The Continuing Holocaust
The Black Holocaust continues to affect the descendants of its victims even today. It plagues our minds and begs to be confronted and dealt with on a daily basis. Written below are but a few examples of this nightmare that will only continue until we set about the task of putting an end to it. |
Modern Day Slavery:
Sudan and Mauritania
 | The thought of slavery existing today may seem unbelievable to many. But the fact of the matter is that even as you read this, there are continuing reports of Africans being enslaved in the African republic of Sudan. Home to the ancient state of Nubia, this land has become the site of a 13-year-old civil war that has left over 1.5 million dead. Numerous reports have charged the Islamic fundamentalist North with carrying out a war of genocide against its African South who are mostly Christian or of native spiritual beliefs. The Northern population of Sudan consists of Arabs and Africans who identify themselves as "cultural Arabs." It has been reported that Northerners have been raiding African-Sudanese villages and kidnapping Black women and children for sale in the northern portion of the country to Arab buyers. Once taken north the children are force fed Islam while the women become domestics and/or sexual servants. It should be remembered that this pattern is similar to the
Eastern Slave Trade which only officially ended in 1911AD. Pictured here is Jane Alley who managed to escape an attack of Arabic slave raiders on her southern Sudanese village. (Photo and Information courtesy of CASMAS website, VIBE, Associated Press) |
The thinking of the northern Sudanese is that they want the whole Sudan to be Arab and Muslim. Now we southerners have been resisting. As a result, the North wants to raid, kill the men, get the women and rape them, so that they will produce children who will be Arab. They will indoctrinate them, take them to work on farms, teach them Arabic, convert them into Muslims, and they will forget they are captives. It's a mark of genocide. We are fighting with all our will to see that this doesn't happen to our people. And if we are subdued, then Arabism, Islamism, will penetrate right into the heart of Africa.
Sabit Alley, Native Black Sudanese |
The situation in Mauritania is similar yet different to the one in Sudan. Here the victims are again Black while the slave masters are Caucasian Berbers. Mauritania has outlawed slavery three times since 1960, most recently in 1980. Yet even now, the mostly Islamic republic has been accused of enslaving Africans known as Haratines. The products of Berber men and their African slave mistresses, these Haratines exist in a state of bondage. Though phenotypically similar to their African Wolof, Bambara, Soninke' and Pular sisters and brothers, the Haratines consider themselves culturally Berbers. Raised and indoctrinated by Islamic Berbers, they are traded among Berbers families or given as gifts. Punishment for these Haratines may go far beyond the routine whippings and beatings. Reports tell of slave masters placing insects into a victim's ears and then sealing them with wax as a form of torture. Another tells of burning coals being applied to the thighs and sex organs of others. Pictured here is a former slave Shaba Bint Bilal. Her hands were disfigured when she was hung from a post for days by her Arabic-Berber slave master. She is only free now because she was deemed "worthless" by her owner. (Photo and Information courtesy of CASMAS website, VIBE, Associated Press) |
...my belly belongs to my master
Escaped Haratine slave woman explaining why 5 of her children remain in bondage to her former Arab master. |
Rwanda and Burundi
 | The disastrous effects left by centuries of Slave Trade and Colonization are incalculable. Africa today remains in political upheaval and cases of ethnic warfare from Sierra Leone to the Congo. A prime example of the chaos unleashed upon the continent can be seen in the central African nations of Rwanda and Burundi. It was in the 1400s that the Tutsi ethnic group, on the move most probably due to destabilization caused by the two ongoing Slave Trades, entered the Rwanda and Burundi regions. Already occupying the area were the Hutu and Twa (misnomered pygmie) groups. Though forced to live in the same region, the three groups created a complex social order based on tolerance. And though Tutsis made up most of the ruling class, they were careful not to overly exploit the Hutu agricultural masses which surrounded them. This social order was by no means utopian, but it was one in which Tutsi, Hutu and Twa ate, interacted, and worshipped together. This delicate social order would be shattered by the Germans and later Belgians who colonized the region. Obsessed with race, they declared the slender Tutsis "Dark Caucasians" and mistook their societal status as a sign of white supremacy. Thus Tutsis were given a favorable status in the colonial order. They were educated in European schools, baptized Christians, and given official titles. All of this left the neglected Hutu masses resentful towards their Tutsi brethren whom they regarded as colonial lackeys. This time bomb has exploded again and again in both Rwanda and Burundi leaving hundreds of thousands dead leaving the Central Lakes Region in ruins. |
Hate Crimes
and Police Brutality
The tide of white supremacy is alive and well in the United States. It exists in the institutions and forces of authority that exist throughout the land. The violence of America still persists today in the form of numerous cases of police brutality, church burnings, and anti-black "hate crimes." Pictured is Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. Louima was arrested at a Haitian nightclub in New York city after a brawl. What happened next shocked the city of NY and the nation. Officers Justin Volpe, Charles Schwarz, Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder physically assaulted Louima while in the patrol car, hurling racial slurs at him. Upon arrival at the police precinct , Volpe and Schwarz continued to attack Louima in a stationhouse bathroom, kicking him and sodomizing him with a plunger handle while his hands were cuffed behind his back. Louima, 31, was hospitalized with a ruptured colon and bladder. |
Black on Black Crime
It is rather difficult not to notice that a trend with some of these new forms of Holocaust, is that while the victims remain Black, the perpetrators seem to be as well. The new term for this in the media was "Black on Black crime." It was a phrase well used throughout the 1980s and 90s as gang war fare erupted throughout the nation leaving dead Black men, women and children in their path. In fact, statistics showed that Blacks in the US were 7 times more likely to die from homicide than whites. Over 90% of the time, the perpetrators would be other Blacks. Black males especially became involved in this cycle of violence that seems to make little sense to many. But after understanding the long years of physical and mental abuse, it is easy to see the root cause of self hate among Black people. In the end it would seem that in the past two decades alone, "Black on Black crime" has claimed more Black lives than all the years of lynching and anti-Black riots in America. And the number continues to rise. Pictured is black hip hop artist Tupac Shakur who was slain in 1996. His seemingly at times troubled life, his move from revolutionary activist to thug and violent death brought the issues of Black on Black violence to the forefront on the national and world stage
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