CITATION
Rasheed, Muhammad. "Letters From Facebook Jail." Cartoon. The Official Website of Cartoonist M. Rasheed 27 Jan 2018. Pen & ink w/Adobe Photoshop color.
CLICK & SUBSCRIBE below for Artist's Descriptions of #MRasheedCartoons images!
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Muhammad Rasheed - So this time I'm banned for 30 days, which as a long-time fan of the old Deputy Dawg cartoon made me chuckle when I saw the FB message. The titular character used to hand out 30-day sentences like candy on that show, so I heard his voice in my head as I read it (it also caused me to do my DD impression all day, of questionable accuracy since it kept transforming into a Paul Puma impression). Anyway, I submitted my report protesting the ban. Hopefully it kicks in and I'm able to return to my regular posting schedule on my M. Rasheed Art Page.
The funniest part about all of this to me, is how the white conservatives like to pretend they are SUPER-PATRIOTS! who are all about the Constitution and the rights of the US Citizen, etc., etc., when in reality they have placed themselves in the role of thought police who want to control the flow of information and force it to tell the pro-white supremacist narrative. I'm personally all about Freedom of Expression, and will willingly trade with anybody on any topic, both for my own knowledge and to use the data as fuel for my art. So their new habit of getting me FB banned out of some petty sense of tit-for-tat -- and the deletion of my Facebook Art Page -- has another goofy layer on top of it outside of the raw hypocrisy of the performance.
Facebook is my social media homeroom, so it sucks being unable to respond to the comments there now. My solution will be to copy/paste the comments into this "Letters From Facebook Jail" space and address them here. So peek in regularly for updates.
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Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Alexander,
I have no hate towards whites. I do have total hatred towards your precious systemic racism w/white supremacy attachment though. The nature of racism is whites plundering Blacks to build up their own political, socio-economic class, so the "access" you believe I'm "clamoring for" is no less than protesting your traditional wrongs that I may be free to enjoy my people's own self-empowerment without further sabotage from you lot.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Alex,
It turns out that generations and generations of white people wearing hostile evil faces has made me lose my mind. lol Please tell your folks to knock it off and straighten out their faces. Thanks.
If you go through your life pretending racism is a fiction, and all Blacks who protest systemic racism are crazy, then you are the problem with the world. Take a bow.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Chuck, Jose, Nate & Sam, et al.,
The cartoon is based on the alt-right profile written by Abi Wilkinson, in which she points out that part of their modus operandi is to pretend that they aren't racist when in public. This is laughable since they are really shitty at it and seemingly unaware of all of their own blaring racist tells, which is what I'm poking fun of in the cartoon. "But we were being very polite as we called for the genocide of all the mud people. I don't know what gave us away."
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Virosh & Jason,
The problem with this silly GOP political talking point is that it pretends the 2-party system has always looked the way it does today. Up into the very recent past, the Democrats used to be split up into 2 main factions: the pro-Civil Rights Democrats in the North, and the anti-Civil Rights Southern Democrats ("Dixiecrats"). Reagan actively courted the Southern Democrats, using the coded ("states rights") language that his racist campaign manager devised, and they all ended up 'converting' to GOP-ism en masse to become the good ole boy GOP we know-n-love today. So all of the voter suppression ID laws the modern day GOP supports is 100% a reflection of their racist Democrat roots, but from a different angle than what you are preaching here.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Sean,
In the context of the argument the quote was pulled from, I'm saying that I don't negatively judge white men based solely on "the color of their skin," which is just nonsense misdirection speak that racists use in their effort to pretend the very real evils of systemic racism are only in my head. My judgment of you is based on the evils you have done and continue to do in order to maintain the racist aristocracy you've created at my expense. The label of "race" is the smoke & mirrors concept you've developed to justify the evil actions you perform, and to pretend you aren't doing anything. The idea that the "label" of race is just something I'm unfairly holding onto, is just more of your devilment at work.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Stuart,
lol Meanwhile, I'm reading this from my 91st FB ban. Y'all are SOOO full of crap. hahahaha If the racists that are clearly triggered by my work didn't care as you claim, then I wouldn't be banned, would I, Stuart? Maybe you should leave all the thinking for the grown-ups over at the big table, hm? smh
At the very least, my job is to make the racists uncomfortable, because they prefer to live in their La-La Land Whitopia pretending they are the white-hatted good guys of history who've never done anything wrong. My work is designed to push their nose in their own shit and MAKE them think about their true role in the historic record of Western Society. I'm banned by red-faced, teary-eyed, triggered white conservatives (and white liberals who pretend they aren't anti-Black) so my cartoons are working. Now I just need MORE exposure. ;)
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Benjamin,
There were wealthy free Blacks during the very height of the slavery era, just as there is a wealthy Black upper class today. The problem isn't the poverty itself, but whites deliberately sabotaging Black people efforts to build wealth over generations and use the leverage for political and economic inclusion. For the last 150 yrs, whites have built up their own middle and upper middle classes by plundering the wealth of Blacks and exploiting their poor. This is the actual problem. Individual Blacks have never had a problem working hard and escaping poverty when they focus on that. The actual problem is YOU and your willing support of a system designed to uplift whites by stealing from Blacks.
Muhammad Rasheed - Wow. lol That one sounded personal, didn't it?
Dear Anthony,
Calm down before you give yourself a stroke. I am not a racist. Trust me I have never denied white people opportunities and/or economically excluded them from anything based on their racial classification or whatever else. I do hate white supremacy though. If that's why you are mad, then I suggest you get over it.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Wade,
It should be obvious (to a normal human anyway) that this cartoon wasn't designed to have a "ha-ha/he-he" type ending. Did you respond the same way whenever Bill Watterson would end some of his strips like that, with a thoughtful ending instead of humorous? Were you aware that cartoonists even had that kind of option? It turns out art is a lot more open & free than you seem to believe.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Ben,
I appreciate the conditioned support, but I am not allowing hate to distort my view of anything. The only thing I hate is the systemic racism and White Supremacist Ideology that all freedom-loving people should hate. These two asshats certainly don't represent the worst of it; they are just thug/henchmen level racists that Batman would take out with one punch while infiltrating the Big Bad's lair.
The slave trade has zero to do with Al-Islam the religion, as it is not supported in the Qur'an nor by it's founder Arab prophet (peace be upon him). Only raw greed drives the Arab slave practice, no different than it does among the judao-christian traders from the time of the West's Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade up to the current slavery 2.0 version of mass incarceration.
In the holy book of Islam -- a faith that is all about collecting good deeds so one may enter paradise -- the One God lists "freeing the slave" as one of the greatest good deeds the believers can perform. This religious trait alone almost wiped out slavery altogether pretty early on in Islam's history, but it was later brought back because the greed in men's hearts was unleashed and overwhelmed their piety. Despite the popular rhetoric of the day, slavery has nothing to do with religion itself. It is purely an anti-religious, greed-fueled economic system.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Jen,
That's not true. They did set up the original model of the Atlantic Slave Trade, having owned all of the initial apparatus involved (sugar cane plantations, ships, rum distilleries, West African port forts, etc.), but once the gentile whites got their hands on the system and went wild-eyed, drooling mad turning it into a super, mega-industry, the Jewish businessmen were mostly content to stay on the Wall Street speculative side of the incredibly lucrative slave economy, confining their "ownership" to company shares and the like. Relatively few decided to risk being on the hands-on side of slave ownership after the Revolutionary War when they took such massive losses.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Raymond & Lee,
So what? Was it Anthony Johnson's sole decision to permanently delegate the chattel slave status to Blacks in order to save poor whites from "the evils of white slavery?" That's the pact that the elite whites made with the poor whites that birthed the racist aristocracy we deal with today. Whites conspired across class lines to make Black the official "let's shit on them" class so that poor whites could be spared the slavery state... a pact that manifests today as the "promise to the white working class" political talking point. Anthony Johnson's actions, although selfish and evil in their own right, were confined to his own crazy estate in force and scope.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Joe,
The majority of slave owners are American for-profit anti-Black prison CEOs.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Jakub,
I find it interesting (and by "interesting" I mean "batshit insane") that in your critique of this cartoon, you simultaneously blame Blacks for the problems of racism while dismissing racism. You don't think it matters if someone deliberately sabotages a nation and cripples its people, while you project racist talking points at the people for not being pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and bettering themselves as if they are in that state through laziness and not the sabotage. I find it interesting that you also seem to recognize that Blacks AREN'T the barbaric savages of the stereotype, but are on the receiving end of the barbaric savages who want only to hoard the world's wealth & power for themselves.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Michael,
No, but pretending to give free money and aid while pocketing it and leaving the people to rot IS racist and exploitative.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dear Tyler,
Since only the racists benefit from never mentioning or challenging their evil, I'm actually doing the very opposite of encouraging racism by pushing their noses into it and forcing them to think about it. Getting racists triggered, and forcing them to come up with alternate ways to justify their evil is one of the ways to combat racism, as it forces the national Candid & Courageous Conversation that can eventually lead to some form of long overdue, once-n-for-all closure of some description. The race war you've mentioned very well may be that closure, since it took the American Civil War to grant me the rudimentary freedoms I currently enjoy. I think we both know that the racists will never willingly give up the benefits of their racist aristocracy, just as their ancestors refused to willingly give up the extremely lucrative slave institution.
There are FAR more poor whites on the gov assistance programs. Presumably to supplement their heroin addictions and food stamp fraud businesses.
Dear Daniel,
Within this society, Black people are economically excluded as a self-empowered political entity, forcing them to use all of their skills and talents to support their rival white culture. It's part of the "integration" scam that deliberately sabotages the efforts of an independent Black empowerment. Consequently, Blacks are forced to take the jobs you've listed just to have a basic life above the poverty line -- jobs that do little more than aid the oppressor in subjugating their fellow Blacks into a state ripe for further exploitation.
The historical record is full of Blacks working hard to make it, followed immediately by whites taking from them and plundering them to increase the wealth gap and prevent Blacks from coming together and using their wealth to elevate themselves as a group. The entire socio-economic class of Blacks who as a whole do little more than use their skills and talents to support white institutions are ultimately traitors to their own people.
Dear Jack, Bjarni & Lynn,
Your lack of respect for the lessons of history make you look foolish here. Remember the slaves fought in the American Civil War at odds even more lop-sided than they are now. Remember your ancestors had convinced themselves that it was impossible for the Blacks to show themselves as brave and canny warriors since you lot believed they were inherently designed to be chattel. The rudimentary freedoms I have today came directly from my ancestors' performance during the last civil war. lol All three of you sound crazy.
If you refuse to leave my people alone to build up our own wealth for our benefit and live free as full US citizens then of course a new civil war is not only a good idea, but it is the only option. Freedom is worth the spilling of blood.
All branches of the US military are heavily represented by Black people; many Blacks are combat veterans, and are far more experienced in battle than their ancestors were during the previous civil war. It seems like you all refuse to use basic logic and reason to formulate your racist opinions. We don't have to fire the first bullet; all we have to do is walk in our God-given freedom and refuse to play your games and you will attack to protect your white supremacist/anti-Black society. We will win again because ours is the righteous fight of the believing oppressed and have God on our side. We will stay in our current oppressed state as long as we foolishly believe that whites will somehow come to their senses and stop abusing us just because.
Dear Mikhail, Logan & Daniel,
As you can see in the cartoon itself, it's the white racist figure who is using the term "reverse racism," not my character. That's YOUR term, not mine. Are you even capable of basic comprehension of your own racist foolishness? Or is this just one of your very weak gaslighting efforts?
To be clear, there is no such thing as "reverse racism." Western society is fundamentally structured to plunder and steal from Black people to support the centuries old white racist aristocracy. Efforts of Blacks to break free from this evil system, no matter how small, trigger whites into behaving the way you do here, acting in a kneejerk panic to steal my Freedom of Expression rights away.
Please improve.
Dear Joel,
Do you walk around with a bag of strawman effigies that you toss around willy-nilly like Mardi Gras beads? Because that's all you've done here. None of what you've typed here aligns to any kind of reality. The alt-right isn't interested in "Black genocide" because whites need the subjugated Black class to exploit of their wealth. They NEED Blacks to be the lowest socio-economic group so the poorest most raggedy whites will never be in that slot. In other words, without Blacks being artificially held down in that slot, the poor whites would take their defacto proper place as the abused footstools of the white elite.
Dear Joel,
1.) I am very much anti-Trump administration, anti-vote suppression, and anti-white supremacy. This is the angle that my political cartoons take. Obviously all of these angry white trolls who came to get my Art Page deleted off of Facebook are far-right Trump supporters precisely because they didn't agree with my anti-far right Trump supporter message. lol Since my Freedom of Expression was attacked and my platform was removed because people exactly like you disagreed with it, that 100% made me a victim of you racist anti-American types.
I do think it's interesting that you think it's alright to attack me because you think you are a victim though.
Dear Javier,
I'm still trying to understand why people like you think this comment is relevant to anything, and why you think it's supposed to mean anything to me. Let's break it down:
- I posted an anti-racism cartoon that triggered a legion of white supremacist types who typically operate within a racist hive mind and support each other no matter what.
- Through sheer word of mouth, the cartoon spread around enough white supremacist circles to attract a sufficient number of their trolls to make anti-Black comments on my posts.
- The white supremacists who agree with the bolder trolls decided to 'Like' one of the anti-Black comments a troll made.
- Javier and other like-minds believe that the 'Likes' that the white supremacists provided in support of one of their own members somehow has a significant meaning more potent than the original cartoon that triggered them all into kneejerk action in the first place.
- You're an idiot. Take a bow.