Preaching a doctrine of self-love and mutual respect, controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan addressed some 600 students Thursday at Charlotte Amalie High School.
“In you is the capacity to master anything,” Farrakhan told the students.
The guest of Sen. Usie Richards and the V.I. Basketball Federation’s “Give Up the Love” visiting speaker program, Farrakhan addressed students from both of the island’s high schools on topics ranging from violence, self-worth and mutual respect to studying worthy topics including math, history, science and engineering.
Unwilling to listen to excuses, Farrakhan told the crowd, “Don’t tell me biology is too hard. I am a living biological being. I am biology.” Pointing out chemicals in the body, Farrakhan said, “How can I fail chemistry, when I am chemistry?”
Farrakhan went on to criticize the curriculum as white-supremacist and admonished the students’ teachers to make the teaching relevant to the schools’ students, who are largely black.
“If you cannot relate the sciences to us, why do I want to be in a school that doesn’t relate to me?” Farrakhan asked.
Farrakhan spent considerable time addressing young women in the audience, encouraging them to understand that their real power comes not from their sexual allure, but from the power of their minds.
“You should honor and respect yourself,” Farrakhan told the young women. “He [God] created you in his image.”
He told all the students to be more respectful of themselves and their minds and bodies, which are given to them by God, than they would be of a church, which is man-made.
“The greatest form of pleasure is when you see something in your mind and create that thing and leave it as a legacy,” Farrakhan said, adding sexual pleasure is the lowest form of pleasure and is responsible for driving people into an AIDS pandemic.
Disparaging a system that allows girls to get an abortion without informing their parents, Farrakhan encouraged students to challenge rules when they are wrong.
“If the rule is wrong, we are the men to change the rules,” Farrakhan said. “I will not strip parents of their parental authority.”
Addressing the violence in the territory, Farrakhan discussed how the students’ enslaved ancestors, who were brought in chains across the Atlantic, had more love for each other in their times of suffering than contemporary people do for each other, in this generation of freedom.
“Here we are, hundreds of years later, hurting each other,” Farrakhan said.
This thought resonated particularly with CAHS principal Carmen Howell, who closed the assembly.
“We ought to love each other and stop this violence,” Howell said.
Ivanna Eudorra Kean tenth-grader Sherryfa Edwards talked after the assembly about her take-away from the speech.
“He talked about love and unity and young girls need to keep our bodies to ourselves,” Edwards said. “He also said we need to look up to God and we need to make peace.”
