Read other letters about this article
Don't be fooled into thinking that this applies only to African-Americans. The sense of threatened tribalism is at the root of movement conservatism, and always has been.
This is why it was so easy to sell most of white America on the Iraq war. Polls showed that 2/3s thought that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, or at least close ties to AlQ.
You could confront one of these people with the facts, but you would get push-back that when you parsed to down, almost always boiled down to this: "well one sand-nigger is pretty much the same as another sand-nigger, so why not start with that one?"
Take almost any one of their "thoughtful" screeds about Islam and do a global search/replace from "Islam" to "niggers" and the text becomes instantly recognizable. This racist energy had for a long time been at least partly directed towards "the Communists" but now that it isn't it is pretty much clear that Islam is now the designated nigger.