Did the FBI Just Declare War on Black People?

Loving Your Blackness Could Make You a Target of the FBI

While White men are beating Black men on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, while a “lone” White wolf is shooting people from the Mandalay Bay Hotel, and while the word “terrorist” is hardly used to describe these men, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), under the leadership of the racist Attorney General Jeff Beauregard Sessions, has thought up a new way to oppress Black people. Despite the fact that there is no evidence of an organized “movement,” the FBI has described Black people that have rallied for racial equality and criminal justice reform as “Black Identity Extremists,” who pose a domestic terrorist threat to police officers.

Hold up! We have seen domestic terror threats, though there are those of limited intelligence, who cannot fathom them. The man who shot up an Orlando, Florida nightclub was a domestic terrorist. Dylan Roof, who worshipped with the parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. then murdered nine of them, was a domestic terrorist so highly regarded by law enforcement, that they bought him a meal from Burger King. The man I will not mention in Las Vegas was a domestic terrorist, but the FBI is manufacturing evidence to focus on African Americans, who embrace our Black identity and social activism.

“Foreign Policy,” the magazine and website that broke the story of this new classification of “woke” Black people, shared the FBI document online that links Black identity with extremism and threats to police officers. The document mentions Black Lives Matter, although the connection between Black Lives Matter and anti-police violence has not been established. For the FBI to identify “Black Identity Extremists” (BIE) as domestic terrorists is to declare war on Black people. After all, what does it mean to be a “Black Identity Extremist?” Does it mean we love our Blackness and refuse to back down when we are attacked? Does it mean that we revel in our identity and use every available platform (thank you, Colin Kaepernick) to lift our voices up against injustice? Why is this embrace of Blackness so frightening to melanin-deficient people? They prefer us silent, docile, grateful and acquiescent. They demand no such acquiescence from their melanin-impaired friends, who gleefully walk through civilized streets of places like Charlottesville and parry racist chants like “You will not replace us, Jews will not replace us!”

That’s domestic terrorism, Beauregard. Call it like it is, instead of inventing a Black movement that does not exist.

Andrew Cohen wrote about the FBI report for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and said that “there is no “BIE movement,” because it only exists in the barren minds of those within the Trump Administration that want you to believe that there is some sinister, Black force out there bent on attacking police officers. No journalists or academics have discovered and chronicled such a movement or its leaders. No such leaders have come forward to say they are a part of such a movement. No one has killed a cop in the name of such a movement. The only citations to the movement, Foreign Policy tells us, come from “internal law enforcement writings made over the past two months.”

Journalist Sam Fulwood III, writing for the Center for American Progress Action Fund news site ThinkProgress.com, describes the FBI report as an “ominous siren call coinciding with President Donald Trump’s penchant for stoking racial divisions in the country.” He says that “the administration views criminalizing communities of color as a way to shield police from scrutiny and score points with a base of White voters.”

We’ve walked down this path before. We can start with Marcus Garvey, who dared to dream of Black independence and paid a horrible price for it. Fast forward to the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party, and so many others identified as “enemies of the state.” J. Edgar Hoover submitted a five-line request to get Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s phone lines tapped, because he was an alleged Communist. Was Dr. King perceived as a “Black Identity Extremist,” because he preached about economic justice for all “and” for the rights of Black people?

The FBI report said that the “Black Identity Extremist” movement began after a Ferguson, Missouri police officer unnecessarily killed Michael Brown. Andrew Cohen noted that the FBI report listed six cases where so-called BIE perpetrators killed police officers. These cases were so isolated, that if these men had been White, they would have been classified, as Dylan Roof was, as mentally ill or troubled, and handed a Happy Meal from McDonald’s. Instead, the FBI figured out another way to demonize Black people.

Meanwhile, according to The Washington Post, 180 Black people have been shot and killed by police, so far, this year. Six instances of BIE folks allegedly (do we know they are BIE, or just crazy) killing police officers is a pattern, but 173 Black folks being shot by police officers is what? Business as usual?

This so-called BIE nonsense is diabolically racist and pathologically creative. It suggests that any Black person, who has issues with so-called law enforcement is suspect. I stand with my people, who choose to protest ignorance, ugliness and nonsense. Those who embrace their Black identity are not terrorists; we are healthily self-confident. We are at risk, as we have always been, when injustice prevails.

Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author, and Founder of Economic Education. Her latest book is Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy. Follow Dr. Malveaux on Twitter @drjlastword.