Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

4 // JACK SALZMAN
Farrakhan, the more strident the refusal became. They might not have much
regard for Farrakhan, but they were not going to be told what to do: charges of
Black anti-Semitism were countered with cries of Jewish racism.
The discontent became most marked when in 1995 Farrakhan announced that
he would organize a march of one million Black men on Washington, D.C. Jewish
institutional organizations were undecided on the position they wanted to take.
Although none were supportive of the idea, most preferred to remain silent about
the march, lest they seem once again to be telling Black Americans what they
should and should not do. The march itself elicited a spectrum of responses. The
white press, including the Jewish press, emphasized the length and discursive
nature of Farrakhan's speech, as well as the National Park Service's attendance
estimate of 400,000, rather than one million, people. Many Black women objected
to their exclusion from the march, while many African American gays and lesbians
expressed their anger at the Nation's homophobic stance. Some African
Americans, like Adolph Reed and Roger Wilkins, saw the march as the end result
of the desperate state of poor African Americans and the refusal of white people
to heed the need of many African Americans. "By ignoring moderate Black leaders,"
Wilkins commented on the day of the march (October 1 6), "they sowed the
seeds for the emergence of Farrakhan as a more important figure." 5 As for the
Jews, many seemed angered by the march: it was not possible, some felt, to separate
the spirit of the march and the good will that was evidenced on the part of
the marchers from the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the march's organizer. To participate
in the event was to be in league with Farrakhan. So my colleague Cornel
West was taken to task for sharing the platform with Farrakhan. West, who only
months earlier had been the subject of an insidious attack in The New Republic, was
chastised by Jews on both the Left and Right, including old friends like Michael
Walzer and Michael Lerner. 6 Although West had spent his public life insisting
that a dialogue of inclusion was imperative to human progress, dialogue with
Farrakhan was deemed untenable. Jews were wary of Farrakhan's anti-Semitic
rhetoric, and comparisons between Farrakhan and Adolph Hitler were not
uncommon in many Jewish communities.
Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam were not the only source of uneasiness for
Jews in 1 995. When Michael Jackson's album lilStory was released in June of that
year, there was an outcry over the song "They Don't Care About Us," which contained
the lines "Jew me, sue me, everybody do me/ Kick me, kike me, don't you
Black or white me." Jackson soon rerecorded the song, and the lines were
changed. But there was no changing the verdict of the celebrated O.J. Simpson
trial. When the jury found Simpson not guilty of the murder of Nicole Brown
and Ron Goldman, the country truly seemed to become divided along racial lines.
Jews (and other whites) for the most part reacted with stunned disbelief; many
Blacks cheered the verdict, their distrust of the police validated by the jury's decision.
(The verdict, Greg Tare wrote in The Village Voice, may "represent the first
time in history that a majority Black jury has wielded an apparatus of state power