Louis Farrakhan Tells Supporters "Don't be Pacified" by President Barack Obama's Win, But Work to Repair Communities

The right wing is in a frenzy this morning over Minister Louis Farrakhan's recent speech in Memphis, Tn., in which he urged his followers not to become complacent by President Barack Obama's historic election but to work to repair their communities. What was so wrong with what he said? In the speech, commemorating the 14th anniversary of the Million Man March, Farrakhan said people shouldn't become pacified by the election of the first black president. "This can pacify you and lull you to sleep in a dangerous time, making you think that we live in a post-racial America – when the opposite is true," he said. 

What's so wrong with Farrakhan's line of reasoning? Aren't there some African Americans out there who think that President Obama's win means we are now in a post-racial America, which couldn't be further from the truth? There are far too many issues confronting the African American communities across this country that need to be resolved by the residents and not solely the government. Take the gun violence in Chicago's inner city communities. There are many who refuse to "snitch" on the perpetrators. How can the police help them if they aren't more forthcoming?

Sunday's speech was billed as a plan to focus on reducing crime. Farrakhan didn't lay out details in his 2 1/2-hour address, but said members of the Nation of Islam have shown a blueprint for helping people repair their lives. The organization has long focused efforts on recruiting in prisons by encouraging inmates to study the movement's teachings.

"They're going to prisons and they make a man and a woman whole, the prostitute gets cleaned up, the drug addict gets changed," he said. "You see a model in Muslims in the Nation of Islam when our people come into the mosque toxic and then are made useful." Farrakhan said the theme of repairing communities will become the basis of a series of future lectures. The leader regularly speaks at the movement's headquarters, Mosque Maryam. The lectures are widely distributed throughout the movement.

Again, I don't view what he said as divisive and explosive. He was calling the black community to task. Isn't that what President Obama has done repeatedly? Granted, I am no big fan of Louis Farrakhan, but he was not inciting his supporters to stage an uprising against the government and whites in this country. He was calling on each black man and woman to take a stand in their own communities and not be complacent into thinking that because a black man is our president that all our problems will be miraculously fixed. It seems that every time Louis Farrakhan speaks, even to utter the word "boo," the right wing goes crazy and makes a mountain out of a mole hill.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/19/farrakhan-dont-be-pacifie_n_325616.html