Historic racism against blacks is atrocious and has left scars upon the community, as do all human rights violations against a community. The Holocaust against the Jews is no different. But when an offending group evolves (e.g., those of European decent), so should the offended group (e.g., blacks). This is not to say that ongoing racism does not exist, but one cannot deny a dramatic evolution in the West when it comes to the past sins of slavery and colonialism; there has also been an evolution from Nazi Germany — with its quest for Aryan “master race” dominance — to modern Germany, which has now flung its doors open so wide to immigration that the country is under siege with migrant crime.
The article below relates the poignant story of an era of black oppression, in which many black people who were successful were deemed to be agents of the Communists and investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee in a witch hunt. Charles S. Johnson, the grandfather of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, was the victim of a witch-hunt; he was a distinguished sociologist with a PhD, and also president of Fisk University, which was a “haven for black intellectuals in the Jim Crow-era South.”
Those were the days where few blacks prospered and when it was acceptable to violate their basic human rights; this is no longer tolerated in Western democracies. Racism is not society-wide, but limited to individual action. Although it is still widespread in some locales, it is also found occurring between visible minority groups, and also among visible minorities hating whites; for example, Louis Farrakhan told his followers in a sermon full of “Allahu akbars” that “white people deserve to die.” He also called for the murder of police last year in the name of Islam, and he invoked the Quran, stating: “The Quran teaches persecution is worse than slaughter. Then it says, ‘Retaliation is prescribed in matters of the slain.’ Retaliation is a prescription from God, to calm the breast of those whose children have been slain.”
Farrakhan promotes racism and hate, despite the fact that police killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015.
I have stated previously on Jihad Watch that “No matter what America – or the West — does in terms of correcting its past wrongs such as slavery and colonialism, it will always be deemed collectively ‘guilty.’ Americans and Westerners have not been able to fathom the hatred against them that is held by Islamic supremacists, who notoriously exploit the victimology narrative to try to destroy and conquer the West, and will stop at nothing to do so.”
Jeh Johnson, who has climbed the ladder in America to become Homeland Security Secretary, lives far above the standard of most blacks in America – and most whites for that matter – yet he is making racism comparisons between innocent black sufferers of racism in a different era and Muslims in the modern era. As Homeland Security chief, Johnson does not need to be told that blacks suffered dehumanizing racism because of the color of their skin, not because they had declared war against infidels and the West, as have jihadists — who are deemed martyrs for murdering innocents, not only in America and in the West, but in their own states as well.
Johnson states: “Why single out Muslims, a cleric from a mosque in West Philadelphia objected. What about the non-Muslim gunmen who have attacked U.S. schools, churches and movie theaters?”
A few questions back for Johnson:
Did Christian black preachers in Charles S. Johnson’s days deliver messages of murder at Sunday services? Was there a black version of the Islamic State, of al Qaeda? Did the innocent victims of black racism murder millions globally in the name of a religion? Were these innocent blacks backing malignant efforts toward the obliteration of a state because that state was Jewish? Did these blacks have people hiding among them who slipped across the borders to wage jihad war against host societies, and called for the murder of civilians? Did blacks preach the killing of gays, saying that such killings would put gays out of their misery as a duty of compassion? Did these blacks orchestrate a massive explosion at office towers, killing thousands, and then blame Jews for it? And did they issue calls for more such violence?
Martin Luther King was an icon in battling against racism and promoting racial unity and harmony. He was a peaceful man who found no excuse for promoting violence in an era of grave oppression of blacks. King lived by the statement that “nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.”
Martin Luther King also said in a speech:
“Nonviolence has also meant that my people in the agonizing struggles of recent years have taken suffering upon themselves instead of inflicting it on others. It has meant, as I said, that we are no longer afraid and cowed. But in some substantial degree it has meant that we do not want to instill fear in others or into the society of which we are a part. The movement does not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites. It seeks no victory over anyone. It seeks to liberate American society and to share in the self-liberation of all the people.”
How does Johnson reconcile King’s prized humanitarian words with the violent hatred spewed by jihadists worldwide, as well as by the influential Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan? Johnson blatantly ignores such hatred and danger to homeland security.
Johnson grievously uses the suffering of his grandfather to make outlandish comparisons, which is inexcusable given the knowledge he clearly has about the war on terror, which includes stealth jihad as a powerful tool. The sad era of Johnson’s grandfather was a time when it would have been inconceivable to imagine a black person in the White House, let alone as President. Johnson is using the extreme racism of the past to promote an us-versus-them agenda, which in turn erodes efforts in the war on terror, a very separate war from the fight against all forms of racism in modern society.
This is not a war that seeks to demonize Muslims, as Johnson suggests. There were few Germans who were out-and-out Nazis, but the Nazi influence was far-reaching and a formidable threat globally. When jihadists are moving and working among mainstream Muslims; when mosques on our soil are preaching violence; and when leaders such as Farrakhan and others who drive a hate agenda can do so with impunity, the public becomes rightly afraid. In addition, racists will take advantage as well, unfortunately, thanks to leftist failed leaders and their jihadi sympathies, and the promotion of white guilt to a boundless degree.
The Secretary of Homeland Security is not living up to his job title; while he points out the minority of jihadists among us, he disregards the explosion of Muslim crime across Europe and the domestic threat to homeland security.
Johnson regularly travels in the line of his duty – not to defend homeland security as per his job requirement, but “to meet Muslim leaders around the country, usually in private. He asks them to help authorities identify potential threats in their communities.”
Let’s hope this hunt for anti-Muslim Americans is matched by a hunt for anti-American Muslims, but somehow, this seems unlikely. As head of Homeland Security, Johnson is failing in his department, which is a “key part of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts”; and instead, he is employing a victimology subterfuge, well used and abused by stealth jihadists. In addition, one last note about these Muslim leaders with whom Johnson is regularly meeting: let’s hope that none of them espouse Sharia in the West, or are affiliated with unindicted co-conspirators to terrorism.
“Homeland security chief is guided by memories of how a communist witch hunt scarred his family”, by Brian Bennett, LA Times, July 27, 2016:
Jeh Johnson frowned. Cemetery groundskeepers had cut down a broad magnolia tree that once sheltered his grandfather’s grave from the sun. Lichen pockmarked the granite headstone.
“We got to get this stuff off,” he said, pointing to the mottled slab. Chiseled on it is the name of Charles S. Johnson, a distinguished sociologist who was president of Fisk University after World War II, when it was a haven for black intellectuals in the Jim Crow-era South.
The secretary of Homeland Security was in Nashville on business. But he asked his security detail to stop at his family plot in Greenwood Cemetery, a nearly all-black burial ground that remains a vestige of the city’s color line.
Johnson’s department is a key part of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, and his grandfather has become a powerful personal touchstone for him as he juggles competing demands for national security and personal privacy, for government surveillance and civil liberties.
Johnson’s grandfather was a target of the communist witch hunts of the postwar era. In 1949 he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which investigated allegations of disloyalty and subversive activities.
The black college president was asked if he was then or had ever been a member of the Communist Party. He wasn’t and he hadn’t. The FBI investigated him but found nothing.
The family kept silent for decades about how the humiliations of the Red Scare touched them. Jeh Johnson only learned of his grandfather’s tribulation last fall while researching a speech.
“Basically in the late ’40s and early ’50s, if you were a black intellectual with a PhD, you were also suspected of being a communist,” Johnson said.
Now Johnson sees uncomfortable parallels to the animus and distrust that many Muslim Americans face for the terrorist actions of a few.
“We always risk a fundamental misunderstanding of who is an individual of suspicion and who should be subject to government surveillance,” Johnson said.
The issue is resonant because Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has made suspicion of Muslims a centerpiece of his campaign.
Trump has not only called for banning all foreign Muslims from entering the United States. After a gunman who pledged loyalty to Islamic State killed 49 people on June 12 in Orlando, Fla., he said that many American Muslims and mosques knowingly protect terrorists.
Court records show that since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Muslim clerics, family members, friends and others have repeatedly called the FBI to report suspicions, or have agreed to work as informants.
In fact, a member of Orlando gunman Omar Mateen’s mosque had told FBI agents the security guard was a fan of jihadist videos. The FBI dropped the case after interviewing Mateen. Two years later, he attacked the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
Johnson has voiced strong support for police after gunmen killed eight officers and wounded a dozen others this month in Dallas and Baton Rouge. But he also says he understands how a rash of police shootings of unarmed black men in several communities has sparked public outrage.
“I’ve had my share of unpleasant encounters with law enforcement when I was much younger,” he said on CNN this month. But, he added, “incidents of profiling, of excessive force, are not a reflection of the larger law enforcement community…. I think we have to remember that, especially now that tensions are so high.”
Johnson travels every few months to meet Muslim leaders around the country, usually in private. He asks them to help authorities identify potential threats in their communities, and he often describes his grandfather’s torment to show he understands how innocent people can be harmed when fear, fueled by politics, sweeps the nation.
“This is not an effort to enable us to spy in mosques,” Johnson said. “The U.S. government cannot and should not be everywhere, and so it is incumbent on community leaders, neighbors and others to help us in these efforts.”
It’s a carefully calibrated appeal, and it doesn’t always work.
On May 3, Johnson made his pitch to about 30 Muslim clerics and community leaders in a drab conference room in Philadelphia. He sought their help battling extremist calls to violence, asking them to report loved ones and friends who might try to join Islamic State or even launch their own attacks.
Why single out Muslims, a cleric from a mosque in West Philadelphia objected. What about the non-Muslim gunmen who have attacked U.S. schools, churches and movie theaters?
Johnson nodded, and told them that his wife, Susan, had received emails from a neighbor in Montclair, N.J., where they have a house. The neighbor warned that he’d seen a “Muslim-looking person” riding a bicycle on their street.
“My wife responded, ‘Thank you very much. That’s my son. He’s home from college. Thank you for your interest in national security,’” Johnson told them.
The group laughed — but kept pressing.
A woman in a yellow and green headscarf said authorities had visited the home of a local 14-year-old after he searched “Islamic State” on a high school computer. A man said his 4-year-old son, Abdullah, was questioned at an airport checkpoint because the child’s name was similar to someone on the terrorist watch list.
“As an African American whose ancestors were the subject of discrimination in law and in fact, I appreciate and understand, I think, the discrimination you face,” Johnson said.
As an African American whose ancestors were the subject of discrimination in law and in fact, I appreciate and understand the discrimination you face.
Sometimes Johnson reaches deeper into his family history.
His great-grandfather, Charles H. Johnson, was born into slavery in 1860, was freed three years later with the Emancipation Proclamation, graduated college by 23 and spent 42 years as a Baptist minister in Bristol, Va.
“When you’re the Baptist preacher in a black community in southwest Virginia [at that time], very often you were the preacher, you were the therapist, you were the marriage counselor, you were the estate planner, and every once in a while you had to break up a lynching,” he said.
Johnson’s grandfather grew up in the preacher’s house, surrounded by books and Bibles and the threat of mob violence that governed race relations in the post-Reconstruction South.
He would go on to earn a doctorate in sociology and spend his life writing about race in America. During World War I, he served as a volunteer in a segregated infantry unit that battled through France and Belgium.
After the war, he finished his studies at the University of Chicago and survived the 1919 race riots that left 38 people dead. He wrote an influential sociological study of the riots that closely examined race relations in Chicago.
His report helped lay an academic foundation for future integration policies and propelled Johnson to prominence among sociologists and in black intellectual circles…..