Human Rights begins with Humanity. We cannot support universal human rights, if we do not recognize people different from us as fellow human beings. Human right activists cannot support those who dehumanize others and claim that others are actually NOT “natural human beings.” Yet this foundational issue of respecting fellow human beings, as actual human beings, has become a challenge in the United States of America.

Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.)’s foundational support is for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). 70 years ago, world leaders called for a new universal human rights to challenge the “barbarous acts” of the past, with a commitment to equality, dignity for all – based on a shared foundation of humanity.

The barbarous acts in the past has also included persecution of people of color denying them rights, and oppression of women and denying them rights. The United States of America (and other nations) must also continue to be accountable and responsible for its role in slavery of African-Americans and others, particularly in the 16th through the mid 19 centuries. Wrong is wrong. Americans must never forget that barbarous acts are not only barbarous, when they are done by some other nation. We are ALL Responsible for equality and liberty, and the shared human rights of dignity for all fellow human beings.

R.E.A.L. and its leaders always have stood for those working for such equality and dignity for fellow human beings. R.E.A.L. is a non-partisan organization. R.E.A.L.’s support for half of the American people, with women’s rights without qualification, has never been viewed as a “political” issue to R.E.A.L.

Women’s Rights are Human Rights. Women’s Equality is our commitment to Equality. We support women’s rights, racial justice, not only because it is right, but most importantly because these are our fellow Human Beings.

On January 14, 2019, the “Women’s March” group President Tamika Mallory again defended her support for Nation of Islam (NOI) extremist leader Louis Farrakhan. For some time, this has been an issue of public controversy when Tamika Mallory publicly (and repeated again today on ABC television) that Mr. Farrakhan was the “Greatest of All Time” (aka “GOAT”). The controversy raised was due to Mr. Farrakhan’s repeated and continuing Anti-Semitic hate statements against the Jewish public. Tamika Mallory indicated that her support for Louis Farrakhan was not for all of his words, but for what Mr. Farrakhan has done for black Americans.  R.E.A.L. is more deeply concerned about the legacy of hate, rejection of equality, promotion of violence, and and rejection of even the very reality of “humanness” to other races, that Mr. Farrakhan has DONE to too many vulnerable black Americans who have needed a voice of hope, love, and dignity.

R.E.A.L. takes unamibuous stands on human equality. Mr. Farrakhan has freedom of expression and free speech; this is not only under the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights, but also a fundamental part the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19. We do not simply defend freedom of expression for those we like and those like us, but for all of our fellow human beings.

R.E.A.L.’s challenge to NOI’s Louis Farrakhan is not about “freedom of expression” – but about respecting that our fellow human beings actually are “human beings.”  To be responsible for equality, we must accept the foundational equality that we are all, in fact, actually “natural human beings.”  Mr. Farrakhan does not believe this.

Human Rights begins with Humanity.

The long history of Louis Farrakhan’s Anti-Semitic hate statements, praise for Adolf Hitler as a “great man,” and hate comments against Jewish people may be known by many. Yet that is where the challenge to Mr. Farrakhan’s ideology of hate stops. among too many critics. This focus alone completely misses the point, and the issue that women’s rights activists must address with Women’s March President Tamika Mallory. Louis Farrakhan’s ideology of hate is not limited to Jewish people.

NOI leader Louis Farrakhan rejects the very humanity of white, caucasian race as “natural human beings.” These are not some rash “remarks” or statements made in “bigotry” or “anger” by NOI leader Louis Farrakhan. This is a well-organized, well-documented ideology that rejects that people with a white race are actually not “human beings.”

NOI leader Farrakhan expresses an ideology that an evil scientist “Yakub” grafted artificial beings of “white devils” from black human beings. Mr. Farrkhan does not view this as a “myth” or a “legend,” but as a fact, in his NOI teachings.  Mr. Farrakhan has repeatedly expressed such views of dehumanizing individuals who are white, as not “natural” or “real” “human beings.

Human Rights begins with Humanity.

As the NOI leader Farrakhan stated in the Chicago, Illinois Mosque Maryam to his African-American followers, “the white man is not the real man. He’s a MADE human being from you…” and tells his followers that the “white man” is a “grafted” race from “Yakub.” He then views that the “white man” was driven to the caves in Europe, and he dehumanizes them as animals. Mr. Farrkhan dehumanizes white race human beings by comparing them to animals, claiming how white human beings like to crawl on all four like animals, and even “he grew a little tail” and claiming hair on their arms comes from “their days in the caves.”

To the Women’s Rights movement, how can we promote equality for women, with a leader promoting an individual who actively promotes that only people of his race are actually “human beings”?

Human Rights begins with Humanity.

In the debate on the NOI’s extremism leadership, there is discussion on his Anti-Semitism, his calls for violence, support for Adolf Hitler,  hate language, death threat against black American journalist, and incitement of those involved in violence and terrorism in the U.S. in Fresno, Dallas, Baton Rouge.

But all of this debate ignores the foundational issue.

If we do not respect others as actually “human beings,” we cannot support their equality, dignity, and human rights.

Human Rights begins with Humanity.

It is past time for the Women’s March to make an uncategorical rejection of Mr. Farrakhan’s views, not just due to his Anti-Semitism, but foundationally on rejecting the racist views of NOI’s Louis Farrakhan in rejecting the very humanity of people of other races.  R.E.A.L. urges Mr. Farrakhan to reject a hate, so terrible and all-consuming, that it would go so far as to reject that people of other races are not even natural human beings.  R.E.A.L. can imagine the pain, bitterness, and frustration that would allow such hate to seem normal and even reasonable.

But the great human rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. taught the American people: “Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity…. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

Hate is not the answer.

Our support for our fellow human beings as a part of the natural family of humanity must be a starting point for any movement to improve and enhance human rights.  Human rights activists who accept an ideology that some are “less” of a human being than others, reject our shared universal human rights, equality, and dignity.

Choose Love, Not Hate – for all of your fellow Human Beings.