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White Supremacy, the Black Woman and the Making of the New (Modern) Black Man

By Wesley Muhammad Ph.D.


The Honorable Brother Minister Farrakhan has stated:
Whats our program of action, Pharaoh? Pharaoh said, Kill all boy babies. Why kill al
l boy babies, Pharaoh? Spare the women, kill the men. Why? Because the ideals of
a nation is carried in the man. If you kill the man, you kill independent ideal
s. The woman is the born reflector, so you can leave her and shell reflect the id
eals of the civilization thats in power. So kill the man and let the woman be. [19
80]
He says further:
When you conquer a nation, you conquer the manhood. When you conquer the manhood,
you conquered the ideals of that nation. When you conquer the manhood and the i
deals, you conquer the ideology. Then if you are the conqueror, you come in with
your ideas, with your ideology. And if you have an open field with the woman of
the conquered man, then you not only put your seed in the womb of the conquered
nation, you put your ideas in the mind of the conquered woman. Therefore, she p
asses on to the seed the ideas of the conqueror, the ideals, the folkways, the m
ores, the norms of the conqueror. So through the woman, the man has conquered a
whole nation...It was the slave masters idea in conquering the Black Man to conqu
er his ideals and ideas and the ideology and the philosophy and the NATURE of th
e Black Man so that you would have no power as a man with your own woman. [1984].
The Honorable Brother Minister Farrakhan is most correct. History records that w
hen White men conquered Black nations, they not only conquered the MEN of that n
ation but they conquered the very MANHOOD of that nation. Black Manhood is alway
s systematically undermined and then RECONSTRUCTED and reconstituted. In colonia
l southern Africa, for example, new masculinities that served the interests of the
British were constructed through colonial legislation and economic policy. Precolonial Zulu society was very patriarchal, but it was a SOUTHERN patriarchy, no
t a Northern (or Western) patriarchy. This means that, though political power wa
s in the hands of men (as a class) and in the home the power of the father was p
aramount, women enjoyed status, wealth, and influence in Zulu society. In pre-co
lonial Zulu religion God was the First Man, called uNkulunkulu. His Wife emerged
after him, but the two of them together are the creators of everything and toge
ther they are called uNkulunkulu as He alone is called uNkulunkulu. Black Manhoo
d among the Zulus was such that their White enemies stood in awe of them. The co
lonial educational officer C.T. Binns lived among the Zulu for 59 years, after w
hich he wrote the book The Warrior People (1971). He was a racist and white suprem
acist, yet he intensely admired the Zulus, saying:
Throughout his life, the Zulu of THE OLDEN TIMES was subjected to a remarkable sy
stem of unremitting discipline, but it was a discipline that Made him honest, bra
ve and wise, respectful toward king and neighborHe was a cunning and daring oppon
ent, a keen logician and consummate diplomatist, not a mongrel but a man of repu
te, not a debased savage but an intelligent being. He was, in short, a man of ri
ght with an undeniably just and overwhelmingly strong claim to be dealt with as
such, even by his conquers and every other Whiteman living in Africa.[1]
Zulu masculinity of OLDEN TIMES - combined martial prowess with honesty, wisdom,
morality (such as sexual abstinence), trustworthiness, and dutifulness. The Zul
u father was the supreme authority in the home whose word was obeyed, but he had
to EARN such authority. A Zulu could not marry until 33 years old, after he had
developed his manhood through 15 years or so of military service. Among the socalled Shona people of Zimbabwe, who are also patriarchal, martial prowess was not
absent from their construction of masculinity but it was not PRIMARY either. In
stead, Shona masculinity was primarily defined by intellectual prowess: a real man
(murume chaiye) has the ability to demonstrate the skill in argumentation and l
anguage. The colonial powers systematically eroded both indigenous constructions
of masculinity and imposed new, domesticated constructions of masculinity. Econ
omic policies were introduced that compelled Zulu and Shona men to leave their rur
al homes in the villages to travel to the urban areas to work doing feminine tasks
like cooking and cleaning for colonial administrators and when they returned to
their village homes their authority and respect in the home was severely dimini

shed. The Woman of the home more and more grew self-willed and gender tensions r
ose. Shona men were even introduced to and started wearing skinny jeans! Yes, you
heard right; called in the local language mabhogadhi, tight jeans. Back in the villa
ges these were condemned as satanic, and they were right. In Zulu society, the sys
tematic diminishing of the patriarch in the home and in society resulted in a ho
st of social ills, including the new, alarming, widespread growth of sexual prom
iscuity among Zulu girls, where pre-colonial Zulu men and women had been renowne
d for their morality and sexual modesty.
The clearest illustration of White Supremacys conquering of Black MANHOOD after c
onquering the Black Man himself is in the very name Shona: this is not the indigen
ous name of that collection of peoples of (what is now called) Zimbabwe. It has
been suggested by Chenjerai Shire, himself a so-called Shona, that the name is the
feminine version of the Gaelic male name Sean. Thus, by self-identifying with thi
s name Shona peoples have internalized a masculinity designed to place them in emas
culated, subordinated relations with the colonial power (Men Dont Go to the Moon, 14
7). In other words, the Shona were covertly feminized and they internalized this f
eminization.
The exact same processes are operative against the Black Man and Woman in Americ
a. The Black Man has been conquered, his woman has been robbed of respect for hi
m (because he has been robbed of respect worthiness), and as the final step Blac
k MANHOOD is being reconstructed and reconstituted: that is why you have so much
talk about new Black masculinities, from Jada Smiths dress to Dr. Mark Anthony Nea
ls book, The New Black Man. In the home, in the church, and even in the mosque many
Black Women tend to reflect (mostly subconsciously) the ideas of the White Male
elite. And when there is a Black man present she reflects these ideas and ideal
s onto him. This is one reason why the proverbial Black Male/Female Relationships
are so acrimonious: because the Black Male and the White Man are locked in confl
ict, so there can be no real or lasting peace between the Black Male and the Bla
ck Female that reflects the ideology and sentiment of the White Man, unless that
Black Male accepts the emasculated, subordinated role that is approved for him.
As my Wife would say: "The Black Woman is the new White Man."

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