Black genocide or a black extinction scenario usually takes the form of a genocide conspiracy in which whites (and sometimes Jews as well) are covertly killing off the black population en masse. This often takes the form of tainted food or medical supplies intended to spread disease or induce sterility among the black population, à la Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
Many of the elements of these conspiracy theories can be found among the more extremist black charismatic preachers of the South and urban North of the United States after that country's Civil War. One of the most popular was F.S. Cherry of the Black Hebrew Israelite sect. Cherry laid out a sort of prototypical version of Afrocentrism as well as introducing aspects of anti-Semitism and apocalyptic visions of a race war (which he prophesied would occur in the year 2000) into extremist black ideology.
AIDS denialism and related conspiracies are probably one of the most popular components of the "black genocide" theory. The disproportionate effect that AIDS has had on the black population has led to conspiracy theories that the disease was introduced by the CIA or some other infamous organization in an attempt to kill off blacks. This conspiracy theory has had severe effects in Africa. There, it often cross-pollinates with Big Pharma-related conspiracy theories. The most infamous case of this was South Africa's Thabo Mbeki's denial of the HIV/AIDS connection, which led to over 300,000 preventable deaths.
Inducing sterility in black men is another common theme.[note 1] One of the more well-known incidents of this idea gaining popular traction was the "Tropical Fantasy scare" of the early 1990s. Rumors and fliers were passed around claiming that the soft drink Tropical Fantasy contained a secret ingredient that would cause sterility in blacks and that the beverage was actually bottled by the Ku Klux Klan.
Abortion as an alleged tool of black genocide is a conspiracy theory generally specific to pro-life activists (as well as some black supremacist and black nationalist groups, including the Nation of Islam). This one works backward from the data showing that black women are more likely to have abortions than white women. Therefore, abortion is secretly a eugenics plan to eliminate the black population, no matter if the black population has progressively increased!
This probably has something to do with the fact that Planned Parenthood's founder Margaret Sanger endorsed eugenics (as did many American intellectuals at the time), although she insisted that it be voluntary and not based on race (something omitted by most critics). In any case, the group as it currently exists certainly no longer endorses these beliefs.
Black supremacists such as Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party throw anti-Semitic conspiracies into the stew as well. This often involves ripping off ideas from older sects such as the Black Hebrew Israelites as well as recycling ideas popular among neo-Nazis and shoehorning Jews into the historical narrative as the "real" perpetrators behind instances of oppression of blacks, such as the idea that the Jews masterminded the slave trade.
While the historical oppression of blacks has been at the heart of these conspiracy theories, two incidents of real conspiracies in particular in the US seem to drive many of them.
The first is the aforementioned Tuskegee experiment, in which hundreds of black men were unwittingly recruited into a secretive study of syphilis in return for free (albeit limited) health care and food. They were already infected with syphilis but not told this, while being assured that the "treatment" would cure or prevent a made-up ailment the examiners diagnosed them with. Syphilis was curable at the time, and while the cure was basically "infect with other disease which kills syphillis"[note 2] it was still much better than the dementia and debilitation of advanced syphillis. Even when a much safer cure, penicillin, was discovered and made any purpose for the study absolutely moot, the patients were not informed. Nearly all of the men went on to die horrific deaths as their conditions worsened, but not before infecting others, including their spouses and children.
The second was the discovery of COINTELPRO, an FBI program that infiltrated civil rights groups such as the NAACP, among others. While it would make sense for the FBI to investigate any large organization, especially ones that had been receiving funding from the Russians and in the groups that had long been involved with commies , COINTELPRO often went beyond observing and into the actual realm of criminal activity, ranging from assaults and burglary to actual murder.
Millions of black people died as a result of slavery, however, unlike the Nazi Holocaust where the slave labor was incidental to the main goal (killing people) here the main goal was the slave labor and killing people was incidental. There were also quite notable differences in survivability of enslavement from time to time and place to place. During the last 50 to 60 years of slavery in the US, there was no legal importation of slaves to the US and thus the "supply" had to be "self-sustaining" hence too big a dieoff rate was not desirable. Meanwhile in other eras and places a slave who survived the passage and the first two years of slavery was actually among the "lucky" minority as most didn't.
Black/African people were subject to genocide by white people during the Herero and Nama genocide in German South-West Africa.
↑ These conspiracy theories are brilliantly parodied in the blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite.
↑ Malaria causes the body to raise the temperature to a point which kills syphillis, at which point the cure, quinine, was administered to the victim patient. As malaria is quite deadly, this brutal cure is not available for the extremely young, the elderly, or people suffering from the advanced effects of a debilitating disease such as syphillis; intentionally failing to inform a patient of a syphillis condition effectively eliminates the possibility of using this cure and might as well be murder. And while, yes, many African Americans are immune to malaria and thus this cure would've been unavailable regardless, many more are not immune and thus could've been saved.
↑ Benjamin Sevitch. When Black Gods Preached on Earth: The Heavenly Appeals of Prophet Cherry, Daddy Grace, and Father Divine. Journal of Communications and Religion.
↑ Didier Fassin and Helen Schneider. The politics of AIDS in South Africa: beyond the controversies. BMJ 326: 495, 1 March 2003.
↑ See the Wikipedia article on African American § Demographics.
↑ For a full treatment of this particular idea, see Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight by Eli Farber.
This page was last modified on 6 November 2018, at 09:08.