There was no arguing with these men, who were incensed with the word of God. One bystander tried to argue with the flock and received a torrent of phlegmy scripture that left him cursing and walking off, shaking his head.

Others stood dumbfounded, trying to make head or tail of the rants. Pedestrians passed by, clutching shopping bags, heading straight for the nearby subway entrance, sidestepping the strange scene as if avoiding someone with the flu. The rest of the group stood behind the duo, hard and expressionless. The gist of the message from what I could gather was, 'Down with the white man's science.” There on the street, one fellow read from a Bible, overseen keenly by a preacher who would interrupt him periodically and interpret the text. Their garments read “Israelites United in Christ” in a font that looked as if it had been borrowed from a poster for Disney's Aladdin. When I asked the strange group of men who was in charge, I was directed toward a robed gentleman who said, “People call us the Black Israelites. While the first rule of advertising is to keep it short, with these guys the message travels a long, windy route through the Book of Deuteronomy and other texts before arriving at the takeaway: Black people are the real Jews, and white people are possessed by Satan. If you live in a major American city, you may have encountered a variation of the scene I witnessed: men who look like they've wandered off the set of an all–African American production of Jesus Christ Superstar, soapboxing on the street corner to puzzled passersby. In Queens, I came upon a group of about a dozen individuals lined up in a row, wearing purple robes with faux-gold edging in front of the Jamaica Center shopping complex. Instead of hitting the streets, many of this country’s racist white folks rang in “white man's March” by lazily posting photos of themselves holding white-pride banners on the internet.īut that's not to say I didn’t find racists on March 15 they just weren’t white.

The only other white person around on Jamaica Avenue that afternoon, besides myself, was a dude handing out yoga-studio flyers. Nor were they on hand in Queens, where they had advertised a barbecue party that day in front of the outlet strip mall on Jamaica Avenue, which is heavily trafficked by African Americans and West Indians. They were no shows at Grand Army Plaza near Central Park, where they had planned to congregate.

White Devil by Stella Purple