Note: I'm just a white guy who read the Autobiography of Malcolm X when I was younger and did some additional reading. If I've got any details wrong or I'm wildly offbase please call me out. I have thrown around the Yakub bit myself. When a Hexbear called out the bit as racist I had to do some self-crit about it. Here's a very short explainer to give some backstory on where the bit came from.
The very short version
- Yakub is a figure in Nation of Islam mythology derived from the Hebrew patriarch Jacob
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- In NOI mythology Yakub used eugenics to create white people from ancient black people
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- due to the horrible methods Yakub used and his evil intentions white people are incapable of empathy and compassion and can only do evil
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- 4Chan found out that the NOI exists a few years ago
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- 4Chan created the (CW: 4chan bullshit)
spoiler
"We were kings" meme, usually with "we were kings" deliberately misspelled and accompanied by racist imagery
. This was inspired by both NOI beliefs and Hotep beliefs
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- At some point the Chapos found out about the 4Chan meme and began ironically adopting the NOI position in response, referring to white people as Yakubian devils or variations of that
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- It stuck around on Hexbear
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- It's not appropriate for white people to be making jokes about a black religious and political movement
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- The NOI mythology was created during the 1930s when eugenics was a popular concept. It inverts contemporary white "race science", essentially reversing the roles of white people and black people under a similar, religiously influenced psuedoscientific narrative.
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- The NOI call themselves Muslims. Their religious beliefs are a very idiosyncratic mixture of Christian, Muslim, and original beliefs. They were not closely related to Sunni or Shi'a Islam
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- When the founder of the NOI died in 1975 his son and successor disbanded the organization and re-formed it. The new organization went through several names before settling on the American Society of Muslims. The American Society of Muslims rejected most NOI beliefs, becoming much closer to mainstream Sunni Islam
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- After the NOI was disbanded Louis Farrakhan and a splinter group formed a continuation of the NOI. This sect is notorious for it's racial superiority ideology, anti-semitism, homophobia, and generally being reactionary jerks
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- No one really likes the NOI. They have little mainstream support but continue to have some cultural influence
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- Trivia - Louis Farrakhan probably ordered the assassination of el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, also known as Malcolm X
I asked about this in the federation thread and was pretty annoyed that no one could say exactly why referencing Yakub is racist, including the mod who announced it. A fairly common meme on here is all of a sudden being specifically targeted for removal with zero explanation is weird. So I appreciate the attempt to explain, but I'll be honest, I'm still not sure it makes sense to me
This is all true, NoI suck, but we have a lot of memes on here with problematic sources that have been laundered through a few layers of irony
Is this it? Is this the actual official reason that Yakub references are supposedly racist? If there are black comrades who feel uncomfortable with this, then I'm willing to go along with it.
Idk, I don't want people to think that I want to die on this hill or anything. I'm not even sure I've ever used the meme myself. It just rubs me the wrong way when something is declared outside the bounds of acceptable discourse without any attempt to educate or reach consensus
I think OP is just trying to make a point that making fun of the NoI concept of Yakub can come close to the racist "we were kings" meme in a "isn't it funny that these black people think they are the superior ones" way.
That... actually makes a lot of sense. I always thought of the meme purely as making fun of white people rather than being directed at NoI
I think it might be taken like "bleach demon" where it isn't saying anything about the theology of demons but are simply using it as a sort of literary analogy.
I'm white but there's a little more that stands out to me about why it isn't appropriate: We're talking about the biggest black nationalist movement of its time, which involved Malcolm X among others. To characterize the NOI mainly as funny is to ignore what it promised to black people, as well as the position black people were in for that promise to be worth supporting. By extension, this characterization also ignores the people who supported it, or worse, dismisses them as gullible at best