The Women of NOI and Conservative Values in Non-white Communities

I think it’s interesting how the author talks about white anxieties revolving the portrayal of the NOI community as extremely patriarchal and their women as subservient in their mission of a “racism against the whites”. It’s fascinating how some of these white people seem to only be able to believe in and conceptualize racism when it is directed at them, as opposed to acknowledging any type of structural racism they have championed. “With their women in check, strong Black Muslim men could shame emasculated white American men in crisis by exerting their own power and virility, thus signifying the imminent possibility of Black political and cultural insurgency”(92). This anxiety ignores that the NOI was specifically emulating the white patriarchy many had witnessed (91), and also the fact that as Black people had been put by whites on a completely different trajectory from them, what their family unit and cultural values looked like was bound to be different until actual equality would be achieved. I also found it interesting how the author brought up Cold War anxieties about race and gender–how the U.S. government wasn’t so keen on any Civil Rights Movement, but now the world was watching them. It undercut ideas of American exceptionalism of the “freedom” and “democracy” only found in the U.S., while they also actively had second-class citizens (89). If this was the freedom and democracy America promised, nations wouldn’t side with them over the Soviets when we eventually invaded their country (they didn’t want it anyway).