Al-Qaeda Calls Obama "House Negro"

I find this bizarrely funny:

[Ayman] Al-Zawahri says in an audio message, which appeared on militant Web sites Wednesday, that Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X. He calls Obama a "house negro."

The audio plays over still pictures of al-Zawahri, Malcolm X praying, and Obama with Jewish leaders.

Update from John "Not a Cultist" Cole:

Interesting use of terms, and it made me wonder. We don’t really know who these folks are, just what we see on videotapes. I propose we shoot Ralph Nader and see if these tapes stop.

Comments

[upyernoz]

he actually called him a slave ('abeed). i find it really interesting that the al qaeda translator would take a phrase like "'abeed al bayt" ("slave of the house") and turn it into "house negro". i think it actually captures the sense of the phrase pretty well, including the implicit racial connotations, even though none of the arabic words taken alone require any reference to race. the entire phrase, taken together, clearly was racial.

it's actually quite an impressive translation job. whoever wrote the subtitles to the video did a really good job at finding an appropriately equivalent slur to the original arabic phrase.

[Mithras]

The full video has long excerpts of Malcolm X talking about "house negroes". The translator is just quoting him.

[upyernoz]

ah. so maybe they just copies the arabic phrase used in the arabic subtitles of the malcolm x video.

so much for my respect for al qaeda's official translators! they're just cribbing off of someone else's work after all

[Mithras]

I assumed, perhaps wrongly, the same person did the English-to-Arabic translation for the Malcolm X video. (Note that not all of the Malcolm X clips are subtitled - just the crucial part about "house negroes".) So maybe it was creative after all. Is there a good translation of "Negro" into Arabic? And am I remembering rightly that calling someone a "slave" in Arabic has insulting connotations?

[upyernoz]

Is there a good translation of "Negro" into Arabic?

the short answer is "yes" but the longer answer is: i'm not sure.

there are racial slurs in arabic. i don't know all of them and apparently they vary a lot from region to region. (apparently in the some bedouine dialects of north africa, the word for "blue" is a racial slur)

plus, the word "negro" in the u.s., and especially a phrase like "house negro" can only really be understood in the context of our own cultural history. my understanding is that the "house negro" was the black slave who was used as a servant in the master's house, as opposed to doing harder labor in the fields. because "house negros" were treated better, they were viewed as being more allied with the master than the other slaves. so the term is both demeaning to the person called "house negro" on its own terms, and also has a sense of being a traitor to one's own people. while there certainly is a long history of slavery in the arab world, i'm really not sure if there was an equivalent cultural concept in any native arabic phrase.

[Glomarization]

noz: traitor to one's people

As an added detail, my further understanding of the term was that it suggested that a person got to be a house slave as payment for betraying the field slaves: revealing an escape plan or rebellion, reporting shirking, helping to punish other slaves, etc.

[Mithras]

Cf., Field Negro, Esq.

[Glomarization]

"Cave Negro" -- bwah-ha-ha-ha! I can't believe I hadn't heard that before.