Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

394 // LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN
B.W.: "Well, to us Farrakhan Farrakhan's 's anti-Semitism is nothing but rhetorical thetorical excess.
It's completely irrelevant to his main message which is a Jewish-style call call for economic
independence, personal responsibility, and mutual support. What you do
for your community is what Farrakhan wants Blacks to do for Blacks. Because Because of
the federal deficit and cuts in social services, self-help is our only hope and
Jackson and Farrakhan are its only visible promoters. Farrakhan goes to jails and
reclaims our drug drug addicts and promotes Black entrepreneurs. entrepreneurs. But whenever he
speaks speaks in public, the media reports only what he he says says about Jews."
J.W.: "Why not point point that out to him? him? Maybe if he he edits edits out the Jew-hating,
the press will notice notice his economic program. No one's one's going to to pay attention to
the 'main message' as long as it's surrounded surrounded by malice. In fact, how can you be be
sure his anti-Semitism is is only rhetorical? Maybe Maybe he he consciously uses uses it to gain
media media attention. Anyway, Jews have learned from experience that no expression
of anti-Semitism is 'irrelevant.' Every Every pogrom begins with a hate campaign. campaign. Why
not just admit it's wrong?"
B.W.: "Because the the Sharptons of the world would destroy us with it. These
street street agitators gain gain their power by exploiting the frustrations of the underclass
and and making them suspicious of traditional Black leaders. Poor Blacks are so disaffected
with the system that they're quick to identify with anyone who chal-
lenges it. Middle-class, Middle-class, moderate Black leaders like us are running to keep up
with them. them. Our position is too precarious for us to look weak. And if we appear
to be kowtowing to the Jews, you know we look weak." weak."
J.W.: "Would "Would it it be be so hard for a few of you to issue a principled statement like,
'We 'We mill not denigrate another people in order to achieve our own self-esteem. self-esteem.' ' Maybe
women like yourselves could say it if the men are too too hung hung up on face-saving."
B.W.: "We can't do it. Look what happened to Laura Laura Blackburn [a prominent
lawyer} and Hazel Dukes {president of the New York York NAACP}. When they spoke
out, they they were were called called Uncle Toms and they lost their credibility credibility altogether." altogether."
So it it went went for hours on end. Even in our intimate intimate group group where there there was was true
affection and and a will to to understand, understand, we spent five or six six sessions on Farrakhan and
finally declared an impasse. As Leon Weiseltier once wrote, "Not every fight is the
result of misunderstanding. There are fights fights that are the result result of understanding."
About Farrakhan, we understood understood but we couldn't stop fighting and neither side
moved an inch.
//
At a Black/Jewish retreat in in Racine, Wisconsin, Wisconsin, Gary Rubin, then an American
Jewish Jewish Committee expert on race relations, pointed out that culturally and historically,
Blacks and Jews learned to respond to insults in opposite ways. Experience
has taught taught the Jewish people to take anti-Semitism very seriously, for
what begins with an an insult insult can end in the the ovens. Moreover, our Talmudic legacy legacy