“There is no such thing as living in peace with White Americans. You and I have tried without success.”
—The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, “Message To The Blackman in America,” page 204
Curiosity and outrage erupted on social media recently when a Whites-only group announced plans for building more communities that outright bar non-White people. Currently, the group has two communities in the Arkansas Ozarks region:
A 150-acre parcel established in October 2023 and another piece of land established in January 2025, according to the organization’s website. Organization members are in the planning stages for a third community in the Ozarks region, a community in the deep South and two communities in the Appalachian Mountains region.
In interviews, the organization’s co-founder emphasized the need to control who their neighbors are. Not everyone was shocked, surprised or upset by reports of the establishment of a Whites-only enclave.
“I saw a Whites Only community mentioned on Instagram and people were offended. I wasn’t offended and I’m curious as to why so many black people are addicted to living near white folks in the first place,” Dr. Boyce Watkins, businessman and author, posted on X.
Throughout Black people’s over 400-year sojourn in America, Whites have subjugated Black people to slavery, suffering and death.
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, taught that integration is a hypocritical trick and that to survive and thrive, Black people must separate into a land or territory of their own. It is the best solution for both people, He taught.
“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said once that it is more important to teach separation than to teach prayer,” said the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, in a 2007 interview published in The Final Call.
“Allah (God) knows that we need prayer, but if we don’t separate from an enemy bent on our destruction, prayer alone will not help us to survive. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad points out to us in the scriptures of Bible and Qur’an that the day has arrived for our separation.
And the enemy has used integration as a hypocritical trick to make those of us who have been under his foot for 400 years think that our 400-year-old enemy has all of a sudden become our friend.
“We must wake up to the time and what must be done in such a time. It is not a time for integration; it is a time for us to separate from our former slave-masters and their children and go for self, do for self, and build a Nation under The Guidance of Almighty God,” Minister Farrakhan said.
In 2025, despite inroads in some areas, Black people still lag in various aspects of society and are disproportionately blocked from economic opportunities.
“We live in a nation that has in its motto, ‘E pluribus unum,’ out of the many one. However, when White folks set this up, they did not intend to set it up for the inclusion of the Native Americans and the Indians that they drove from the land and are now settled on reservations, and when they brought Black people over into America to be slaves.
They never intended to make us equal citizens. So, we should not be surprised or offended that some White people want to set up an exclusive town or area for Whites only,” Student Minister Ishmael Muhammad, Student National Assistant to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, said to The Final Call.
He brought to the forefront the program the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, laid out for Black people, called “The Muslim Program,” printed on the inside back page of The Final Call newspaper. The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad outlined “What The Muslims Want” and “What The Muslims Believe.”
He starts “What The Muslims Want” with:
“1. We want freedom. We want a full and complete freedom.
“2. We want justice. Equal justice under the law. We want justice applied equally to all, regardless of creed or class or color.
“3. We want equality of opportunity. We want equal membership in society with the best in civilized society.”
But because Black people are still deprived of these three essentials—freedom, justice and equality–then the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad writes:
“4. We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents were descendants from slaves, to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own—either on this continent or elsewhere. We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to provide such land and that the area must be fertile and minerally rich.
We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to maintain and supply our needs in this separate territory for the next 20 to 25 years—until we are able to produce and supply our own needs.
“Since we cannot get along with them in peace and equality, after giving them 400 years of our sweat and blood and receiving in return some of the worst treatment human beings have ever experienced, we believe our contributions to this land and the suffering forced upon us by White America, justifies our demand for complete separation in a state or territory of our own.”
The time for separation between Black and White has arrived. As economic conditions and political climate in the U.S. become more volatile and unstable, some Black organizations and individuals are exploring the creation of communities where Black people can live and thrive.
In 2023, Booker Washington, a Black real estate developer, opened a Black micro-community in College Park, Georgia, and opened another one in late July in Union City, Georgia.
“I realized that there was no desire to change the status quo. There was no desire to have the hard conversation. There just wasn’t a desire to change the values of these impoverished neighborhoods because it wasn’t us that would benefit,” he said in a video posted to his Instagram account in December 2023.
The Nubian Leadership Circle held a discussion around the theme, “Laying the Foundation For Our Own Black Nation,” at its 9th National Black Leadership Summit held on October 14, 2023. Participants discussed the importance of land ownership, farming and producing food.
“When the brothers and sisters talk about having land, farming, producing food, that’s one of the most wonderful things that we can do: Own land, and then feed ourselves from our own land,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said during his address at the summit.
In other messages, Minister Farrakhan warned Black people that it is impossible for Black and White people to get along in peace. In Part 38 of his 58-week lecture series,
“The Time and What Must be Done,” delivered in 2013, he used the example of the “transgenic seed” and “natural seed,” citing from a federal lawsuit filed against Monsanto, a company that was known for genetically modified seeds, in June 2011, saying coexistence between the two is impossible.
“If there is no coexistence between the natural seed and the transgenic (altered) seed, and the altered seed will destroy the natural seed, then the same is also true in our race relations! Because race relations will continue to get worse, because the government cannot provide food, clothing, shelter and jobs for us anymore!”
The Honorable Minister Farrakhan said. “As we sit around, waiting for somebody else to do this for us, we are making our former slave masters and their children angrier with us; and they are becoming completely disagreeable to live with in peace! And that is why we must be separated if we don’t want to continue to suffer great loss!”
Not only is separation “the only solution to our problem,” as stated by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad on page 36 of His book, “Message to the Blackman in America,” in a chapter titled, “Help Self Before Helping Others,” but it is also a Divine solution given by Allah (God).
“Here we have the solution by God for us to separate from our nearly 500-year oppressor and enemy, and separation is what God wants, and it is what He demanded through Moses with the Children of Israel. The demand that was made to Pharaoh was to let God’s people go.
God could not bless the Children of Israel as long as they were a part of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. So, He separated them, delivered them and gave them a land of their own so that they could be an independent nation,” Student Min. Ishmael Muhammad said.
In Part 44 of “The Time and What Must be Done,” Minister Farrakhan presented an example of other races and ethnicities who have set up their own communities and enclaves, including Chinese, Greeks, Koreans, Italians, the Irish, the Polish, Jews and West Indians.
While people of other nationalities have been able to set up separate but equal communities within America, the Black community has still been in a state of segregation rather than separation. Explaining the difference between “segregation” and “separation,” Minister Farrakhan said that separation is voluntarily done based on two equals.
“We lived through segregation, and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was very critical of our people wanting and demanding for desegregation so that we could be a part of the system, and we went from uptown to downtown, and in the desegregation.
We lost all of the businesses that we owned and operated, from motels, hotels, restaurants, insurance companies,” Student Min. Ishmael Muhammad explained. “We were thriving in doing for ourselves.
And now 60-70 years later, we are paying the price of not owning our own companies, factories, and we are left to seek jobs and employment by White folks.”
He echoed Minister Farrakhan in saying that many of the cities’ Black people live in are already segregated. “We live in Chicago, in one of the most segregated cities.
We are not complaining or offended by the Chinese who have Chinatown, and it would be difficult to find a Black person or Black family living in Chinatown, or where the Pakistanis and the Indians or the Arabs or the Greeks or the Polish;
Regardless of the ethnicity, these people have settled into neighborhoods and communities that they run and operate, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
So, we should not be offended that White folks want a town or neighborhoods that are right now already White and exclusive,” Student Min. Ishmael Muhammad said.
What is the process by which Black people can establish separate, thriving communities? It starts with separating from the politics, education and lifestyle of the larger White society, Student Min. Ishmael Muhammad said, based on the program of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
“When you go into the Chinese or Arab communities, or the Mexican communities, you see them practicing and living according to their norms, values and culture, and they have control of their neighborhoods. We have in Chicago aldermen.
We have Black police as well as firemen and all of these things, but we are too dependent on the system and not exercising the freedom that we have to set up and control our own schools, which is most important—the education of our children,” he said.
“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad demanded that we should be given the freedom to set up our own schools with our own teachers to teach our children. So, the separation here starts with coming out of the mind and the system of politics and education that we can do the things that other ethnicities are doing freely in their own communities.
“That process and the program that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has laid down for us is the way that we should go as a people, and there would be great, great improvement in the quality of life if we were to act on that program, and it would make our communities a decent and safe place for us to live,” he added.
“It’s being forced on us now, and the more that we try a different path and direction and go down the same road that we have been traveling for decades, expecting a different result.
The result that we are looking for is not going to come until we take the path and the direction that Allah has given to us through the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan,” he concluded.