[Editor’s note: The following are excerpts from the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s address on the occasion of the 12th Anniversary of the Million Man March, titled, “Come Out of Her, My People” delivered from the Atlanta Civic Center on October 16, 2007.]
The Black male is in a very particular place of endangerment not only by environmental factors, but the Black man’s attitude, our ignorance, our savagery, are all lending to a plan, a conspiracy. The scientists say that when a species is endangered, the next stage is extinction. If the condition of the Black Male in particular is not checked and if God does not intervene, we will soon be extinct.
Now, both the Bible and Holy Qur’an speak of the problem, which Pharaoh and his chiefs faced with the booming population of the Children of Israel and the fear that God would restore those people and give them land.
According to the Holy Qur’an, I’m quoting now, the chiefs of Pharaoh’s people said, “Would you leave Moses and his people to make mischief in the land and forsake you and our gods?” Pharaoh said, “We will slay their sons and spare their daughters.
Surely we are dominant over them.” This scripture from the Holy Qur’an is verification of the same condition described in the first chapter of Exodus where Pharaoh’s answer to this question is the same. Pharaoh said, “If it be a son, then ye shall kill him but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.”
The fact is, that it was the design of Pharaoh and those with him to cause the extinction of the male children of the Children of Israel. That wasn’t accidental; that was a conspiracy. And since this destruction of the male in that day was by design and in the time of Jesus and Herod it was by design, so it is today.
Black middle class, crabs in a barrel
Some of us look around at American society and we see some Blacks doing well, making what we think is progress and wealth and prestige, and we say, “We’re moving on up now. Things aren’t so bad. Why look at Oprah, Barack Obama, P. Diddy, Tiger Woods, Clarence Thomas.
Look at Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Aren’t they clear signs of progress?” Much has been said about the growth of the Black middle class and how it appears we have finally turned the corner in our quest to attain the American dream. But is this real?
Is it one of the tricks of Pharaoh and his magicians? Is it designed to delay our attainment of the true Kingdom of God for His people? In reality we have the illusion, the trappings of progress, but little else to show for our 452 years in bondage as slaves and now as free slaves in North America.
Now, if we look at the proverbial crabs in a barrel, the crabs are trying to get up, but another crab is pulling the crab down. But just suppose somebody is at the top of the barrel looking at the crabs, watching the drama of the crabs. And suppose he or she says.
“Come, let us deal wisely with those crabs. Let’s take a few out of the barrel and put them at the top of the barrel and let them look back down on the other struggling crabs. If we do that it will give the other crabs the notion that they, too, can get out.”
But the crab that’s at the top of the barrel didn’t get out because of his own talent and ability alone. The crab got out because the master took him out and allowed him out for the master’s purpose!
Now, let’s look at the wealthy and the famous among us. They have become a buffer between the angry Black masses and White people of power and influence that have us looking at our own rich as though they have betrayed us, when the wise demons behind them have used them as a buffer to protect them from the anger of the poor White, the poor Black and the poor Brown.
That is why you can never be an effective spokesperson for the hurt of your people because if you displease the crab barrel master, you are afraid that he might put you back in the barrel and not pluck you out again. But God took me out of the barrel;
I don’t owe nothing to no master! I owe it all to God! And God will take us all out of the barrel; and He will never take one out, and not show the others that He can get them out too.
The enemy of the rise of our people has captured most of the Black intellectuals, the Black middle class, the Black moneyed people and told them, “Yes, you can fight for your people but only to a level that we approve of and you’d better not ever say, ‘come out of us.’ You will not be allowed to say that and you certainly will not be allowed to do that.”
