Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Malcolm in the extreme Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 16:10:35 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE \HD Malcolm in the extreme \SH THE LEGACY: Does black racism exist? \BY Sean Piccoli \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES When three black men, reacting to the verdicts in the Rodney King case, dragged a white man from the cab of his truck at a Los Angeles intersection and beat him nearly to death, few disputed it was a hateful act. But was it a racist act? When black activist Robert "Sonny" Carson led pickets of Korean grocers in a predominantly black Brooklyn neighborhood and passed out leaflets calling the Asian business owners "monkeys" and "blood-sucking vampires," nobody doubted it was a hostile display. Was it a racist one, too? When a Chicago mayoral aide accused Jewish doctors of injecting the AIDS virus into black children, most dismissed it as a groundless lie. But was it a racist lie? And do such incidents prove that racism, which blacks know well as its victims, colors the way blacks themselves express anger at the social ills that afflict them disproportionately? In short, does "black racism" exist? If the answers to these questions seem clear and self-evident to some, they are anything but to many black Americans who are split over the question of black racism and who do not agree on what, if anything, the term means. Yet "black racism" is a phrase heard often today and it's a charge hurled with more urgency as race relations fray, rhetoric heats up and black-white confrontations multiply. It's been aimed at filmmaker Spike Lee, who suggested he would talk only to black journalists about his new movie, "Malcolm X," a $30 million biography about the Nation of Islam leader who originally preached black separatism and vilified whites. The movie opens in Washington today. It's been aimed at Sonny Carson and contemporaries such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was called a bigot for his race-baiting press conferences and his public haranguing of whites during the Tawana Brawley case. It's been aimed at Sister Souljah, who raps, "If my survival means your total destruction so be it/You built this wicked system," but in interviews rejects criticism of her stance, saying, "There's no such thing as a black racist." Many whites disagree. "Black racism is poisoning New York City but nobody has the guts to call it what it is," former newspaperman Raymond Price, a campaign speechwriter for President Bush, wrote in a 1989 column about the indignities suffered by Asian storekeepers in black neighborhoods. Mr. Price's sentiments are echoed by some prominent blacks. Last year, when a group of blacks murdered a young Hasidic Jew in Crown Heights, New York Mayor David Dinkins called it "a lynching" - a word calculated to resound with his fellow blacks. The murder was apparent retaliation for the death, hours earlier, of a 7-year-old black boy accidentally struck by a limousine in a Jewish funeral motorcade. In July, former Democratic congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas, who is black, urged those watching her party's national convention to "reject both white racism and black racism." "We honor cultural identity. However, separatism is not allowed. Separatism is not the American way," Miss Jordan, 56, said in her convention speech, adding that her party "will not tolerate bigotry under any guise." REJECTING THE TERM But it was another politician, outgoing Rep. Gus Savage, Illinois Democrat, who in 1990 rebutted charges that he gave an anti-Semitic campaign speech by saying that black racism does not - cannot - exist. "Blacks don't have the power to oppress white people," said Mr. Savage, 67. "Racism is white. There ain't no black racism." Random interviews suggest that in his analysis, if not his actions, Mr. Savage is not alone. "As long as you have white supremacy, black racism is impossible," says Kamal Hassan, 48, a Northeast Washington resident who manages property and drives a cab. "Black bitterness is there," says Ralph Wiley, 40, an essayist and author of "Why Black People Tend to Shout" (Penguin Books, $9). "Black rage is there. Black bigotry? Yes. Black prejudice? Yes. "Black racism?" Mr. Wiley asks, emitting a dry laugh. "I'm not a member of a country club that excludes whites and Jews. . . . I haven't been the fortunate person that's been redlining people out of neighborhoods. That's racism. That's seeking to keep the benefit to yourself. "Racism is far too powerful and deadly an entity to toss off as, 'All you need to be is prejudiced to qualify,' " he says. "Racism is a pretty emotionless business, pretty much based on economic exclusivity. When emotions get involved, then you're dealing with some other thing." DEFINING TERMS But where race is concerned, even defining your terms becomes a political act. "It's dicey at best," Mr. Wiley concedes. "Racism is a word that is used relentlessly and it's almost always misused," says William Drummond, a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. One source, the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, defines racism as "a belief or a doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cutural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others." But Random House also offers a more expansive reading of racism as "hatred or intolerance of another race or races." "In that sense, of course, there is black racism," says Charles Murray, 49, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy, who has studied race and the welfare state. "It happens constantly. The only way to say there is no such thing as black racism is to toss out the time-honored definition of the word." But Mr. Drummond, 48, who also is white, doesn't condemn incidents like the Los Angeles rioting as an explosion of reverse racism. "Obviously, it's wrong and it's criminal," he says. "But racism has to have a doctrine behind it." He points to the writings of Elijah Poole (later Elijah Muhammad), which systematically demonized whites. Many blacks praise Mr. Poole and his disciples, including Malcolm X, for using strong rhetoric to confront whites with their own bigotry. Not that many blacks believe themselves free of such prejudices. "Believe me, there are blacks who dislike white people, or even hate them," says Stacey Brown, 22, a senior majoring in languages at Howard University. But she dismisses "black racism" as a useful phrase coined by whites. "They're just bringing up this topic, 'black racism,' as an opponent to white racism," says Miss Brown. "That's all." A BLURRING Some insist that black racism is a convenient charge leveled by those unable to deal with legitimate black anger and uncomfortable with the resurgence of '60s-style black pride - symbolized in part by the new cult of personality surrounding Malcolm X, who preached black empowerment "by any means necessary." Today, black identity flourishes in everything from clothing to rap music to the predominantly black schools where even middle-class, integrated blacks choose to send their children. But in a racially charged climate, the lines of perception among "identity," "pride," "separatism," "anger" and "racism" seem to blur. The Muslims who preach bootstrapping and black empowerment on public-access television shows, occasionally dipping into the anti-white demonology of Elijah Muhammad, are viewed as merely separatist by some, racist by others. "In some cases it is a deliberate blurring," says Russell Adams, chairman of Howard's Department of Afro-American Studies. Mr. Adams, 62, argues that society's discomfort with black anger is so acute that "normal protest has become 'racist.' " Some blacks describe the charge as peculiar, and perhaps uninformed, coming from whites who have never lived with racism, never lost jobs or loans or opportunities to buy homes in desirable neighborhoods. "I believe black people can be prejudiced," says Keith Taylor, 22, a part-time staffer at Howard who also works at a Capitol Hill bakery. "Color does not make you not prejudiced. But you've got to understand, black people fear. They fear because everything we get gets taken away." THE POWER THING If racism requires a justifying doctrine or institutional power to discriminate, or both, then many blacks say they don't qualify. But if racism is simply color-bound discrimination with no requirement of institutionalized power, some contend that blacks can be racist. Mr. Adams says academics who study racism traditionally divide it into categories: individual, institutional, ideological and, last, situational. "That's the kind Mr. [Reginald] Denny, the white truck driver, got involved in," Mr. Adams says. "The guys jumped on him because he was white. In that situation, obviously, they were acting racist, because had he been black, nothing would have happened." Blacks might be capable of racism on a larger scale, Mr. Adams says. Some Hispanics charged that the rioting in Washington's Mount Pleasant neighborhood in summer 1991 was the bitter result of years of discrimination by a majority-black city government and police force. Black colleges such as Howard recently find themselves accused of discrimination by white professors who believe they are denied tenure or promotions because of color. "An institution as big as Howard has a place for black racism to happen," Mr. Adams says. "Again, the power thing. . . . They [blacks] can be racist in attitude and in rare cases the use of power. But it's 98 percent the other way." Whites argue they never could say what some blacks are saying - rap singer Sister Souljah's diatribes come to mind - without being repudiated as racists. Blacks counter that whites aren't fighting for the survival of their race. "America is always trying to strangle and silence black people," Sister Souljah declares on her album, "360 Degrees of Power" (Epic Records). In interviews, she claims black and white America are "at war." A war footing and "the system" cover a multitude of actions. During the funeral of Gavin Cato, the youth killed in Crown Heights, Mr. Sharpton implicitly defended the retaliatory killing of a young Jew. "We must not reprimand our children for outrage," he told mourners, "when it is the outrage that was put in them by an oppressive system." TALKING AROUND IT Some blacks argue that even discussing black racism is unproductive, a way of avoiding questions about a society divided by race and economic class. "[Whites] are dealing with black anger and they choose to call it racism because then they don't have to deal with where our anger comes from," the Rev. C.T. Vivian of Atlanta, a former member of Martin Luther King Jr.'s staff, told the Associated Press. "When black people get the sort of institutional power wherein they could be exclusionary, then you could say that [black racism exists]," Mr. Wiley argues. "But it's just I think black people are so powerless. They are working on [getting] their power." Columnist Clarence Page, 45, who is black, calls the argument of powerlessness "persuasive but unconvincing." He writes that racism "is evil but, like power, not limited to any one race." If the debate over whether black racism exists is esoteric, the emotions that inform it are not. Some people are angry, scared and tightly wound. Mr. Adams says, "One cannot do harm, so to speak, by saying, hey folks, in our emotional anxiety about race relations, we are all a tad hyper, and in our excited state, we abuse the language and abuse concepts and misread a lot of critical things." The discussion about black racism, the Howard professor says, has widened "not simply [at] a time of vagueness about racial policy, but about social policy generally. . . . And in the American fashion, we are talking around it." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM