Black Colleges Profiled as Suspected Havens for "Extremists"
[Summary] Don't let the apolitical facades fool you. Virginia's four Black colleges are hotbeds of "militancy and rebellion" and magnets for "a wide variety of terror or extremist groups." So says a government-funded outfit called the Virginia Fusion Center, which also cautions against the national security dangers inherent in diversity. "While the vast majority of these individuals are law-abiding, this ethnic diversity also affords terrorist operatives the opportunity to assimilate easily into society, without arousing suspicion." Safe, secure communities are uniformly white and English-speaking.
There aren't many other places you will hear about this bogus homeland security report--in rather sharp contrast to the accurate report released just over two weeks ago--"Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" (pdf)--which discussed very real potential threats posed by rightwing extremists, including white supremacists, getting whipped up back into their 1990s/Clinton Era anti-government frenzy. that was when Iraq War vet Timothy McVeigh spearheaded the terrorist bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, the most devastating single act of terrorism inside the US in decades, right up until 9/11.
That earlier report was savagely attacked by movement conservatives for supposedly "profiling conservatives" as terrorists (Michelle Malkin, Washington Times: "the Obama Homeland Security report is an overarching indictment of conservatives.}) even though the word "conservative" did not appear in the report. They also attacked it for supposedly citing returning veterans as potential terrorists (like Timothy McVeigh, no?), (Malkin: "the report relies on the work of the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center to stir anxiety over 'disgruntled military veterans'") when the report actually said--directly under the heading "Disgruntled Military Veterans" "DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat."
In short, the DHS "Rightwing Extremism" report was attacked with a typical onslaught of rightwing lies and distortions--and the Clinton Obama Administration ended up apologizing for what they had not actually done.
Here, on the other hand, the same Homeland Security apparatus (though not the federal department directly) has produced a truly baseless report that does rely on group stereotyping, in sharp defiance of the actual entities being discussed, and there's barely a blip on anyone's radar, at least so far. It couldn't be because the targets here are black, could it? No, of course not. Just not possible in today's "post-racial" America.
Those deep thinkers in the Homeland Security Department are paying good money for some very bad advice on what constitutes a threat to American society. An inkling of the kind of madness that passes for research at Homeland Security, is provided by a recent report to the Virginia State Police. The report, which emanates from the basement offices of something called the Virginia Fusion Center, claims that "a wide variety of terror or extremist groups" have ties to the Hampton Roads region of the state. Specifically, the report claims that the area's two historically Black universities are virtual magnets for terrorists and "extremists" - as are the two Black universities in the Richmond area.
For those who are familiar with the four schools - Norfolk State University, Hampton University, Virginia State University in Petersburg and Virginia Union University in Richmond - the very thought of them as havens for "extremist" politics is laughable. Political action is not what these schools are known for. And that's too bad. But the Fusion Center, whoever they are, appears to believe that Black colleges are by definition hotbeds of militancy and rebellion. I wish that were true, but it's not. It appears the researchers at Virginia's Fusion Center believe that Black institutions are inherently suspect. The Homeland Security Department is paying these guys millions of dollars a year to give vent to their own racist paranoia - and to sic the political bloodhounds on a bunch of apolitical Black students.
This is, of course, a pattern that goes back as far as records can be found. Some of the earliest examples of such thinking? Black slaves who wanted to learn how to read in order to read the Bible. There is, of course, a germ of logic to this visceral white supremacist fear of black learning, no matter how apolitical: once you start reading, or thinking in any way, shape, or form, there's always a chance that something unforeseen could pop up. Insted of reading how slaves should obey their masters, you could read the part about the Jews held captive in Egylt, and get all sorts of wrong ideas. So they do have a point.
But not much of one, considering what good drones most educated classes turn out to be.
And here's how that logic would play out today, as Ford goes on to explain it:
The creeps at the Fusion Center see security dangers in diversity, which they believe creates special national security perils. The Hampton Roads region of Virginia has attracted a wide diversity of population from all parts of the globe. The Fusion Center report says, "While the vast majority of these individuals are law-abiding, this ethnic diversity also affords terrorist operatives the opportunity to assimilate easily into society, without arousing suspicion." The statement reveals the screaming racist posing as a researcher. Clearly the report's authors believe that the safest communities, national security-wise, are those that are uniformly white and English-speaking. Presumably, in such surroundings it's hard for the "dangerous" people to hide in a crowd. The presumption seems to be that dangerous people are not white, and white people are not dangerous. White communities are the ones that need protecting, while the non-white or diverse communities represent some degree of danger.
After 8 years of Bush/Cheney utterly failing to deal with the terrorist threat of al Qaeda, we are still mired in this deeply counter-productive kind of thinking, with it's clear and obvious racist, ethnocentric elements that lie at the very core of the problem. For if we actually lived out our egalitarian creed, we would never have created the preconditions that terrorists were able to exploit to turn around and attack us in the first place.
But, of course, we can't see that, because we can't see white supremacy at all. At best, we can--sporadically, at least--see "racism," and when we do, we have a disturbing tendency to only--or at least primarily--see those who are the targets, or victims. And so the story that Black Agenda Report focuses on here is thought of as a "black story", if indeed it is thought of at all. It is not seen as part of an all-pervasive pattern, which is at it's heart a white problem, since it is, after all, white people who are the driving force behind white supremacy.
