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Race & The Nation of Islam - Coggle Diagram
Race & The Nation of Islam
Black religious leaders in the early 20th century argued that the term "Negro" was born out of slavery and thus rejected it
Instead, these leaders provided racial identity alternatives to the government-mandated options
White people have always controlled race-making and controlled racial classifications
Types of religio-racial
identity classifications
Asiatic Muslims
Part of the Nation of Islam
Raceless children of God/human
Part of Father Divine's PM
Ethiopian Hebrews
Lost tribes of Israel that migrated to Ethiopia → many African Americans claimed this ancestry and were so committed to it that they would forego voting or census if this religio-racial classification was not honored
Many Black Americans rejected the classification of "Negro" on the census
Religion and race are linked, cannot be separated for many people
Father Divine
Movement of communal living
Chosen identity was often Moorish-American, not "Negro"
New diet to get away from slave food/Southern cuisine, to get back to what enslaved people would have eaten pre-slavery
People in the movement chose their own names to get away from slave names
In choosing a new name, members often had to forego civil rights, voting, census, anything that isn't allowed because chosen names not recognized legally
Members who join have to let go of their family ties
No medicine--> use their own mind to heal themselves
Father Divine became very patriotic
Became interested in electoral politics
belief that racial classifications were the creation of the devil
Cults/New religious movements born in the early 20th century
Black Americans asserted identity through draft cards, census forms, voting, etc
Moorish science temple of America
Identify as Moorish-American, not African American
“Leaders taught [that Negro] was a false category created for the purposes of enslavement and subjugation, but offered alternative identities for individual members and black people as a whole” (p.5)
“In rejecting Negro racial identity, leaders and members of these groups did not repudiate blackness or dark skin but, rather, endowed it with meaning derived from histories other than those of enslavement and oppression” (6)
Black people converting to Islam an Judaism, but some concerned about the decline of the Black church→ many reject Christianity in exchange for other cults