As you are keenly aware, The Honorable
Louis Farrakhan and Minister Khallid Abdul Muhammad
of the Nation of Islam have been embroiled in a seething national
controversy surrounding statements made by Minister Muhammad at
Kean College in November of 1993, and Minister Farrakhan's response
to those statements. Largely at the behest of Jewish leadership,
many prominent Blacks have stepped forward to denounce both ministers
for what Jews have described as "Black anti-Semitism."
A number of White leaders and, most notably, the United States
Congress, have also censured Minister Muhammad for his statements.
Furthermore, Jews as a whole have widely condemned both men.
In light of the current dispute between Blacks and Jews, we write
to you for three reasons. First, in the June 7, 1993, issue of
Time magazine, it was revealed that you and Tikkun
magazine's Jewish editor, Michael
Lerner, have received a $100,000 advance "for a joint
book on Black-Jewish tensions." Secondly, you are one of
the few Blacks who prominent and powerful Jews in the media provide
a consistent forum for voicing opinions on the schism between
Blacks and Jews. Thirdly, while your publications on this subject
have generally been far more favorable to Jews than to Blacks,
you have at least manifested enough objectivity (in contrast to
Henry Louis Gates and other negroes of his ilk) to suggest
that your mind is still open to input from your own people. (See
the self-described HEAD NIGGER
IN CHARGE)
As it stands now, the world has a distorted view of the conflict
between Blacks and Jews in this country. This is largely due to
the fact that prominent Jews and their Negro spokespersons have
painted a picture of innocent American Jews who are the victims
of a new, virulent and unwarranted form of Black anti-Semitism.
No explanation for this behavior is ever provided, save reference
to Black envy over Jewish progress, or Black scapegoating of a
former "ally" who, among whites, would offer the least
resistance to verbal or physical attack.
Dr. West, as an educator, philosopher and man-of-the-cloth, you
must certainly realize that there are at least two sides to every
story - even to the conflict between Blacks and Jews. Regrettably,
however, we have yet to hear (even in your most recent appearance
on ABC's Nightline on March 3, 1994) or read (even in your
most recent article to appear in Time magazine) your presentation
of the Black side of this one. You have gone to great lengths
to lecture to Blacks about specific anti-Semitic acts on the part
of Blacks that have offended Jews. But, apart from occasional
references to "Jewish racism" and the "demonizing"
of Minister Farrakhan, you have yet to fully inform Jews of Black
grievances against them.
From the Black perspective the current schism between Blacks and
Jews did not begin with nor should it center on Minister Farrakhan,
Minister Muhammad or the Nation of Islam. While we do not intend
here to provide a history of this relationship, we do think that
it is important for you, sincere Jews and readers of Blacks
and Jews News, to be exposed to some of the real grievances
(ignored by the mass media and shunned by many "chosen"
Blacks) that Blacks have against Jews, which we believe to be
at the root of the current hostility between both groups.
Let us first consider the media. In the Black community it is
widely believed that Jews have strong influence in the media.
This has recently been documented in Dr.
Tony Martin's book, The Jewish Onslaught: Despatches From The Wellesley
Battlefront,
and it has been revealed by a number of Jewish writers, including
Charles E. Silberman, Lester
D. Friedman, Howard Suber, Norman L. Friedman and Neal Gabler
(An Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood).
The problem is that Blacks are treated very negatively in the
media. While journalists like Jeff Greenfield, Norman
Podhoretz, Roger Rosenblatt and other Jews have besmirched
the Black image in news shows or on the printed page, it has been
the Jewish producer and showman in Hollywood whose assaults have
been the most relentless and the most devastating.
From Louis B. Mayer becoming a millionaire by distributing
Birth of a Nation, to Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson and
George Burns' blackface routines, to Norman Lear, Mort
Lochman and Ed Weinberger's degrading television sitcoms,
to today's Sugar Hill, produced by Armyan Berstein,
Tom Rosenberg and Mark Abraham, Jews have consistently
vilified and stereotyped Black people in Hollywood.
This Jewish smear campaign against Blacks on television and in
the movies - which has reinforced White America's antipathy toward
Blacks - can only be compared to Julius Streicker's degradation
of Jews in Die Sturmer in Nazi Germany. It is astonishing,
Dr. West, that you have failed to raise this issue in public forums.
Another Nazi practice that Jews have used on Blacks is the claim
that people of African descent are inferior to other groups. Michael
Levin of City College of New York, Vincent Sarvich
of the University of California at Berkeley and Richard Herrnstein
at Harvard are among the most prominent Jewish scientists and
scholars who maintain that Black people are intellectually deficient.
Other Jews, including Howard B. Abikoff of the Long Island
Jewish Medical Center, Rachel Klein of the Long Island
Medical Center and Columbia University, and Gail Wasserman,
in the Department of Child Psychiatry at Columbia, are engaged
in research which has the potential to link genetics to violence
in inner city Black and Latino children.
Where is the outrage, Dr. West? Where are the calls for repudiation?
Jews have also been at the forefront of the attack against Afrocentricity.
Prominent scholars and educators, like Diane Ravitch, formerly
of the Department of Education, Albert Shanker, President
of the American Federation of Teachers, and Mary
Leftkowitz, professor of the Humanities at Wellesley
College, have launched heavy criticisms against Black historians
and anthropologists without providing forums for responses.
The same is true of Jewish-owned magazines, such as the New
Republic and Tikkun, which rarely, if ever, publish
Black rebuttals to their assaults against Afrocentricity.
Perhaps one of the most glaring omissions of the entire Black/Jewish
"dialogue" is the failure of Black "spokespersons,"
such as yourself, to publicly repudiate the Anti-Defamation
League of B'nai B'rith for its transgressions against Blacks.
The San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner,
the Los Angeles Times and numerous other newspapers have
documented the fact that for decades the ADL ran a private nationwide
spy network - "a systematic, long-term, professionally organized
political espionage operation complete with informers, infiltrators,
money laundering, code names, wiretapping and secret meetings."
Newspapers have revealed that among the 950 organizations and
10,000 individuals that the ADL prepared files on were many Black
groups, including the NAACP!
Even more damaging to the relationship between Blacks and Jews
is the recent revelation to Blacks - but long known to Jews -
that the Hamitic Myth (that is, the association of African
people with the alleged curse of Ham) was invented by Jewish Talmudic
scholars over a thousand years before the trans-Atlantic slave
trade began. According to Dr.
Tony Martin, this myth provided "the moral pretext"
upon which the entire slave-trade grew and flourished. This myth
was also responsible for the social inferiorization of generations
of African people after the end of slavery.
Another matter of concern to Black Americans that you constantly
raise, but only to denounce your own people, is the Crown Heights,
New York incident. You have written of "the vicious murder
of Yankel Rosenbaum in Crown Heights in 1992," but
you appear oblivious of the fact that his attack was preceded
by a Jewish killing of a Black child, Gavin Cato, and the
injury of another, Angela Cato, together with the police beating
of the slain child's father as he attempted to rescue his son
from the vehicle that had run over him.
There are many issues of varying degrees of significance that
must also be raised to clear the air:
·On what authority did Jews base a demand that a group
of black students be ejected from an Oakland, California, theater
because they laughed at the wrong time while viewing Schindler's
List?
·
Why, in a slap-in-the-face to Black people, did the largely Jewish
academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences choose Jewish actress
Whoopi Goldberg to serve as master of ceremonies for this
year's Oscar Awards, when the Academy is most-certainly aware
of Goldberg's shameless participation in Ted Dansen's Black
face performance at New York's Friar's Club in 1993.
·
Why are Jewish leaders so quick to attack Leonard Jeffries
- or even Dolly Parton, for that matter - for speaking
out regarding Jewish influence in Hollywood? Yet, Jewish writers
like Joel Kotkin and Neal Gabler make similar statements
with impunity.
Why, even with the knowledge that for as long as thirty years,
Israel had maintained strong economic, military, nuclear, scientific,
academic, energy, tourist, cultural, sports, transportation, agricultural
and intelligence ties with South Africa - and thereby prolonged
Black oppression there - were Jews the only group in this country
who arrogantly threatened to protest the visit of revered African
National Congress Chairman Nelson Mandela to the United
States in 1990?
It should also be noted that a number of prominent Jews have made
anti-Black statements that have rarely been condemned by their
fellow Jews.
Before his death, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan
asserted that the quality of American military forces had deteriorated
because they were composed of Blacks "who have low intelligence
and low education." He urged America to ensure that "fresh
blood and better brains go to their forces."
Prominent Jewish talk show host Howard
Stern was quoted in the November 1st issue of Time
magazine as stating that, "they didn't beat this idiot (Rodney
King) enough." Stern has played Ku Klux Klan musical recordings
and in a recent broadcast used the term "nigger" 55
times in ten minutes.
During the week of March 7, 1994, Jewish comedian Jackie Mason
was quoted by news broadcasts as having said: "The susceptibility
to violence happens to be more among Blacks than whites - a hundred
times more.'
Finally, when Blacks are offended by individual Jews, generally
we respond with civility and restraint. Yet, in all of your "dialogues"
no one has brought this fact to public light. The Black people
of Los Angeles are a case in point.
Karlin, Weisberg and Reiner are all Jews.
Most Blacks in Los Angeles know this. Yet, while many Black people
were very angry at each of them for the decision he/she made,
these jurists were attacked as individuals, not as Jews! In spite
of the fact that the decisions of each of these people inflamed
racial passions to the boiling point, there were no calls for
Jewish leaders to repudiate them for their "racism"
or "unfairness," there were no newspaper advertisements
taken out to condemn them, nor were their names dragged before
congress to be censured.
Dr. West, imagine the outrage among Jews in particular and Americans
in general if Black people were stereotyping Jews in the media,
claiming that Jews were genetically inferior, attacking Jewish
Studies, spying on the American Jewish Congress, teaching
that Jews are the cursed sons of Shem, etc. Yet, all of this and
more is happening to Black people, and you have said little or
nothing about it.
We are sending you this message today because it is time for you
to either speak up or sit down. Your fence straddling on behalf
of Jewish leadership has gone far enough and many Black people
see through it.
Unless you use the $100,000 advance that you have received (even
Time magazine refers to this as "an almost unheard-of-sum
for a scholarly work") to present the grievances of Black
Americans in this ongoing "dialogue" with Jews, you
have no right to claim to represent Black people. Absent a true
commitment to the cause of your people, your appeal to Black leaders
to take the moral high ground in this dispute rings hollow and
insincere, and smacks of clever maneuver to further your own career.
The African United Front is a coalition of professional
and lay persons and organizations that was formed in Los Angeles
to address issues of concern to people of African descent.
TOP