Features » November 17, 2004

A Unified Front

By Salim Muwakkil

Three days after the reelection of President George W. Bush further marginalized the African-American community, two of black America’s most prominent leaders joined in a rare public discussion on what to do next.

Pulled together by WVON-AM, an influential black-owned radio station, Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and the Rev. Jesse Jackson of Rainbow/PUSH spent two hours of commercial-free airtime in a wide-ranging conversation with host Cliff Kelley.

The conversation touched upon many bases of the black movement, from the 1960s to the present. Both men have deep roots in that movement and represent two of its major branches.

Jackson, heir to civil rights icon the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., pushes civic agitation as a method to fight injustice. With King, he helped lead the fight to integrate the recalcitrant South. When King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) took a northern detour to Chicago, Jackson came and stayed. He broke from the SCLC but incorporated its ethos into Operation PUSH, the group he founded. Operation PUSH soon joined the SCLC, the NAACP and the National Urban League as a national power in the civil rights fraternity. Jackson aligned with Farrakhan in 1984, during his first presidential run. That connection proved troublesome for both men.

Farrakhan had been well known in the black community as spokesman for the Hon. Elijah Muhammad’s separatist Nation of Islam until his 1975 death. After a two-year period in which he pledged fealty to Muhammad’s successor and son, Wallace D. Muhammad, Farrakhan broke away to revive his mentor’s separatist path. By the time he joined with Jackson in 1984, Farrakhan had earned a reputation as one of the most eloquent proponents of Elijah Muhammad’s Black Nationalist message.

But some of his allegorical oratory was not quite ready for prime time. He got tagged with the anti-Semitic label for some reckless rhetoric, and that taint subsequently rubbed off on Jackson’s fledgling campaign. The two men parted ways, at least publicly.

One of the first revealing facts to emerge from the November 5 discussion was that Jackson and Farrakhan have maintained private contact despite the public stance of estrangement. And although they stress differing strategies for African-American empowerment—Farrakhan focuses internally on self-reliance and behavioral change, while Jackson prefers fighting externally for equitable treatment and structural change—they said the election results reveal the urgent need for a more unified approach.

Jackson also noted that the election was not all gloom and doom for African-Americans. Black voter turnout increased 25 percent from 2000. What’s more, the Congressional Black Caucus gained four new members—former Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Emanuel Cleaver, Houston, Texas NAACP President Al Green, Milwaukee State Senator Gwen Moore, all elected to House seats from their respective states, and Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, elected to the U.S. Senate. But, Jackson pointed out, those gains offer little resistance to four more years of conservative hostility to issues of social justice and civil rights.

The black electorate awarded Bush 10 percent of their vote, about a percentage point more than he got in 2000. But Bush pulled nearly 16 percent of the black vote in the crucial battleground state of Ohio. Analysts contend that conservative blacks more likely to vote for Bush were pulled to the polls by the same-sex marriage amendment on the Ohio ballot.

Jackson rebuked those black preachers who bought the GOP’s morals argument, saying that the right wing is adept at attaching moral arguments to unjust policies. “They wrapped democracy and Christianity around slavery,” he said. “For them, segregation was God’s will.”

Although the Democrats are now bemoaning their alienation from the religious heartland, Farrakhan and Jackson urged the party not to cede notions of morality to the GOP.

“We have to engage again in the morals debate,” Jackson said, encouraging Democrats to shift the meaning of morality to issues involved with serving the poor. “Jesus’ mission statement drives my politics,” he said.

Farrakhan criticized both campaigns for ignoring the issues of the poor. “The Kerry campaign continuously talked about the middle class, but there was not one word referring to the poor,” he noted.

The radio discussion was wide ranging, informative and even revealing to those with a particular interest in the trajectory of these two black leaders—arguably black America’s top two. But they broke little programmatic ground, other than hinting they might take their duet on the road.

Still, Jackson’s willingness to face the controversy sure to follow his public rapprochement with Farrakhan is telling. It reflects a new level of concern for the well-being of the black community as America heads into a right-wing future.

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• Reader Comments

  “He got tagged with the anti-Semitic label for some reckless rhetoric…”

  Saying Farrakhan engaged in “reckles rhetoric” is like saying Bin Laden is “a little careless with explosives.”

  Let me share with you some *recent* quotes—spoken *this year* by Callypso Louie Farrakhan:

  National Press Club, Washington, D.C., May 3, 2004
  *Jews on a Mission of Evil*
  “Now the thinking of these neoconservatives is written of in scripture. In the book of Revelations, 2 and 9, it reads, ‘I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not but are a synagogue of Satan.’ What is the blasphemy? A Jew is a noble name. A Jew means one who is in a covenant relationship with God in obedience to the divine laws, statues and commandments of God. But these people claim to be Jews but they’re not in obedience to God’s law, they have given a mission of evil a divine look on it. And George W. Bush has swallowed that bait, hook line and sinker. The synagogue of Satan is a gathering of persons of like mind and spirit who are in opposition to the will of God. So Paul said we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers that are not of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places.

  National Black Agenda Convention: Boston, March 18, 2004

  *On Jews and Homosexuals:*
  “I call them the so-called Jews because to be a Jew you have to adhere to the statutes and laws that create the special relationship. How can you be a Jew and promote homosexual marriage?”

  You can read more of Far-Out-Khan’s rantings at:
  http://www.adl.org/special_reports/farrakhan_own_words2/farrakhan_own_words.asp<

  This isn’t “reckless rhetoric.” This is the central thesis of his doctrine and—I fear—the essence of what attracts *some* of his followers.

  Posted by Rev. Ian Brumberger on Nov 17, 2004 at 3:39 PM

  “Minister” Louis Farrakhan is the most prominent racist alive in the US today. Blacks and others should turn their backs on him and ignore him until he goes away.

  Posted by duh on Nov 17, 2004 at 3:46 PM

  Here are some more choice quotes by Callypso Louie Farrakhan:

  “I believe that for the small numbers of Jewish people in the United States, they exercise a tremendous amount of influence on the affairs of government…Yes, they exercise extraordinary control, and Black people will never be free in this country until they are free of that kind of control…”
  Meet The Press interview, 4/14/97

  “I’m not into integration. I ain’t for that. God told the Jews, he didn’t want you intermarrying with others. But you disobeyed him. He don’t want us uniting into this that he’s come to judge… You can’t integrate with wickedness if you want righteousness.”
  8th Anniversary The Holy Day of Atonement speech at Mosque Maryam, Chicago, 10/16/03

  arrakhan: “Is the Federal Reserve owned by the government?”
  Audience: “No.”
  Farrakhan: “Who owns the federal reserve?”
  Audience: “Jews.”
  Farrakhan: “The same year they set up the IRS, they set up the FBI. And the same year they set up the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith… It could be a coincidence… [I want] to see black intellectuals free… I want to see them not controlled by members of the Jewish community.”
  Dallas Observer on-line, 8/10/00\

  “They call them [Hezbollah] terrorists, I call them freedom fighters…No one asks why they would do such a thing. Why would they do such a thing? What has driven them to this point? That’s what the UN, the U.S. and Europe doesn’t want to deal with because the Zionists have control in England, in Europe, in the United States and around the world.”
  Speech at the District Council 33 Union Hall,
  Philadelphia, PA, 4/22/96

  Suppose Hitler was trying to destroy the international bankers controlling Europe, but he went about it by attacking a whole people. All Jews are not responsible for the evil of the few who do evil…But certain Jews have used Judaism as a shield.”
  Saviours’ Day Speech, Chicago, 2/26/95

  “If we dig, we run into the Jewish pot of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. 
  National Black Agenda Convention, Boston, 3/18/04

  “They [Israel] wouldn’t allow me to go to Jerusalem. If I had gone they might have stoned me. I didn’t want to repeat history. I know they stoned Jesus. I know they’ve killed the prophets of God there.”
  Saviours’ Day Speech, Chicago, 2/22/98

  And lest the non-Jewish white people feel left out, here is what Farrakhan has to say about Whitey:
  White people are potential humans…they haven’t evolved yet.”
  Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/18/00

  Posted by Rev. Ian Brumberger on Nov 17, 2004 at 4:24 PM

  I find it interesting that no one has called Min. Farrakhan a lier. If the statements are true then you can not call him an anti-semite, you have to call him a truth bearer.

  Posted by keith on Nov 17, 2004 at 5:35 PM

  I have the desire to legitimize Calypso Louie’s rantings nor to waste my time debunking them.

  But I don’t recall Louie suggesting that we treat the author’s of “The Bell Curve” with deference as “truth tellers,” or the “Jewish Media’s” portrayal of African-Americans as “truth telling.”

  It is a “fact” that more African-American males are in prison than in college. This “fact” is a deliberate misrepresentation, because college kids are almost always between ages 18-24, but people of ALL ages go to jail.

  “Facts” like that can be twisted into a false assertion of racial inferiority. If you are fair-minded and rational, you will realize that it is racism that’s ultimately responsible.

  “Truth” can always be twisted into hate.

  Hate is hate is hate whether it is “true” or not. It must be considered in the spirit in which it is intended.

  I don’t want to get sucked inton a debate on whether Jews are evil, and whether Louie is “telling the truth.” It would be a pointless exercise, and a waste of bandwidth.

  I won’t try to teach the pig to sing. It would only waste my time and annoy the pig.

  Posted by Rev. Ian Brumberger on Nov 17, 2004 at 5:57 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 40 posts.

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