Chapter 6:
Justified Paranoia: The War Against Us
Pre-Reading Glossary
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Radical Political Discourse
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Pan Africanist
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Garveyite
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Complexity
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Contradictions
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Warship
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New World Order
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Apparatus
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Institutional Racism
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Systemic White Supremacy
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Mass Incarceration
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Criminalization
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Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO)
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Sabotage
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Incarcerate
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Mass Incarceration
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Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
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Genocide
Essential Question
How does understanding systemic White Supremacy and Institutionalized Racism provide the clarity we need to fight strategically and courageously?
Comprehension Check
Question 1
Where do Mawuli and Butch search for a book to guide the first Black history study group on the USS Forrestal, an American warship?
Question 2
Why was Know Thyself more than just a bookstore? What other valuable experiences would the young Mawuli and Butch gain from their visit?
Question 3
How does Mawuli’s understanding of White Supremacy evolve from a vague gut feeling into a working definition that gives him the clarity needed to fight strategically and courageously?
Question 4
Why do you think Mawuli is so deeply impacted by Brother Del’s “presentation of the irrefutable and diabolic efforts of genocide against people of African and Native American descent”?
Question 5
At the end of this chapter, Mawuli states, “for us to build an alternative system, a new and better world where Black people are safe and Black lives are sacred; we must fully understand the one in which we currently live.” What is Mawuli’s purpose in ending Chapter 6 with this statement?
Question 6
What is the danger in not analyzing racism and white supremacy as systemic and institutional, or as Mawuli writes, “just my personal skirmishes with racism?”