Minnesota Not-So-Nice?
David Weigel | November 6, 2006, 11:25am
Minnesota politician Keith Ellison
grabbed headlines back in September, when he won the Democratic primary to replace Martin Sabo. The 14-termer Sabo represented the heart of Minneapolis, a district that voted 71-28 for Kerry over Bush. That, apparently, was that - Ellison, a former Nation of Islam activist, would become the first Muslim to serve in Congress.
While polling indicates that Minnesota Democrats are going to notch huge victories across the state, Ellison's support is surprisingly weak. A weekend
Survey USA poll shows Ellison winning with only 49 percent of the vote. The main reason: Democratic defections to the energetically-named
Tammy Lee. Prominent Democrats who worked for Sabo have endorsed her over Ellison, as has Tim Penny, the former Democratic congressman who used to be the party's point man on Social Security privatization (back before they were against it). Twenty-three percent of Democrats, the same number of whites, and 19 percent of liberals back Lee.
None of this suggests that Ellison could actually
lose. Actually, the tolerance this 71 percent white district is showing for a black Muslim would have been unthinkable 10, 20 years ago. Still, why are a sizable number of liberal Democrats gunshy about pulling the lever for a Muslim? Is Ellison just uniquely controversial (as the
Powerline dudes have been insisting with a fury that makes Dan Rather feel like he got off easy)? Once Democrats are no longer scrambling for their very survival as a party, are they going to take another look at a voter bloc that's
only supporting them because of the botched war in Iraq?
Jay J | November 6, 2006, 12:29pm | #
Not sure if the guy is still a member of the Nation of Islam or not, cuz that is very different than just being a mainstream Muslim. Who knows, maybe it would be the same if any other black Muslim was running, but in this case, a Nation of Islam candidate should rightly be shunned by most people, unless he's running against Ann Coulter or something, then you've got a real dilemma.
I may be beating a dead horse, but the Nation of Islam officially believes that white people were living on "all fours" in caves when black people ruled a civilized earth. A dissident black scientist created a "bleached" race of people, and eventually God decided that this bleached race would rule the earth for 7,000 years, but that the black man would eventually overtake this evil race (i.e. white devils) and rule the earth in glory once again.
I can't say whether or not any particular NOI member today believes that, but it is what Malcolm X was taught, though he denounced it after his pilgrimage to Mecca. Not surprisingly, the NOI doesn't emphasize this part of their doctrinal past, and for all intents and purposes, it may not be nearly as important as it once was, but it hasn't been officially denounced, apologized for, or changed.
All this may be common knowledge, and any ole black Muslim may be getting similar treatment, but a Nation of Islam member running for Congress in a white district should be getting a hard time, just like an admitted white-supremacist should if he were running in a predominantly black district.
BTW, the NOI nowadays is much more specifically anti-Semitic than generally anti-white.
