by Sultan Muhammad – -Guest Columnist-
“Why does the Devil keep our people illiterate? So that he can use them for a tool and, also, a slave. He keeps them blind to themselves so that he can master them. Illiterate means ignorant.” —The Supreme Wisdom Lessons, Lost-Found Muslim Lesson No. 1, Question and Answer No. 7
A recently implemented history curriculum in public schools in America has ignited controversy and deep dissatisfaction from wide-awake Black parents.
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While President Donald Trump axed federal funding for what is called Critical Race Theory (CRT), under Executive Order 14190, the “Never Again Education Act” (Public Law 116-141).
Which is a United States federal law enacted on May 29, 2020, provides funding and resources to support Jewish Holocaust education programs in schools across the nation.
Its purpose, according to its supporters, is to improve awareness and understanding of the Jewish Holocaust and the lessons to be learned from it to prevent future genocide, hate, and bigotry.
In stark contrast, Black history, which is truncated and bundled under the umbrella of CRT, is only mandated in 12 states, while approximately 30 states have adopted mandatory Jewish Holocaust curriculum.
The Jewish Holocaust occurred between 1941-1945 in Europe, particularly Germany, while the Black Holocaust, which is continual, began in 1555 and is real American history to this day.
Harvard Law School’s first Black tenured law professor and civil rights activist, Derrick Albert Bell Jr. (1930 – 2011), is considered the “father’ of the substance of Critical Race Theory, although the terminology was coined by educational scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Several other scholars have continued to contribute to the concept, and today opposition to it has been led by President Trump and his now-Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
Bell recognized racial equality is “impossible and illusory” and that racism in the U.S. is permanent. According to sources, he concluded “that civil-rights legislation will not on its own bring about progress in race relations; alleged improvements or advantages to people of color tend to serve the interests of dominant White groups.”
In most cases, this watered-down contemporary version and the continual pursuit of true Black history have generally netted a token month of history to calm dissatisfaction, and even that commemoration is slowly disappearing in many schools.
Although no holocaust is acceptable among civilized human beings, the question arises who would mathematically, morally, or sensibly suggest that a people who have suffered, here in America, unmatched cruelty and death, should ignore the 470 years of their own suffering and immerse themselves, exclusively, in another people’s suffering?
While Jewish Holocaust education is being widely recognized as essential, Black parents argue that the curriculum’s depth and exclusivity raise troubling questions when the suffering of Blacks in America is the worst holocaust visited on human beings.
“This is not about minimizing the Holocaust,” said one educator who requested anonymity. “It’s about asking why Black suffering is being treated as optional or controversial, while other histories are mandatory and celebrated.”
Some worry that the curriculum’s immersive focus on the Jewish Holocaust could lead Black students to develop greater sensitivity to others’ suffering, while remaining disconnected from their own historical and current actual trauma.
This type of disconnection does not allow future generations of Black students to even think about finding their own solutions to the many problems experienced in Black life.
A most significant question that can be raised here is a question asked of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad in February of 1934, why does the enemy “keep our people illiterate?”
The answer is short, impactful and pregnant as a study. His reply, “So that he can use them for a tool and, also, a slave. He keeps them blind to themselves so that he can master them. Illiterate means ignorant.”
According to Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, “ignorant” means lacking knowledge or information. … It can describe a general lack of education or a specific lack of knowledge about a particular subject and is often used in the phrases “ignorant of something” or “ignorant about something.”
In this case, it is the knowledge of self and the continued effort to keep a whole people in that condition. From this answer, it is also implied that there is a master who can only rule to the extent that the people he controls would not come into the knowledge of themselves.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan put it in that fine language of his, in these words:
“He who gives you the diameter of your knowledge prescribes the circumference of your activity.”
House Delegate Henry Berry, on January 20, 1832, while addressing the Virginia House of Delegates, said, “We must close every avenue through which light may enter [the slaves’] minds.”
These insights resonate with current fears that the “Never Again” curriculum may be part of a broader effort to control historical narratives and suppress self-awareness among marginalized communities.
In fact, it is clear that the average Black student may have a more general familiarity with the Jewish Holocaust of Europe than his own sojourn in the land of his own suffering here in America.
On December 10, 1996, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan offered divine insight into some of the underpinning messages in the movie, The Color Purple. He said:
“The rising up of black people brings about a fall of those that have oppressed them. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to us, that our rising force pulls apart and destroys a falling force.
“… If you agree with The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and with what you see with your eyes going on in the world, that this is the time that is written of in the Bible and Holy Qur’an as the resurrection of the dead? And, we do not mean cemetery dwellers.
We mean those who are mentally dead to the light and knowledge of God, self, the devil; the true religion of God; the true nature of themselves and they have been dead politically, dead economically, dead socially, with no power.”
Key in these types of “Never Again” curriculum are exercises in and recitation of parts of the Diary of Anne Frank, as an example of a horrific Jewish Holocaust story. In some curricula, students are even encouraged to act out the parts in a play written from the diary’s content.
While in the same schools, creating plays about Black freedom fighters would be banned as Critical Race Theory and school administrators could even face financial cuts to their education programs.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, determined further regarding messaging in “The Color Purple” that: “All the darker people, darker nations, now, you see a stirring of the bones in the valley. The dead are rising up. Now, if you were in power.
Stop a moment, put yourself in the shoes of those in power. If you were in power and you knew that your time to rule was limited and that as long as the masses remained asleep, you could continue to rule. What would your policy be? Your policy would be, your program would be keep the masses asleep by whatever means necessary? Am I truthful here?”
Why would it be so critical and non-mandatory for the true history of a suffering people to be taught daily, that they and all who study it can benefit from the worst condition ever suffered and declare to the world, “Never Again.”
All under the purview of this curriculum could learn from the most diabolical and extreme conditions over a term of centuries versus years. This is not to ignore or minimize the suffering of any holocaust. But the survival story of the Black man and woman of America is the greatest story of triumph and perseverance that has ever existed.
Knowing the truth and that which has been taught by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan would catapult Black students overnight to the “top of civilization.”
The Jewish Holocaust curriculum’s rollout has been quiet, and its reach may extend beyond U.S. borders. However, with limited public access and little input from parents or communities, questions remain about who decides what history is taught and why—and whose stories are deemed worthy of remembrance.
What controls do tax-paying parents hold over what their children are taught or what should be taught or what should not be taught to their children in public schools?
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”—Ephesians 6:12 (KJV).
We are at war for the minds of our children, who leave home in the morning and come back from school angry about their own existence, and whose truth is not taught in a curriculum designed by their peers. Never Again!
Brother Sultan Muhammad is a member of the Nation of Islam Research Group.