New Panthers’ War on Whites

Some people wear their heart on their sleeve.

Minister King Samir Shabazz wears his on his forehead. Right between the eyes.

“If you want to stop the revolution, that’s what you got to hit,” Shabazz said, pointing to the target tattooed onto his forehead. “I fight my oppressor, and I give him the target.”

Shabazz is chairman of the New Black Panther Party’s Philadelphia chapter. In black beret atop dreadlocks and a black military uniform, he spends most weekdays near City Hall condemning “crackers” and exhorting black passers-by to rise up against their “slavemasters”—and to give him $2 for the party’s semi-annual newspaper.

He is one of the most recognizable black militants in a city known, since the days of MOVE, for its vocal black-extremism community.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate activity globally, listed the New Black Panther Party as among the most active and tough-talking of black-separatist groups.

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But Shabazz is more blunt in his views:

* On whites: “I’m about the total destruction of white people. I’m about the total liberation of black people. I hate white people. I hate my enemy. . .”

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He’s 38 and has children, but he won’t say how many or provide any more details about his personal life, partly for security reasons but also because this reporter is a “cracker.”

He listens to “revolutionary, cracker-killing hip-hop” on his headphones and says things like: “I’ll get black to you on that.”

And he says that he never worries what response his violent rhetoric might provoke in listeners.

“The only thing the cracker understands is violence,” said Shabazz, whose face also bears the tattoos “Freedom,” “BPG” (Black Power Gang) and “NBPP” (New Black Panther Party). “The only thing the cracker understands is gunpowder.

“You got to take violence to violence.”