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organize opposition to them at the ballot box. The only idea that I
have heard that makes any sense is to try and influence black entertainers
and black athletes to express disavowal of black anti-Semitism. This
might be possible, because of the Jewish role especially in the entertain–
ment industry. Now my question for Mr. Podhoretz is, what else could
we be doing now, as a community, to fight black anti-Semitism?
Norntan Podhoretz:
To be fair, Major Owens was not the only black
politician who condemned Farrakhan. There were also John Lewis and
two or three others, though I would agree that the response in general
was tepid, and in some cases, worse than tepid; it was, in effect, acquies–
cent. The head of the NAACP has actually met with Farrakhan, em–
braced him after rhetorically criticizing Khalid Muhammad's speech.
Anybody who remembers the NAACP under Roy Wilkins must feel ut–
terly bewildered to see what has become of that organization.
What to do? I am very much against the tactic of begging blacks to
condemn expressions of black anti-Semitism. I think it's demeaning,
lacking in self-respect. That might perhaps be a price worth paying if it
worked, but it apparently does not work. In fact, all it has done lately is
to elicit further attacks on the Jews for trying to bully blacks into mak–
ing statements that blacks don't wish to make or that it is politically im–
prudent for them to make. I certainly wouldn't want
to
see pressure put
by Jews in the entertainment industry or the sports world on, I don't
know whom, Michael Jackson? Michael Jordan? For one thing, that
would completely confirm some of the charges that Farrakhan has been
making about the Jewish control of black entertainers and black
sportswriters.
It
would not only not work, it would be counterproduc–
tive.
So what indeed is to be done? Saul Bellow is a novelist, and I am a
critic, an editor, an analyst, an observer. I'm not very good at formulat–
ing programs of action. But watching the way the organized Jewish
community has responded to black anti-Semitism since it came into visi–
bility in 1967, I have come to the conclusion that certain things ought
not
to be done. I do not believe in the vaunted black-Jewish dialogue
that a great many Jewish organizations keep yearning to reconstitute in
the hope that this will somehow mollify or pacify the anti-Semites
within the black community. They dream of restoring a black-Jewish
political alliance at a time when the interests of the two groups have di–
verged to such an extent that it's hard to see a common basis for action.
All these dialogues seem to accomplish is
to
mount spectacles of Jewish
self-abasement. So I would like to see them cut off altogether. Anyhow,
I don't see what there is to talk about. I have nothing to say to an anti-
