From niggers, to ragheads, back to niggers

It didn't take long. 8 years--tops. Thanks to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Niggers are back to being bogeymen of the world. That's right: Back to Black. What a relief it was for many Niggers--post Sept. 11, 2001: In one fell swoop, 19 hijackers had radically lifted the red-dot from the heads of Niggers and planted it on anyone with a middle-eastern accent--especially those donning kufis. For a while, speaking Arabic was in and of itself a terrorism predilection. Reading the Qu'ran? Why, that was downright a tell-tale detailing a terrorist mind at work.

The words "Allahu Akbar" carried more criminal weight than "I Shot the Sheriff." Anyone who even dared utter such dastardly sentiments in public aroused the interests of federal agents with swiftness. The air was thick with suspicion. Passengers were being bumped off planes for suspicious activities such as closing their eyes with palms stretched forth, praying to the God they serve. Word around town was most terrorists did that right before capping off explosives on an unsuspecting group of people, 50,000 feet from land. Women with hijabs on their heads could also end up escorted by armed guards from planes: Anything to pacify the concerns of frightened citizens. (The Wetbacks never had a shot--crossing borders illegally hardly generates equal amounts of panic as blowing up planes and buildings.)

Well, the grace period is over. Operation "Niggers Are Potential Terrorists" is back in full effect. And not just any kind of Niggers--the African-Jungle-Banana-Niggers. Folks like me. With Umar's help, acknowledging you're Nigerian, or from the West African country, can earn some pretty amusing stares from passersby. Deeper than the occasional "Email Scam" stares, they are longer, harder, and scarier. For most Nigerians, however, the adjustment process shouldn't demand much.

For decades, the dominant perception of Nigerians, by Westerners and Europeans, has been of the scamming millionaire prince promising a bounty in exchange for a few dollars--preferably through Western Union. Many have, over the years, been swindled into sending hundreds of dollars to teenagers overseas--not always Nigerians--with fingers crossed tightly, hoping the promise of tens of thousands of dollars is more than an internet hoax. Soon later, their worst fears were confirmed.

The pain of betrayal is strong. Thus, Nigerians have been placed under unofficial suspicion lists in the eyes of any citizen with an e-mail address. The many Nigerian immigrants involved in credit card scams over the past few decades have also done a good deal of favor to any compatriot who enjoys being treated with mild hostility at cash registers. Almost always are the credit or debit cards looked over multiple times--that the gas station clerk may avenge the cause of her uncle whose bank statement mysteriously reported thousands of dollars in video games and name-brand sneakers overnight.  

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"Nigeria is the most corrupt country in the world," has been the theme music for years now. Dictator after dictator after dictator: Just what the people deserve. The Western corporations whose practices kept--and keep--in power those--and these--dictators never batted an eye. (Still don't.) They knew their role and played it well. (Still do.) Many wondered how a country with so much rich resource in oil could contain so many of its people in poverty--with no shot at economic mobility. These issues and many more were bandied about--still are--but never dealt with critically. Didn't matter that fragile lives were at stake. (Still doesn't.) Never was present the will to search for solutions to the problems being obsessed over. (Still isn't.) The aim was--and is--to look at them, see how badly they were living, and conclude nothing could be done to salvage that brutish race of people. Nothing but colonization, of course. Anything less was--and is--investing in a lost cause.

And this is the guiding light illuminating the calls for invasion ratcheting up with vehemence on right-wing talk radio and cable channels.

And while hawks like Sen. Joe Lieberman believe a bomb, bomb, bomb, Yemen approach is in order, most pundits seem to agree greater emphasis must be placed to address the "concern" Africa--and specifically Nigeria--poses to the security and safety of the western world. "Violent extremist groups on the continent, including some inspired by or affiliated with al Qaeda, have largely been focused on North and East Africa," reported the Wall Street Journal last weekend. It's more critical because Umar's "nationality and his origination" single-handedly "casts a fresh spotlight on possible extremist activity in Nigeria, where large populations of Muslims, concentrated in the north, have clashed violently with Christians in the south."

Smart Nigerians have created a "We Condemn Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's Action: Nigerians are NOT Terrorists" Facebook group. As of now, it stands at 24,590 members. While admirable, it is unlikely to prevent the backlash and claptrap already picking up feedback in the extreme corners of neo-con circles. No doubt Nigerians would experience greater discrimination and surveillance in the coming months--official and unauthorized. Nigerians, who already are subjected to some of the most offensive questions about where they come from, would be asked their take on Umar Abdulmutallab's "action." Do they condemn it outright or believe it deserves a complex set of addresses? (Notice the parallel between complicity and the call for sanity.) Do they, as well, harbor terroristic thoughts about this great land? Do all Nigerians believe Umar Abdulmutallab is a "martyr"? That Nigeria is like most other countries--packed with a hardworking underclass, a shrinking middleclass, and a corrupt and greedy overclass--would probably be exempt from the dominant discourse. That most Nigerians are too preoccupied with the heavy toll of human life to even conceive thoughts of international terrorism would be rendered an immaterial consideration.

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As I write, hysteria is being whipped up about the "larger," "bigger," "harsher" picture--safe havens for Al-Qaeda in Africa. It might be a Black president's nightmare, but if intelligent forces can prove without a shred of doubt a rise in extremist activities on the "dark continent," it wouldn't take long before bombs are being dropped and homes shattered to restore the sense of safety most are willing to take another's life for. No one wants to feel "unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence and hated," as Cornel West put it post-9/11. And it might shock some Africans to hear this, but if considerable fear is inflamed by the conservative kooks, very few would be left standing in defense of poor African mothers when babies are being blown to smithereens and villages decimated. Not even a sizeable portion of the African-American community would have the courage to speak up with dignity. 9/11 proved that enough.

Those who expected Black folks, by-and-large, to take up the cause against paralyzing paranoia, which took flesh in dangerous forms of xenophobia and jingoism after the horrific attacks in New York, were sorely disappointed. They saw a majority more allied with the dominant, hateful, chauvinistic charade than the immoral inhumanity many middle-easterners--or those remotely resemblant--were being subject to. Niggers felt so good to have the burden of Blackness finally lifted off of their shoulders--if only for a temporary moment, if only for a few months. They would rather join the choir than preach against it.   

But, as with all things, what went around is carefully creeping back around.

What it simply means is the ball--or, rather,
bomb--is back in the Niggers' court. And the world is waiting and watching. Waiting
and watching--with loaded arms.