IS THEIZE A CUKE FOIZ ANTI-SEMITISM?
439
Stanley Crouch:
I'm not sure that it's being taught the way [ would
want to teach it, because I think, as Jim Sleeper and Marty were saying
in part, that there is always an overly protective position that a number
of people take if they are in a minority group. So they say, "Okay, we
know this, but I don't know if it's good to talk about it publicly, be–
cause then that will give arms and ammunition to the opposition, who
are just waiting for any excuse to crush us one way or another, anyway."
Martin Peretz:
In other words, "Don't say it in front of the goyim."
Stanley Crouch:
Exactly. And I think that's one of the problems, be–
cause so mllch of the political discussion about Afro-American life is
based on the fact that it's all about the white man. It is all the white
man. The white man is always Henry Higgins, and the black person is
just Eliza Doolittle asking, "How do you say it, boss?" "Say it like this."
"Okay, okay, ['11 do it." And so if he teaches you the wrong word, you
go the wrong way.
I think one of the things we've got to start talking about in terms
of black leadership is this: leadership at this point is not about parades
and press conferences. Those are just TV events. Leadership is when
Maynard Jackson became mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, and the police
force that had the largest number of police homicides of black teenagers
was completely turned around. Jackson replaced the guy who was the
police chief and reassigned him to guard airplanes at Hartsfield Airport.
That's political leadership.
There was a point when the Arrow Shirt Company was going to
move out of Atlanta and reduce the tax base. I think six hundred jobs
were going to be lost. The company wanted to sell its property to
Metro Atlanta. Maynard Jackson said, " If you don't stay in Atlanta, I'm
going to tell Metro Atlanta that they're not going to get a blasting
permit to build, so they won't buy your property." Now that's politics.
Standing up with a sign saying "We need this," and blah blah blah,
that's just a show. But in fact we do have black mayors, black police
chiefs, and so on, all across the country.
I think it's much more important now to really find out what's
going on inside cities under these administrations, and whether or not in
terms of this particular subject that we're talking about now, that the
mayors and the city councils are falling asleep when anti-Semites in posi–
tions of serious influence arise in those various cities. What some jerk like
Louis Farrakhan says, with his bowtie and his constant congratulation of
himself - that's just smoke. What would bother me would be something
like what Saul Bellow was talking about, with Steven Cokely. Now
that's a problem, when you have a nut in an administration who comes
