What Does FAFO Really Mean? Let the Black Church Show You

Talk about cosmic retribution, “what goes around comes around,” and karma biting someone in the ass. After nothing but bad news out of Washington the last month, this is almost as funny as the “dead honky” retort from Richard Pryor on Saturday Night Live in 1975. I’m probably never going to stop laughing about this.

Remember how on Jan. 6, 2021, hundreds of imbeciles decided to storm the U.S. Capital in an attempted coup? They called themselves “taking back America” in the delusional belief that Donald Trump had won the 2020 election. He didn’t. There was no evidence of any improprieties, but God bless ‘em, they didn’t let facts get in the way of a good riot, especially one that cost five lives.

That wasn't funny at all, but let me tell you what is. The Proud Boys, a bunch of far-right extremists who go around the country bullying people and who were among the ring leaders on Jan. 6, ironically can now no longer call themselves “Proud Boys.”

Why is this? Well, because a Black Washington D.C. church, once vandalized by some of Proud Boys members, now owns the trademark. Think about it: a group of racist ignoramuses who want to use their name to terrorize people, kinda like ummm – the Ku Klux Klan, can’t do it anymore because a judge said they can’t. It’s like people who thought they were Thanos believing they had all the stones in the Infinity Gauntlet, finally snapping their fingers and realizing it was only costume jewelry.

No Game, No Name

It all goes back to Dec. 12, 2020, when a bunch of Proud Boys members decided to attack Metropolitan AME Church in downtown D.C. and destroyed a Black Lives Matter sign. They sued the next year, bluntly pointing the finger at them. The courts then awarded the church $2.8 million, which the Proud Boys, broke losers that they are, defaulted on.

So the courts gave Metropolitan ownership of the trademark, and thus the name “Proud Boys.” This means this merry band of idiots can no longer publicly use the name without exposing themselves to legal action. If they sell any merchandise, every dime goes to the church. Now, if that ain’t funny, I don’t know what is.

From the Metropolitan A.M.E. website:

…For the first time in our nation’s history, a Black institution owns property of a white supremacist group. Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church now owns the exclusive rights to the Proud Boys trademark, stripping them of the very name they rallied under.  This also means that any money the Proud Boys makes from using the trademark must be paid to Metropolitan to help satisfy the multi-million-dollar default judgment.

Now, I grew up in the A.M.E. church, and from childhood, I was taught its history, beginning in 1787 as both a respite for Blacks who suffered the indignities and hypocrisies of a society that claimed to stand for the freedom and equality of all men.  At the same time, it served as a strategy space and war room for the burgeoning abolitionist movement as both Black people and their white supporters plotted to end slavery in America.

The Black church, and for these purposes I’d argue in particular, the A.M.E. church, embodies the Black experience in this country. Places like Bethel in Greenwich Township, N.J., and Mount Gilead  A.M.E. Church in Bucks County, Pa., were just two of many churches, Black and white, that were part of the Underground Railroad.

Members of the church, led by Bishop Morris Brown, later founded Morris Brown College in Atlanta in 1881, which my own grandmother attended. In 1965, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Ala., to launch his push for voting rights, which eventually led to the “Bloody Sunday” standoff between Black people eager to cast a ballot and the fascist Alabama state troopers who attacked them.

But the church was also the backdrop of one of the most obscene massacres of people in American history in 2015. In that incident, white supremacist Dylann Roof joined a group of people at a bible study at Mother Emanuel A.M.E., and opened fire on the unarmed worshippers, killing nine of them, including South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney. But the terrorism also brought out President Barack Obama to his funeral service, where he sang “Amazing Grace” to those in attendance.

Roof was later sentenced to death. He deserves no further mention anywhere.

Sunday Schooled

I’m saying all this to show you that what the former Proud Boys attacked was not just a slogan that annoys racist white people and their MAGA cult followers (who are, by default, in the same category). Contrary to the A.M.E. Chuch, they have no history outside of being the social disease they are. They tried to spit on hundreds of years of American history as part of a tantrum that only petulant entitled children can throw.

I don’t know how you feel about corporal punishment, but that they can’t even use their name again is the legal equivalent of a butt whuppin’ with a thick leather belt, and I’m all for it.

Now, they’ll probably surface under another stupid name, and they might even attract more losers looking for manhood in hate since they had nobody to teach it to them otherwise.

Metropolitan isn’t blinking, though.

"This is our time to stand up, to be very clear to the Proud Boys and their ilk that we came here fighting, that we have never ever capitulated to the violent whims of white supremacist groups," Rev. William H. Lamar IV, the church's pastor, told CBS News. "If they thought we would be afraid, they were wrong. There are many people with us and who stand with us."

What really matters is that the leadership at Metropolitan A.M.E. not only preserved their history but also removed a stain from American history. And they did it not through violence, retribution, or revenge the way the MAGA cult is operating. They used their brains, stood firm against anyone who would terrorize them, and undid their damage while erasing their identities.

Apologies to the reverend and the church for the language here...but that’s how you make a bunch of dimwitted racists fuck around and find out!

Madison Gray is a New York City-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in multiple publications globally. Reach out to him at madison@starkravingmadison.com.