NET Journal; 228; Some of Our Best Friends; Part 2

way senses that here's a possibility because the second point is for people to really communicate, meaningfully and understandably, there has to be a quality of confidence in the relationship. You know what I mean? I think there's a lack of relationship and this is the most that perhaps we can accuse you of in this situation is insensitivity, right, insensitivity, let's wait, wait, you know racism. Ralph Ellison wrote a beautiful book called The Invisible Man, right, and I accuse you all of racism, you know, of not recognizing the visibility, what the teachers do with those utish remarks, they don't speak utish flu, right, what the teachers do in talking about those kids sitting in those 35 seats is all they weren't there as though they didn't know what a schwatsun was because their mama knows what a schwatsun was because she does very work for them, right, is a place to make that criticism and to make that attack upon this Jew, I'm not denying that, I make that attack from my pulpit.

I hear black saying, look, we're choosing the time, you know, and we're choosing the mentions, you know, and we have the right to do that and we're choosing the weapons so to speak, and you know, I hear the Jewish group saying, but you know, we've always had the opportunity to be a part of that with you, you know, and I came up very clearly in what you said, I think, Murray, and now you're saying we don't have that right. Here an example, an SCLC, an ACP Corps, I was deeply involved in them, now, not right now, but about, I'd say three years, four years ago, you know, stay out, I was told to stay out. I was initially perhaps perturbed because I wanted to share this. I, from my point of view, feel that my destiny as a Jew and as American is inextricably connected with the destiny of what happens to the Negro in this country. I can't separate it.

I think that the Rabbi, through the course of this discussion, several hours probably appreciates that better than anyone else in the group who is, you know, any better than any of the other non-blacks except for maybe this guy who already came with a keen appreciation of it. And a man over here, a year in cloud nine, I mean, I have to say that, you're not, as far as I'm concerned, in here in this room, I don't even show if you're trying to get here. I'd like to provide you with a little answer. That's my name. Just a moment. Just a moment. I wrote this on Thursday evening when I first received exactly what it meant. Not just a moment. Just a moment. You didn't know I was going to be here, did you? No. No. I knew human beings were going to be here. And I addressed myself to something that I feel the Rabbi should, the Rabbi should have addressed himself too.

And that is that we are addressing ourselves to something that should be non-existent in America. And that is that there should not be any racial antagonistic differences between us. In 1969, I'd like to read this, and I ask your tolerance, please listen. No. I won't listen. Well. Excuse me. I wrote this last Thursday evening. Excuse me. You didn't know I was going to be here. You didn't know I was going to be here. You didn't know I was going to be here. You didn't know I was going to be here. You didn't know I was going to be here. You didn't know I was going to be here. And there was left one man and one woman on earth. And the two were not as one. For the man was kin to the color of night, and the woman a kin to the sun. And the woman shrank from the man and cried, and the man just stood and stared. And they heard a voice speak to each of them. It is so because I cared. You see, my whole world was destroyed in fire.

Every man, every woman, by hate. But I saved you two, each one of a kind, and hope that you two would mate. If you only hate, you will both expire, and there shall be nothing left. All that I loved will be ended in fire. And the whole world will be bereft. Just one thing shall make my whole world whole again, such a love, as I give you two. And I'll make you blind to each other's skin, and create my world a new. That has all the wrong answers. I won't comment on the poetry, but poetry always has wrong answers. But it seems to me that I couldn't agree with that in a million years, because to be blind to his skin is to insult him.

Do you want to be blind to his skin? I don't want him to be blind or deaf to my Jewishness, or as I express it, I don't want to be blind to his blackness. He's got a right to it, and it's great, just how I want him to be respectful and understanding of mine. This thing is crazy. The poet uses the words blind to skin, he means, if I may interpret, to be tolerant and compassionate. We just think we were getting close to, to begin into zero in on the target. Like, you know, I'd like to ask you a question, that it ever occur, you an American Jewish Congress, is that it? I was just wondering, did it ever occur to you two, or has it been any discussion about supporting these caps in their idea of getting self-determination for their schools? Yes, the answer is yes. The answer is that when the school strike was on, we called on the school teachers to go back to work with the only Jewish organization to do so. We passed a resolution and announced it publicly in support of decentralization, as a measure of, as a way and a technique and instrument of improving and increasing the participation

of parents and the education of the children, and we weren't the only Jewish organization to do that. The reformed rabbis have done it, and so on, and I think, I want to try to one step further. It really is that it, when we hit smack into the economic arena, and I'm going to stereotype and generalize a bit in here, that the Jewish ally, who was with me for integration of the restaurant, I wonder if he's going to be there with me, if in my attempt to get economic control of my community, he has to attack some Jews at that level, and when we attempt to get, you know, teachers that are relevant to our kids, be able to understand it's not because the teacher is a Jew, but because the teacher comes from a different environment, which you'd be with me if it meant economic harm to those Jewish teachers at that point. And that's what I'm not. If it meant that a thousand teachers in New York, or any number you want to mention, a thousand

Jewish teachers, a thousand teachers, 80% of whom say if the ratio of persists are Jews, if it meant that a thousand teachers were fired because upon investigation and due process and legitimate study, they were found to be lousy teachers who could not relate to their children in the class. I would say fire, absolutely, absolutely. And I think that there are ways and we have proposed ways of establishing some kind of measurement so that the teacher doesn't get his tenure after three years and automatically continues for the rest of his life. That's no good. I'm with that entirely, but what I'm against, I'm against replacing this teacher because he's white and putting a black in there, it's so factor without any indication other than the fact that one is white and one is black, that the black is better for the black child. That's what I'm against. I'll fight you on that, not on the first. Is that clear? Are you going to go back here? The issue that I saw that does connect the two for me was your statement, bringing up that you can trust his organization, but that you don't know on the basis of your history

with other people, other experiences, whether it would have, or there's any reality to trusting Dick. And that's the issue. And you were trying to point there, because I think you're asking too much, because I think everybody came here, I came here at least, with certain set notions in my head about who the people were going to be here, and I was prepared without having met them, it wasn't a question of liking or disliking, but I certainly had some fixed ideas. You were first in the poll. I had a fixed idea. Now, and I think everybody had a fixed idea. Now the question is, the need that became very apparent, very quickly, at least for me, was to junk as fast as I could, most of the notions about the people who were here.

I mean, I certainly had a junk that notion I had of hatchet, because my, what everything I got out of, I knew about hatchet was what I read in the New York Times, or in the internecine, interminable, insane arguments that go on in the pages of the New York Review of Books, which review each other. It's called the New York Review of Vietnam. Yeah, well, the New York Review of Vietnam. So, too, and I had a picture, they tell me, when Willa said to me, going to have a rabbi, I had a vision in my mind that's going to be one of them organ toning cats, you know, guy who talks like he's standing next to an open grave all the time, you know. And, you know, I think of him, so he's the NAACP. That's the goddamn tom in the operation, because that's, you know, out where I live, the NAACP doesn't. It's not such a hot thing. Now, it takes a while then to get rid of, of these kinds of attitudes and begin to understand and to listen more carefully to what's being said.

And so, I'm not certain that we can get any more out of a scene like this than a willingness to take the next step, which is to make the demands on each other and keep testing until we do achieve this mutual. I don't know how you heard what I was saying. John. I'm asking this question. In terms of what I said before, how far I'm going to go or willing to go as I, as honest as I can be at this time as I conceive it, are you willing to at least go any distance with me? Or because I hedge at one point, are you saying, okay, the hell with it? You at this stage of the game, you're not my preoccupation, you see, I'm not preoccupied with you. I'm preoccupied with black people and doing for black people, you see. Perhaps at some distant future we may come together again as me as a man and you as a man.

At this stage of the game, I am a black man in search of my identity in order to recover the humanity that your folk, meaning whites, stripped me of. Now in the process, I can care less about you in this kind of search, you're out of it. And I admit this. I don't think it's possible to put me out of it. I admit this. I don't think it's possible to put me out of it and you truly gain your humanity. Oh yes, I can. I don't think so. Because I'm going to do to you, perhaps, what you accuse us of, you accuse us of humanity. Ellison, in invisible men, said that you just as my body, but we have lost our humanity. And the charge that we have lost our humanity by depriving you, just like the Nazis lost their humanity by murdering Jews, that's a correct charge. You're saying now you've lost your humanity, I'm going to lose mine.

And after I've lost mine as much as you've lost yours, then we can be together. And I think that's very destructive. And now I'm listening. Because I think that the process is the product. The process is the product. And we've got to make that process decent, if we are going to be decent, I'm ignoring you. And John said he was going to get and seek his human. Well, here we're saying it's part of his own business. But Ellison, we've got to go back. We've got to find ourselves. We've got to go all the way back. And so on, when we were in Africa, and when some of us were princesses and prince and king and queens and what have you in those societies so that we can start to find out where we belong right now. We've got to find out who we are. Where are we going? We've got to find ourselves. You cannot be involved in finding me. You are white. You are a wasp, whatever you want to call it. You are white.

You cannot be involved in finding me, Charlotte Robinson, a black woman. No. Never. All right, not Murray. But he's a human too. Who's who? I'm not saying he's not. And you're a human. Nobody. And we share. If we don't share negritude or Jewishness, we share some measure of humanity. Otherwise, we're not saying, you know, throw you out. You aren't human or anything. I said, well, give us a chance. We want to find out who we are. You're not black, so you can't be included in that part of the week. Right. That's one point I'm not very clear on, and that is Murray and Dick. And their vehement rejection of, you know, what was said by Charlotte, you know. And what John said in terms of blacks getting themselves together. And you're seeing a rejection of, you know, being a part of that, I don't understand. No, no.

I'm saying, including in blacks getting themselves together, is the confrontation and the real confrontation with whites. I don't think it can be excluded. Well, I don't understand that. I really don't understand that. I get in this feeling again, this attitude, attitude that's been expressed here, I hear all the time, that Niggas are, you know, the Jewish burden in this country, you know. And I go, you know, watch out for us, you know, and make sure that we get it ready and get it right. Otherwise, we might go off someplace and come up with something weird and strange, you know. Well, you didn't get that here. I am getting in here, right? John, John, John and Charlotte, you know, talked about the need for black people to develop their own identity. And while we're doing that, we have to do that. While we're doing that, we really can't be dealing with you or anybody else, you know. I mean, like- But that's not real. I mean, that's not real.

Because what he is in a desert, all by yourself, why is it real? Because you left Egypt and we're not in the belt, the whole thing, right? The course that was in a desert and there was nobody else around us except the sand. But you're surrounded in this country, by whites, by Catholics, by all kinds of people, by institutions. I think this is another one of those times when we're not going to finish in the next 30 seconds. We have gone an hour past break time and I've been waiting for the thing when I thought it would end in 30 seconds. So let's take 15. I'm not believing in the New York Times. I think most of us here resent, you know, the fact that you guys believe that- and defining

ourselves that you should be involved in the definition of us as black people, as black people. And you were saying, Dick was saying, I think, that unless we deal with you as human beings in our definition of black people, we're not going to be human if we negate your humanist or something like that. All we're saying is that in this day and age, I think we need each other more than we did before because I think the Jews need the blacks and I think the blacks need the Jews. I don't think you need us to help define your own identity, although I think our experience

as a people and as an identifiable ethnic group can be valuable to you. Why did Jews need blacks? Jews need blacks because blacks are part of the human race and Jews, and the way blacks are treated, the way blacks are treated is an indication of how humans treat other humans and how humans treat Jews. Okay, so then Jews need Arabs. Yes, they should do. And Jews need everybody. But then the reason the way you put it in that fashion is the reason that we need him is so that we can carry out our mission. We've got to save somebody. Save. No, we've got to save ourselves. We've got to save ourselves. Why couldn't we save ourselves by first saving ourselves? Because you have to have it. We don't have it. Why can't we fairly well? Oh no, no, no. Wait a minute. We haven't saved ourselves in my judgment. My judgment doesn't mean that to be saved means to belong to the club. To be saved means to have a big house.

To be saved means to be financially secure. I don't accept that notion of being saved. If I say to the Jews, if I want to say to the Jews, be saved Jews, then I would have to say a totally different kind of thing. Be saved Jews means don't think that the goddamn house is so important. Don't be so hung up about, you know, belonging to the Hillcrest Country Club and living in the Golden Gate. Every rabbi in the United States, in every Jewish organization in the United States, and every Jewish philanthropic and fraternal institution in the United States would say to itself, our problem as Americans is to try to discover how affected we have been by the American notions of racism, then we would be saving ourselves and incidentally, maybe. Maybe. We might help them. In fact, the trouble with that is it's two contemplators. And what you're indicating, Paul, is not going to be available from the Jewish community. Jewish community right now, at any rate, is not going to join in a revolution. Right.

Okay. So, when I'm saying then, let's stop kidding ourselves. Yeah, I'm thinking about how we're going to help the blacks. All right, we're not going to help the blacks. There's a, because you're assuming that the only way you can help the blacks is by revolution. No, I'll tell you. Well, then I'm assuming that. Well, if you did, I think you're going to have a revolution. What the hell? I think the difference is right there, I'm glad you said it, because I think that what you have done, I think you put your finger on a, on a very, don't join it, but watch it. That's a very important difference between the Jewish community as a corporate body, if anybody can speak for it, and the black, the, the, the black power, or the black movement, the movement. That is the, the Jews, the Jewish community believes, rightly or wrongly, that the system can be improved reform, the difference is that those, those whites and those Jews who feel that the system can be improved by revolution, by, by reform, and improvement. Those people find themselves, and I find myself, frightened by the idea of revolution.

I, you know, it's like, I got some real strong feelings that one of the things that's happening here, and it's been happening since the civil rights movement, where a great number of Jews came into that movement, and the very things you talk about that are Jewish ideals, but not Jewish practices, as I see it, because I can just show you Jewish communities that went yes on 14, because they said property values were more important than human beings, et cetera. And the idealism of the Jewish youth, not being able to vent itself in the Jewish community, turned to the black movement, the civil rights movement for integration into it. Now, black people have come to the conclusion after that movement, and so did the whites, that America ain't about, ain't about, never has, and therefore, seeable future isn't about to absorb any group of color. She absorbed you, because you white, even though you are a Jew, to a larger, to a much larger

extent than she could absorb the Indian, who was the original cat here, the Puerto Rican, the black, the Filipino, you name me a group of color, America never took them in, and they've built their institutions around that racism, that's what we call institutionalized racism, and really what we as blacks are doing is kind of annoying at that idealism that you, you know, you see in your religion, you see, and you see in your so, your supposed way of life, and in very fact, you have been co-opted. The majority of the Jewish community, as I see it in this country, and that's the big difference I see in between an American Jew and Israeli Jew, is that you have been co-opted. You are just another honky at this point, but underneath you still have those kind of dreams. You see a curtain between your material over here, and your dream over there, and you're kind of saying to the black, hey man, you know, like a, can't we find another way where

I can accommodate both, me and Paul get along very good, because I think we understand full well that there's going to have to be some basic changes made in the economic system of this country, and more important, more important, and which I think it's smack dab in the middle of Jewish ideology, there's going to have to be a basic change of how human beings are viewed in this country, because if one thing the black community will tell you, and we know, that dollar bills in this country right now are more important than people. Property is more important than people. Now you know that runs smack dab in contradiction to what you would like to believe, right? But in fact, you're caught in the trap of that materialistic jazz, and we want to find a way, and this is simply what we mean by a black revolution. I hope we can do it peacefully. We want to find a way where we can have the benefits of the technological society, like my tooth was just hurting, darn it, I don't want to know which doctor, I want that stuff

right there, it knocked it out. When I came east, I flew on a jet, I flew on a jet that got me here, and three hours and something, I don't want to cover it wagon, but I also want my Friday and Saturday night, and I want to be able to relate to him as our brother, and not as a dollar bill or commodity. She's my sister, and we want to have our primary relationship and groove at the same time we can have our economy, and that's in the economical advantages, and that's the challenge right now to the Judaism itself, I think, and we're annoying the hell out of you. I'll say this, you know, every one of us at a different point are going to say, well, this far no further. I don't think the Jewish community is with you when you say this far no further. I agree with you, you know, we're not at that point with you. How do we begin to extricate ourselves from this kind of dilemma? It's by first controlling a very basic institution in society named the educational.

This is the reason we've singled that one out. But that's not the only institution we're interested in. We're interested in the totality of the black community. John, I hope by this time, I don't think it was necessary to have this meeting tonight to understand it, because I think you already did understand that when there are stores in Harlem, it's not the Jewish, the little Jewish storekeeper who's gouging the black man in Harlem, it may be Chase Manhattan Bank that owns a property and owns a lot of condemned property, too. It's not the Jew by and large who exploits. And I think that kind of defensive posture might be necessary to be said again and again, because apparently it isn't understood. Well, how come you never had this conversation with him before this scene here in Washington? He and you two guys live in New York.

He's been a central figure in a hell of a controversy. You're the assistant director of an agency that's been directly involved in. How come you never picked up? How come you never picked up? How come he's not even talking to Mark Rudd? Yeah, but no. Well, I can't do anything about the Mark Rudd thing. Here, it takes a television program to take you down to Washington and him down to Washington. But the first time we have it, I'll listen to you guys talking to each other. I think to myself, what a thing this is. What's the matter with you? You couldn't pick up the form and say to him, hey, hatch it. I read in the paper about that that you put out about Jews. Why don't we sit down and talk about that? That's what I said. I'd learn it. I should have done that. I learned that from John tonight, and I'm very grateful. I want to know. Wait, I want to know. Is it real? Did it? I want to know. Look at the trouble we got getting you there. I'm not a black man. You cannot expect the Jew to be a black. I did not.

Not the Jew to be a black. I asked the Jew to try to understand that maybe you get worse than me. We are trying to understand and we are trying to help. Maybe you're missing from us or maybe you're missing the coin. You can't help Jews with this, with the naftety of the feelings or the pervasiveness of the feelings, the surfacing of the feelings is due to this. And Les Campbell read the poem on W.V.A.I. and Rose Shapiro got up and clacked with her false teeth. She comes out along with a rabbi whose name I can't recall, and I think it was Eisen Drop. And some other prominent Jewish figures and says, without reservation, Les Campbell is racist, anti-Semitic, etc. and Les Campbell must be fired from his position for reading that poem. When she says this, this is not lost on the black community. John, can I explain why Jews took offense at that?

Granted that the poem was a valedictsession of the way this girl fell, but Suna Campbell was her teacher. He read the poem was one of his, and the way he read it on the program, and this comments before and after indicated that he approved of that. He approved of a sentiment by a child that said, I wish you would Jew with the Yamaka on your head. I wish you were dead. Now, can you understand, I ask you to try to understand what that means to a Jewish teacher or to a Jewish parent or to three million Jews, whatever number there are in New York, when the teacher, who was supposed to be training the mind of this child, apparently encourages and approves of that kind of sentiment. Now, can you understand really, I want to get close to you, can you understand what it feels like having known that six million of your kin were killed in this generation

over there, and somebody writes a poem, I don't blame the child, the child feels that way, I blame the teacher for not saying, here's the poem of this child read. She feels this way. It's terrible. We've got to do something to train this child not to hate. Isn't that important to you, to train children, not to hate? What, why don't you go talk to this guy? What are you talking to the television audience about this guy? Why don't you go talk to him directly? You see, it seems to me that just, and this kind of thing that's happening here, it seems to me that if this is the way the New York City School, the diet, the debate about the New York City School System has been carried on, it's no wonder the goddamn school system has grown up in that fashion, you people aren't talking to each other, you're talking for the benefit of the press, and you're talking for the benefit of the television, and you're talking for the benefit of the ads and the newspapers, you're talking for everybody

except yourselves. That's probably true to some extent of the blacks as well it is, as it's true of you. We're going to spend, well, almost 10 hours together here, and we have looked at a lot of incidents that have happened in the communities from which we come, and some of our thoughts and feelings, and now if we can focus it in on, and what is the net result of spending time this way for us and our feelings and reactions about each other, and what other kinds of issues would have to be looked at and dealt with before relationships move further, which is really the issue. I have learned a lot, I feel that I relate to John, who was just a name before tonight, to me, and who I think Paul you're right, I think I should have called him and tried to

meet with him in New York instead of wishing to meet him, attacking him. This session in the pit has taught me anything, it has taught me that I should have done that, and I hope the next time he writes an article, that I ought to call him, or perhaps and now that he knows me, he might not write it in the very same way. I don't, I think I try to get a question, it's a blue, I don't think I understand blue very well, I don't know why, I think blue is a revolutionist, and wants to just tear everything down, and that simply isn't my personal way of looking at it, I think yet you're trying to adopt a kind of a real tough guy attitude, a real hard line position, because you think it's the right way to act.

I don't think, and this is very presumptuous of me, I don't think you really feel it. I think that at least as it comes across to me, I think somehow you've gotten caught up in this dialogue here tonight, almost in a kind of a trying to outdo the other guy kind of business. I think some of the Jewish participants have too, particularly with Paul, because Paul is a superior person, and then the queen over here has somebody called it with earrings. I don't know, I'm a very poor judge of women. I think you're very angry at me, and I think you're angry at a lot of people. I think you're probably very angry at a lot of black people too. You strike me as a person of deep feelings, who gets mad and hits and strikes out and reviles.

I would guess that you have a terrible temper. Now, all colored women are that way. I've only lost my temper once in my entire life, just one. That proves what allows a judge of human nature. But one is for a long time, you know, I came from the school where you didn't say anything. You accepted whatever was told you by the adult blacks and by, especially by the white community. And I never questioned it, I never said a word. And when I got in a position of coming out of my own, you know, some of the thoughts that I, you know, put in the back of my mind, because I didn't want to confuse myself, because I had to make it through school, and I had to keep everybody happy, so I could. I decided now that I'm taking care of myself, I can express these views. And I'm like to, you know, find out exactly what my other brothers and sisters feel, what the white people that I come in contact feel. And I'm angry, true.

I'm angry at anyone who stops me, and the black people, and the non-white people from having peace, peace and freedom to me are synonymous, you know. Let me have my freedom and my peace. If you don't, I'm going to be very angry. If you cross me, look out, because I'll get you. Now, that's just the way I feel about it. And regardless of who it is, if you're black and you cross me and you're against my freedom, and, you know, you're right around home, but I'm a big Negro liberal, you know. You go with the rest of the people. I can't do this kind of thing, because perhaps I should have confessed to bands, and then maybe I wouldn't have been here. But I'm not very groupy, some people have misread me. I find it very, very difficult to function in a group environment. In fact, I don't get along too well with adults, many of whom are Negro.

I come alive mostly in relationship to black children, usually in a classroom setting. Now, this is just, you know, me. So I can't go around like this and say how I relate to a particular individual, except to say that on a one-to-one basis, I am more likely to get my point of view across. To that person. So that person better understands me as a black person if I'm talking to a white, or if I am speaking, you know, I can speak to a group of people. But this is because I have been trained in that kind of thing. I go back to a long tradition of ministers.

A great-grandfather was lynched because he dared to preach. See, this is part of the environment in which I grew up. So I can't do this kind of thing, except to say that it's not all in vain what we have done. Because if that be the case, then I don't think I would have sat here this long, I'm not being patronized. I don't think I'd develop any kind of emotional, or philosophical, or other kinds of feelings toward anyone in a group that it didn't have when the group started, I mean, doing the cause of this thing. Were they when you started? When you started, yeah. I'm glad I participated in this thing, though, because when it comes to, you know, the white, the Jewish participants. I realized a little while ago that I have not really gotten involved in an involved kind

of conversation with the type of people that you, that most of this group represents, that is the white men's. I know Jewish radicals are very comfortable with this cat, both, you know, and style and you know, lifestyle and the way he comes on and what he says is the only whites I really deal with talk to get involved with are radicals, you know. Otherwise, I don't talk to them as I have to, you know, it just doesn't seem to be anything to talk about. So, I didn't really have an appreciation for the, for the bag that the Jewish community as a whole was in, but I'm not, I think it was Dick here, you know, who said something about me, the individual, not being, he didn't believe me, I think is what he was saying,

but I'm not really where I, where I've been, I don't, I'm not really at where I, the way I've been coming on tonight. And that, that, I sort of find rather amusing, an interesting observation and I just wanted to ask him, you know, why, why, why he feels that I'm not, you know, it's hard to say, I think, I think because you strike me as being too smart for that. I think, I think you know too much to shut other people out and it doesn't, it doesn't come across to me that you really mean it when, when you say or when, when you indicate to me that you want to shut me out because I think you know better than to, than to shut

me out and I, I just, I just had that impression from, from what you were saying that, that you, you weren't, as you were, as you were coming on and that, you know better. How do you know I'm too smart to, you know, maybe, it might be a dumb thing, it might be really stupid and really dumb and really way out and all that, to, to want to isolate myself and deal with myself, you know, as a black man, you know, maybe really stupid and way out and the wrong thing for the black community to do it. But, but that's what I want to do, that's what I think it's got to be done. I can't figure out any other way of doing it. And I, I, I get annoyed, I really am getting annoyed, I do get annoyed, I mean getting annoyed all night long, whenever, whenever, you guys come up with that kind of thing. What's right, it's right, it's right, it's right, it's now I didn't, I didn't, I didn't care, I think I ever tried that, I don't know, I didn't think Dick had just done it

for right now. Well, it's, it's difficult to, to talk about how you relate to other people, particularly someone that's strange to me as you are, because I don't have any contact with black radicals. Without sounding patronizing, and if that sounded patronizing, I didn't mean to, to mean it. Would, would you, would you've said that about me to, you know, to smart for that radical bag? No. I assume that that's what you're talking about in this case. No, no, not that he is too smart for the radical bag, but that, it seems to me that there is a value in bringing people together and not cutting them out. I don't think you've cut them out. I think he does, or at least he, he seemed to, you don't, he does, and it seemed to me that that's so lacking sense and lacking value and self-defeating that I don't believe that he means it.

You and John have not responded in kind to this situation, this experience, and I'm just wondering if this is going to be true of all of you. And I'm asking myself why, is it, I mean, just because he can't get along with the group, doesn't mean you can't respond to the human being. The rap wise point is something that concerns me too, and that is, if your reaction, John, and yours were typical, then that tells, if it's, if it's important, if it's typical, it's important, and if you, and if you're not representative, then it doesn't, doesn't really matter. But what it means is what it tells the rabbis, I understand, and what it tells me is that the possibility of working together is apparently dismissed by you, not only intellectually, because you don't think that we've got it or will go well the way.

But emotionally, psychologically, because you're unable, if your reaction and yours, John, were typical, you are unable to relate to us. You know, you're making it a Jewish black confrontation here. I don't agree with you or agree with you. I think it takes a special kind of a hutspa. I mean, I'm using the word, I think, in its right sense, at this point, if there's one thing I learned tonight, or I think I feel, is that to get to know somebody and to get them to know them totally, it will take a hell of a lot more than what we have done now, and that perhaps the one thing that I realize is that gap that I knew existed is much greater and must need much more work than I have, or a lot of people have been willing to give, so that to pass off and to say, I judge thee, and thee, and so forth, is to me, there's something that I don't think one can do.

I don't think one can do, and I think one does that. One of my problems is, you know, I just don't feel comfortable enough in this group to open up to it again. I've opened up to it before and told you how I felt about black kids in education and how I'd even go against my own value system at the starvation point, and what I have gotten back is some intellectualizing, you know, when we throw out the subject of anti-negrow feelings in the Jewish community, you know, we can't really explore that subject, and that hurts me very much, you know, what we haven't, you see, and all I'm saying is that I don't, I don't even explore in that one, and the wall, you know, is kind of going up to where, you know, I'm not just ready to open up to this group. I feel no sense of community, you know, very frankly, within a total group. I don't think you, I think you can, I think you can emotionally and intellectually understand

the Mediterranean Sea, at the back of the Jew in Israel, and I could, you see, I could sit there and look at that sea and relate very much to it, but I don't think you have accepted the fact that we are against our Mediterranean Sea too, and we feel just as emotional about it, and we are just as desperate in that, and you know, I haven't heard, it's always questioning us about what we are going to do, you know, like you tell me that you think I'm going to tear the system down, or you know, I don't think I have to tear the system down, you know, I think you're going to tear yourself down, and if we can just hold up long, out long enough, you know, we can just survive long enough, most of the work is going to be done, you know, and as far as going along with you, I don't think it really means that going along with us, you understand, you know, you haven't asked me to go along with the American Jewish Congress, you know, you understand what we were talking about.

There's some things we blacks have to do as blacks, there's some things you Jews have to do as Jews, that doesn't mean we can't get together on every level, other levels, you've tried to twist it around and we say that certain things black people right now have to do with black people, we have to get our manhood and womenhood and a society that is continuing through like, you know, the school system to still rob us of that, to still try to make us feel like we're not as good as Caucasians, you know, that's still the emphasis within the schools, that's the genocide we were talking about, you know, that that made me come out of school, so darn mad that if you called me black, I'd fight you three or four years ago and every one of us in this room, and I had a advantage on him because I was lighter than him you see, and you had us hating ourselves, hating our colors, straightening our hair, the whole bit, and what we're saying is we haven't seen that change within the school system and our kids still and they have to go outside of that system, so I don't know, you see

you're opening up from your gut and how you emotionally feel and you get intellectualized and you're questioning like, you know, how are you going to do it, I don't know how we're going to do it except I know we're going to do it, now that's not rational, that doesn't fit within the framework of categorized America today, but you see, you know, I see America is a totally different thing than you see us, I see America is a place that has never allowed me, sure it has accommodated you, it has given you a niche, but I don't see it as that, I see it just as likes to use it, I am the rock on which America stumped her toe, a James Town long ago, hell no I don't get excited at the Constitution, when he talks about his law and order, hell it took article one and made me three fifths of a man and now it doles out my rights and those rights, I, you know, I don't you know when nothing is anymore dehumanizing, you're talking about sensitivity and anti-Semitism, how would you like to have been sitting up for the last ten years and hearing Congress debate how

much of a man you're going to be this year and you have to go through that kind of debate and that's all it is, you know, and then they turn around and talk about the glorious American dream and you hear Congressmen and senators feel a bustling, feel a bustling your manhood and all they're saying is they're giving a license to white people and I know those bills weren't for me, those bills were to give you, you know, to set the bounds of your conduct towards me, you know, and I, you see, and I just have to do this because you know, the human is ain't going out of us baby, but we're retreating behind our wall, we're tired of throwing our gut out and back on it, throwing our dreams out, wham back on it, you see, every time we throw out a dream, you're talking about killers of a dream, now that's all we've been talking about, dreams, now no real concrete factual way, we couldn't sit any on a piece of paper and give you one real concrete way we're

going to achieve them, except that we're going to achieve them and you're going to have to take us on that faith and we're going to achieve them because we walk to achieve them. You know, I just, so, I like to hear something back from you, I'm very much moved by what you said, and stirred by it because I think you have opened up now as you did a lot ago and you have made me feel uncomfortable because I'm white and I am part of the structure and part of this system that has dehumanized you and a small part of it, perhaps not as big as you think, a small part of it, a part and an even smaller part of that small part is my organization, his organization, others that are trying to do what we can

about it and I can understand or I can, I'm moved by what you say and I try to empathize or sympathize or feel that and all I can't entirely because I haven't lived it, it wouldn't be honest of me to say, I know just what you mean, man, I'm with you all the way, I can't say that, I'm trying to be honest with you by saying that I can't feel that I can be stirred and moved and touched by what you just said and I am, but I can't honestly say, I'm going here all the way because I'm with you, my skin is black, it's not black, it's white and I have what I'm saying is I'm trying to tell a street, I'm trying to be a nice guy and have you like me and say, I'm with you all the way, I'm trying to tell you as honestly as I can how limited I am in helping you or in trying to help you, I want to help you more, I think more than you realize in ways that I don't know how to open up and I want to, and I'm touched by it and I want to go, but I can only go as far as I'm able to go,

that's what I want to say. One thing I want to say, please, please, don't think of it as helping me, start looking back in and seeing what's happening to you and fight for you, I want to say one more thing on the whole subject of antisemitism, you know, if I learned anything sitting in this group, I certainly don't fit that role, you know, I, you know, I, in fact, as far as quotations are concerned and that's where I put a G with this point, in this country, G is that I, I pick, I'm almost like, I don't like white people except my list is growing, do you follow me? Yes. As a blanket statement, no, I don't, don't trust, you know, that's the, that's the dual thing that you got on job about earlier, but if you watch us, that's the way we operate, right

in the middle of a sentence, I can switch from you individual to you group, you say, no, white people as a whole, I don't trust, but my list of whites, who, who I work side by side with is growing, and I mean, that's about as far as it can go, and I will attack of black, who tries to kill my dream and I don't care if you call me anti-black, I will attack a Jew who tries to kill my dream, and I'll just carry the little cross of anti-Semitism or any other group, but right now, man, you got to understand we are against that seat, and some black cats are strapped up, and I've made some very serious commitments, and there are some whites who understand that that's the same box there in, and in fact, your job is going to be harder than mine, because it's better to say, we starting from ground

zero, in fact, in some cases, minus zero, and we have nothing to lose, your problem is going to be, how are you going to get your freedom when you have vested interest in the very system that's stifling your freedom? That is a problem, and, well, I say to you, I understand that, try, when we try to help with a work side by side, or whatever way you want to use it, and don't hurt, because I say help, work with, or whatever way, try to understand, just as we must understand, the depth of your despair and desperation and everything else, as you said, try to understand too, that we want to help. Dick, would you just try that to read back what you think he was saying to you about the word help, because I'm not sure that you understood that. I understood him to take offense at my use of the word help, because I interpreted him

to have understood, to have, he interpreted my use of the word help as kind of condescension. Isn't it that, and, and, and, and, what about, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and that he wants to, he's got to do it in himself. That's right. Yeah, what did you say? I'm so happy every time, every time, every time you get the right by, I, I, I, so do it. What do you say when, well, you, you're, you're inferring as I understood it, which I wouldn't go along with. It's his problem. You're going to happen to solve this problem. He's saying, no, it's your problem. Well, I think, well, I think, I think that's a phony intellectual formulation, I really do. It's his problem. It's his problem. It's your problem. Yes, your problem. But, it's, it's, it's, I suppose you accept, would you accept this? There is no way my problem can be solved by you and I working on my problem. I am a symptom, and only a symptom of the bigger problem.

Do you see? You're not going to free America by concentrating on Harlem and what's outside your car, this market. If we deal with that outside place, we're only a symptom, get rid of the germ and the syphilis bump will go away. Don't treat the bump man because then the germ will have a chance of getting in the spinal column and killing the body. You should be like, you should be like, you should be like, you should be like, you don't want to lose your job. Do you feel that? No, I don't. I do feel that. Do you feel, do you think that can happen? Do you feel that? You think we can be programmed to manipulate it. No, I don't think you can be manipulated. You manipulate yourself. I do think that if you get desperate enough and mad enough and wild enough that some of you, may decide they're in a way, let's not bother, let's not bother being careful.

I think that the possibility exists that I think you've said it tonight in so many words that that may be the case. Certainly blacks have been attacking the economic system within their community very violently and it happens to be a lot of them cats caught in that box with Jews. Well yes, that's already started. We are at a point where we ought to make a decision whether we stop or go on just to a clock. One possibility would be to take a few minutes if anybody else wanted to have their final say. Another would be to let it roll and see where we go with it. I like to say just one thing, it's very interesting that we started out talking about anti-Semitism in the black community and ended up talking about the whole society as a whole and it's

not a separate issue. I didn't think it's a nice related issue and they're going to come times when blacks and Jews are going to rub each other. I hope this has shown that it's not the anti-Semitism, Christ killer type of thing, it's going to be an idiot. Those rubs are going to take place and I would just be tragic if we got sucked into a battle whether it's time magazine or whoever it may be is making that appear that there's an anti-Semitic thing in sense that blacks are out to get Jews. It is just a, you know, a transfer of power that needs to take place, they are going to come those rubs between blacks and Jews and blacks and everybody else. And blacks and Negroes, that rub that's going to take place and that certainly doesn't mean they're anti-black. You see, and I just want to make that clear and I understand, you know, your paranoia at times, because I have a little button I wear sometimes, it says even paranoids have

real enemies, so, you know, kind of keep your guard up, but in this case, I have seen, I'll just tell you from what I've seen, no planned or concerted or even the beginnings of a plan to smash Jews because they are Jews. Do you follow me? Yeah, but they are. We don't have the time. Sure, but they are. One of them is that, you know, some Jews may get rubbed, some blacks will get rubbed and that we're not going to call you anti-Nigra when we get rubbed. They're going to be all different groups of people from ethnic backgrounds who are going to get rubbed. We as a black group of people don't have time to jump on the Jews per se. We're out to save what we can of this country and ourselves. First.

What's the longest marathon? I like my sleep too well, they even keep track. Are we done? Done. Everybody's going to help before they do. Do you need to run? Oh. This is for you. Where'd you want? This is NET, the public television network. This is NET, the public television network.

This is NET, the public television network. This is NET, the public television network. This is NET, the public television network.

This is NET, the public television network. NET, the public television network.