When racism is discussed within American Muslim communities, there’s a tendency to assign Black Muslims the role of “identified patient”.

“We must stand in solidarity with our Black brothers and sisters!”

First of all...

Let’s break down this term “identified patient”:
Per wiki - (don’t @ me)
“This is a clinical term often heard in family therapy... It describes one family member in a dysfunctional family who expresses the family's authentic inner conflicts.”

“As a family systems dynamic, the overt symptoms of identified patient draw attention away from the "elephants in the living room no one can talk about" which need to be discussed...The identified patient is a kind of diversion and a kind of scapegoat.”

Black Muslims become the “diversion and scapegoat” in these “challenge anti-Blackness in the ummah!” conversations.
[see post George Floyd memos]
Superficial, trite and avoidant. Stop doing this basic analysis.

The elephants in the room include: (Internalized) white supremacy, whiteness (aspirational & otherwise), white identity, colonization, power/privilege.
You can not remedy the illness w/o a proper diagnosis. Anti-Black racism is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.

Do we truly interrogate the ways whiteness/white supremacy is disruptive in Muslim spaces? How corrosive it is? How white folks in the community (or adjacent to it) are privileged, given a deference and latitude which is extremely detrimental to all of our well-being?

Hint: NO. We don’t talk about this because everyone is focused on the identified patient, ie Black Muslims. So much so that the system of white supremacy remains invisible, and folks are actively resistant to exploring beyond those blind spots in order to maintain the status quo.

Moving forward, let’s shift our focus on understanding
WHITENESS & WHITE SUPREMACY.
How it functions, the complicity that it requires, the ways it corrodes relationships and how it supports mediocrity, abuse and violence.