiers. But when the soldiers come, they come to do what they have been prepared to do—kill our youth.

In Los Angeles, the so-called gangs—the Bloods and the Crips—have come together and decided on their own to stop the violence. Why did they decide to stop it? Because the idea of Muhammad, the idea of Malcolm and the idea of Martin is beginning to take root and they saw the folly of killing one another. The idea of unity is coming to birth in them, giving them a new vision, so they embraced each other.

When they embraced each other, the police became alarmed instead of rejoicing. Parents were happy because there would be no more drive-by shootings. But the police are doing everything in their power, as I am told, to destroy that unity because they want to see our young people killing one another.

We have to ask ourselves, “Is this a plan?” Why is the mortality rate of Black people so high? No prenatal care is emphasized to our young women, so they are not protected in their ideas of sexual involvement. Therefore, our women are having a lot of babies; but with a lack of knowledge, our babies are dying from lack of care and disease.

Education was used to contain us in the past. Today, however, the dropout rate is around 50 percent in Chicago and nearly 45 percent of the youth drop out of high school. If you drop out of school and you need a high school diploma to get a job at Wendy’s, and there aren’t but a few jobs at Wendy’s, then without a high school diploma, what kind of job will you get? Nothing! You can go into the Army, but even that’s so high-tech today. So, there is no future for you.

The murder rate in the Black community over the last nine years has been 100,000. In nine years of war in Vietnam, the total loss was about 59,000 lives. That means that it was safer to live in Vietnam, with planes dropping bombs and people shooting, than it is to live in the ghettoes of North America.

There are 1.2 million people in federal and state penitentiaries. Seventy percent of those are Black, and in some prisons it’s as high as 80 percent Black. Most of these are young men who young sisters would be desirous of marrying. They are in jail. They are in the armed forces, but now that the Army is releasing them because they have no more need for all those soldiers in Europe, and they are coming back to America to be released into what? No jobs. So here are more youth trained to kill and nobody to kill, so the message is, “Go back to your ghetto and kill each other.”

Minister Louis Farrakhan greets children in New York.

Prison reform obviously never occurs because those incarcerated keep going out and coming back. Taxpayers pay $27,000 to $35,000 per year to keep us in jail, and the government is willing to pay that to warehouse you to perpetuate the criminal mindset and to make you homosexuals.

The Black family is being destroyed. The poor Black woman is having children by men, but there is no man in the home to help her with the children. The Black woman has to work or she stays home on welfare and watches television. So who is rearing your children, mother? It is their peers that are rearing them. It is television that is rearing them. There is nobody to provide little league sports for Black youth like they provide for young White boys. So, gangs, guns and drugs are inevitable because it is part of the overall plan for the destruction of our youth.

The police are recruiting our young people, in some instances, to sell drugs. Drugs are a $200 billion to $300 billion industry, more than General Motors and General Electric. Drugs are corrupting judges, police chiefs, senators, congressmen, etc. So when you are in the drug climate, which the Black community is getting deeply involved in, there has to be guns and territorial disputes, which creates more death on a young generation that is born to get liberation for the whole people.

So here we are, young men expressing the male ego in terms of self-destruction. Popping someone with an Uzi is a way of expressing our manhood today. “How many did you kill? I drove by and popped several. I don’t know how many of them died. I’ll look at the news tonight.” That’s insanity, isn’t it?

But that is because of a denial of the idea of Allah (God) growing in their heads and this is why rappers have become so feared, because they are putting words of the vision from the idea in a rap. The rappers who are progressive are helping to interfere with the overall plan and objective of the enemy and now the rappers are targeted because the youth are listening to the rappers.

The youth do not think that any leader is qualified to lead them and they are not wrong. Most leaders are not of the mind and spirit to harmonize with Black youth. But with Moses, there was a Joshua and he spoke the language of the youth. And with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, there is a Farrakhan who speaks the language for our young people.

What is the solution? How do we utilize the wonderful spirit of our young people? Not by breaking up the gangs, but by giving the vision to them that they may continue to organize—but organize to protect and build the community rather than destroy it. How do we do that?

First, you have to know yourself and the enemy of yourself. Who is going to teach you? The scripture says how can they know except they have a teacher and how can they have a teacher except he is sent. But suppose you have a teacher, but you don’t know where he is. We have to get the message to them. That’s why rappers who are putting the message in rap are so important.

When the rap starts moving and young people start grooving to the rap, you might think they are grooving to the music, but they are also getting the idea and the idea is giving them vision. Pretty soon they will say: “Wait a minute. I know myself now. I got the message and I know my enemy. It’s time to stop killing myself and overpower my enemies.”

Who are you? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says you are the Original People of the Earth. You are not Black because you are cursed; you are Black because you are the first people in the light of the sun and from you came all other human beings. You are mentally asleep. Therefore, the children produced from you have run amuck. This is why you must wake up and assert yourself again as the Father of Civilization, that you might bring your lawless children into order. You are the Original People of the Earth. You must rise up and know yourself.

Who is the enemy? I don’t have to get into that, you already know. The enemy is not a color. The enemy is an idea that rules in that color or lack of it. You must be able to recognize the enemy no matter what color it comes in because the enemy is anyone who is focusing on the idea of the enemy. If the idea is to divide and conquer, then anyone who will divide us to keep us a prey in the hands of our enemy is part of the enemy.

You have to recognize the time and what must be done. What time is it? It’s the end of a 6,000-year period of rule given to the idea of White supremacy; and it’s the beginning of the time of the rise of the darker people of the Earth. If it’s the time of the end of White supremacy, you can’t go to the White people begging them for a job because they don’t have it to give you anymore. Allah (God) is taking their jobs from them so you won’t depend on them anymore.

It is time for us to do something for ourselves. It is time for us not to go to the White man for his education; it is time for us to educate ourselves because Caucasians are going to educate you in a way to serve them and your time of being their servant is over. It is time for you to come back and serve Allah (God) and serve yourself.

You must join onto your own kind and stop trying to join onto somebody else. The same way you would get together in what is called a gang because you have certain things in common. What is more common than the fact that we are Black people? What is more common than the fact that we are the children of slaves? What is more common than the fact that Allah (God) is at the root of our existence?

We are normally and naturally Brothers and Sisters, flesh of each other’s flesh, blood of each other’s blood, and bone of each other’s bone. If there is going to be any integration, let it be from a position of strength. You can’t integrate with a people stronger than yourself; you will get taken over. But if you integrate with yourself and we become strong, then whomever we want to sit down and form an alliance with, it will be from a position of strength for progress.

Lastly, you cannot pattern your lifestyle after the lifestyle of our enemies. Their lifestyle is going down. Brothers, if we recognize and know ourselves and want to join on to our own kind, then leave the White woman alone and join on to your own kind. When you recognize how valuable the Black woman is, you would not want another woman. You would want only what Allah (God) has created to complement us. You will join on to your own kind and you will force the world to respect and honor her.

Thank you for reading these few words. As-Salaam Alaikum.

The Final Call