NET Journal; 228; Some of Our Best Friends; Part 1

The following program is from NET, the public television network. Last month, NET invited a group of 11 people, blacks and Jews, to take part in an experimental dialogue on relations between the two groups, relations which recently have been the subject of much attention in the national press. They were told they could take as much time as needed to try to get past the rhetoric and fears that have divided them to try to reach some understanding of each other. They spent 11 straight hours together before our cameras in Washington, with only short breaks between each of four sessions.

The next two hours is an edited version of what took place there. Helping run the dialogue are Charles C. Shaw and P. Bertrand Phillips, psychologists with the National Training Laboratories Institute of the National Educational Association. Participating are Paul Jacobs, political activist and writer from San Francisco. John Hetchet, teacher and central figure in a black Jewish controversy at New York University. Charlotte Robinson, teacher in an anti-poverty program in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Louis Smith, president of Los Angeles Operation Bootstrap. Naomi Mandelbaum, a teacher from a Detroit suburb. Sid Finley, Chicago field representative for the NAACP. Ed Solomon, principal of a Harlem Junior High School. Laurie Rodel, of New York's urban coalition. Dick Cohen, associate director of the American Jewish Congress.

Murray Saltsman, an Indianapolis rabbi, active in civil rights. And Milton Huffman, merchant in Washington's black community, whose star has been burned down twice. NET Journal presents some of my best friends. Perhaps I, as the last measure of court, and the first measure of merchant, and another measure of a member of a populist, and another measure of citizen of Washington, and another measure just one human being amongst other human beings, and best qualified to start this. And for that purpose, I'd like to read a poem that I have before me, that I'm sorry I found the cause and the necessity for writing. It was written on April 6th of last year, shortly after the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King.

It was written at the site of my former and present business at the corner of 9th and 8th Street, Northeast. It was written looking at the cinders that were there, instead of the merchandise, and the fixtures that had been there the day before, merchandise and fixtures which I felt had been honestly used to serve the community as well as myself. If I may have the privilege, I'd like to read it, and I'd also like to read the comment that is below. It is called from the cinders. Cinders black relating to my neighbors, and rain won't fall in any color tonight. So some accept this as expiation for slavers, and some believe that this wrong makes a right. Our blackest blind and whites, who engage in actions, blindly dealing blows where sense

suggests, here are friends, who did befriend the doer. Here is one so different from the rest. How shall peace come, where there are two humans, who do not understand that God's command decrees that each must be a better human, if both are heir to reach the promised land? Pray God that there shall come just one tomorrow, that men shall see through eyes both blue and brown, that not contributes more to human sorrow than forgetfulness, that every child's God's own.

And underneath that are the words composed Saturday, April the 6th, one day after viewing the burned hulk of what once had been art young men's wearer, and respectfully dedicated to all our friends and neighbors, and to the memory of a great and noble man. May he rest in peace to the Reverend Mark Luther King. I hope this requires no comment on my part. It doesn't, to me, say anything as much as it raises a lot of questions about what you really felt, if I'm not a merchant, but if I had a store that had been burned out, presumably and destroyed with all your merchandise and the other things that you mentioned had been destroyed in that fire after serving the community and yourself as you put it all these years. At least from my own point of view, I wouldn't have sat down and written a poem.

I think I would have been a man of the hell, and would not have been satisfied from my own point of view with writing a poem which seems to be some kind of a cop out, it's a cop out because you were apparently ashamed to be mad because something inside you felt that you shouldn't really be mad. I think the poem expresses a very to me again, a very artificial kind of emotion. It says, they burnt my store, they destroyed, what may have been thousands of dollars of life saving and so on, so I'll write a poem and say, we should all love each other. I think why maybe I better answer this question at the first point, I'd like to hear the message of the print that way, in the store with which I am associated are the youngs at 9th and 8th Street North East, because we recognize that 99% of our hatred is from people who are brown or black or tan, and I try not to put too much emphasis on color because to me characters of a little more importance.

We employ, we employ only members of your race. We don't employ any white people. Which race do I belong to? The human race. I hope you don't have a mind. It isn't the context in which you admit that, I do. I do. I didn't mean that. No, he's right, be honest. We're crying out loud. When you said you're a race, you manned a black man or negro, a malnato, whatever the hell you are. I am. I was a human race. That's what I mean by a cop out. You're not honest with yourself. Mr. Solomon, I... I... Mr. Solomon. I'm Mr. Solomon. I'm Jacob. I'm Jacob. I won't remember anyway. The pride of authorship, we're sensitive to, I'm sure. But what you were doing was, in a certain sense, posturing, creating and rationalizing feelings, with a sense of guilt that seemed already, inherent in trying to justify yourself, perhaps as a Jew, but as a person with a point of view that you're going to accept.

Everyone here. I'm not sure I'm going to accept everyone here. And it's not the issue of posturing or reading statements or poems, but, you know, coming to grips with, what are we really saying to each other? I think that's... And what do we really feel about each other within our own selves? This is the issue. Also, you know, I'm part of the... We wanted to talk about Martin Luther King. I came here to talk about Jews. Well, isn't that black? Well, isn't that black? Good. We can get down to what person is cheering on the models. The nitty-gritty situation, but I think that perhaps some sort of historical perspective is needed. Now, I'm perfectly willing to discuss black Jewish relationships, but on my own terms. And my terms are these that, first of all, you have to recognize that my ancestors were brought here not as persons, but to get that straight. And brought here as animals, as beasts of burden, so that euphemism slavery did not apply to us.

Now it has taken us almost 400 years of our own striving, not with anybody else's help, our own striving to try and become what this country said we were not, namely, human. And the process from so-called slavery through reconstruction, through the World War I, through World War II, down to the present, certain persons like myself have decided that we have to have some sort of roots, and that the most important thing to root ourselves in is our own blackness, our identity as persons of supreme worth. Now, obviously, in the process, a lot of people are going to get hurt, that is, both verbally and physically, very simply. We were spawned in a country that was founded on violence. We were not special creatures.

We were not immune to that kind of violence. So why all of a sudden, when blacks resort, as some people say they do to violence, why the surprise? Because we're no longer docile beings? Mr. Hatchett, we were prepared to jump on Mr. Hoffman because he was trying. Isn't the kind of general so somewhat of that, you know, that country was founded on violence. Unquestionably, there is an element of violence that was intrinsic and indigenous to the country. Okay, one based on the concept of violence, if violence is, finally, the absolute alternative, available in America and nothing else, then this is a waste of time. Well, we were talking about, John, I thought we were going to start talking about Jews. No, I was going to break you off. It is really a waste of time because you could join me in it. You see, I feel so trapped in all this bull that goes around saying, violence is

ain't the way, you know, and I give you examples of that. The black panthers in Los Angeles were trying to buy guns, and let's bring it to the Jewish community. And they were appealing to Jewish liberals for money to buy guns, okay? And they were told, oh my God, you don't do those kind of things. But those same people packed Hollywood Bowl and bought guns for Israel. So I feel kind of like, you know, there's a separate standard set up for me over here that no other American has to go through, but here's the crux of the marriage. I'm sure that's the perception, the perception is different. I agree with that. He'll mean that. He's not interested. He's actually indiscriminate about who is there there. That's why I say you should get your gun and join me. In the enough of the black panthers, the black panthers don't hurt. Just a moment. That's the fact. You wrench it in your own mind, honestly, between a Jew and a white. In other words, when you say Johnny Jones is a bigot, all right. Now when you say, Sidney Goldberg is a bigot, do you honestly make any differentiation?

Is it important to you that he's Jewish to must the population be free? The differentiation I make between him is that he's a bigot and I hope to God that I'm not. That's a differentiation. But you say the two are the same and you're mine. Well, certainly. If, by the way, we all agree to that. I mean, if I ask each little, if I ask you the same question. If you had asked me the same question many years ago, no. How many? Well, I'll let you give an example. Like I grew up in a West Philadelphia ghetto, you see. And I had my own image of a Jew. No matter as a teenager and pre-teenage. And that's what I said earlier. Yeah. I had my own stereotype of a Jew, of a Jew. He owned a store, he was a hustler, and I tried to hustle him, and he wasn't just a white man.

He was a Jew. Why? Because you know no other. You know no other. If you were with me, it's on your heart. I feel about it before you tell me how you know I should feel about it. And I knew he was a Jew because he was closed on Jewish holidays, you know. I knew he was a Jew and a white man on top of it because his kids didn't go to my school. We went to Mark Washington, which was all black. And even though he lived in our community, he went over to Blankenberg and Lydie high schools. I knew he was a Jew, you know, somehow not, you know, you get your information. And to me, that was all a Jew could be. In my world, there were no other Jews. Since then, I could say now I don't care what he is, I don't question that about him. I'm a kid, you know, with Paul sometimes. Are you Jewish, Paul? I'm half Jewish. You know. My parents were Jewish, but I'm not. I'll say this, as a kid, in my ghetto, and in my gang world, damn right, I had a stereotype

of a Jew. But no, I'm asking about that. In other words, when you discuss it now. When I discuss it now, it doesn't mean anything to me. You ask why Jews. Now, I think it's wrong when a black guy gets attacked for saying, when a black guy is accused of being anti-Semitic because he says the school system of New York City is run by Jews, I think that's a fact the school system of New York City is being run by Jews. What becomes anti-Semitic, though, is when you go one step further than that and you say the reason that he is doing this is because it's part of a Jewish plot. I didn't say what you suggested. No, I say, yeah. Al Vand didn't. Al Vand didn't. Al Vand didn't. And we are the three persons thus far by no means alone, but thus far in New York City who have been. I've sort of faded into the background. Now, Al Vand is getting the grunt of what I have come to call a very vicious and very unprecedented attack.

And the things that we have in common, that is, Al, Les and myself, is a compassion for the welfare of black youth. Now, despite our particular idiosyncrasies, we do not allow that compassion, or we have not allowed that compassion to turn into a passion against Jews. This is what Jews have said and have tried to convince people of your organization, for instance. The level and attack that I have not witnessed in part to raise funds. This is one of your functions to excite the Jewish community to the presence of so called black and Thai, you know, John, I think we owe each other at least this. I don't have a right to interpret what you say, although I do have a right to tell you what kind of an effect it has on me.

I hope you grant me that. Now, you don't have any right to interpret what we do except in terms of how it appears to you. You say we are exciting the Jewish community to raise funds. That's ridiculous. Why is it ridiculous? Because it isn't true and because it betrays a lack of understanding on your point. That's very discouraging. Point out to me that the basis for the attacks on the black male teachers in the New York public school system, when you say that Jewish teachers are trying to castrate black children, mentally castrate. Well, okay, mentally castrate and when you make it very clear, at least as we interpret that it's a part of a Jewish conspiracy to keep the black and spears the black, you're interpretation. You have said that it's done, but I have never had a point of sense. Oh, well, okay, and Van and Campbell too. They have never used the term conspiracy. Now, let's talk about what's really happening. What's really happening?

When I see examples and I'm sorry, I have it in the motel room. I could have shown you examples of the reactions of children today, black children. For instance, in the first week I was in a school as a principal. There was a trespasser picked up. Now when you pick up a trespasser, the law requires, and this was a boy not in the school, a boy who had 17 previous arrests. The father came in the next day, now I'm brand new here, he opened the door of my office and said, you white, you bastard principal, Hitler didn't burn enough of you. Now, why was I a Jew bastard principal? You see, I was a white principal. He didn't even own my name, and let me tell you what's happening. That the teachers in New York City, since we have constantly done this, we say the New York City school system is Jewish, Jewish, Jewish.

Now, you use it because it's emotional. You don't have to reason, you don't have to be rational while you can say you lousy Jew bastard, and right away you've got something to go at this individual with. I'm a Jew, you see, whether Paul says he's Jewish or not, he's a Jewish, I'm Jewish, I'm Jewish. I'm a problem Jew. Welcome back to the hall. I can understand that happening, since every teacher I ever knew, every teacher I ever had, you know, from first grade to a little high school, every teacher, you know, every official teacher was Jewish. One makes an assumption that all teachers are Jews, Jews. And the mass of black people in the ghettos of the North never run across any other kinds of Jews, and for someone who's in the educational system, you know, to be surprised, and that was like, that's made of steak. That's 20 years ago. I want to buy this. I want to do something.

We're calling teachers lousy Jew bastards 15, 20 years ago. We're calling a pawnbroker, a cheap bastard, but you can give him enough for the record player that we had to pour the payback caps for the rent, you know, that we didn't get because the case worker was Jewish, you know, they can come through with the bread. Now, I'm going to say this, you see, now this is anti-Semitic. If you interpret that to be so, then maybe we can get to which role it is. I maintain that there has been a deliberate plot within this country that keep black kids dumb, ignorant, and uneducated. We have some ideas about how to teach you see. See, we take the dropouts, the dropouts of the school system, and make computer programmers out of them in one year, but no, you won't come to Los Angeles and find that in the schools because we have not yet been able to muster the power to take those schools over. So why? So why? Everyone who is bad is suddenly a Jew. I don't know anything about that problem. You better work that out with New York people. Well, this is so in Detroit too.

In the Detroit ghetto, the word Jew seems to be used if it's a bad landlord. If so, fact, it's the Jew landlord. In fact, if they don't like a black man, they call him the Jew black or the black. I think a lot of that has to do with the resistance of that first line I was talking about. The point is, the dealings in the Midwest, if you want to call Detroit that, I'm from Grand Rapids, the dealings that most black people have in a community with a Jew is in the capacity of a boss. He is the one who has the money, who runs the store. He is the person who is usually the ghetto landlord. Yeah, we'd like to make a couple of points with respect. Since I'm from the Midwest Indianapolis too, in the Midwest, generally speaking, the population of the Jewish community is less than 1%. I think you can speak of Jewish power in New York and Los Angeles.

You can't in the Midwest. No, you can't. Chicago, I guess. But Indianapolis, we're less than 1%. There really isn't a great deal of power today. And that's strategic, I think. Not strategic. No, today the Jews are concentrated largely in professions. They're not in the stores. The stores have been taken over by larger chains. The Jewish moving and has moved out of the retail business rapidly. There are Jewish merchants and there are Jewish landlords in the slums. But the largest slumlords are Indiana University, the Indiana National Bank. Major white Protestant institutions. And yet in Indianapolis, the epithet and Jew merchant is used not by blacks, but by a particular group of blacks. By and large, the relationship between the black and Jewish community is very good. But the point I'm trying to make is that it's this identification of the oppressor and the Jew that begins to, I think, tear apart the Jew and the black community.

I was right. We're not about the end of the issue. We had two things before us. One was some clarity about where we were on the issue. And I don't think you need any encouragement for burger meat. Get going on that one. The second is what's happening does here in this group. We haven't gotten for ourselves clear on what the concerns are in a way that we can deal with them. Why don't we take 15 and come back and see how we go the second round. I'd like to ask a question, see before we get into something else. And I've never been quite clear on it.

I'd like to hear from a Jew what he considers as anti-Semitism. His definition of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is racism. The irrational thrust. Why do you place the term Jew in front of anything? Anti-Semitism comes out of the Christ killer idea. Now, what you're doing is simply saying, well, I got some other handle that I combine this guy over the head with. And so what I'm doing is he may be an exploiter. He may be a poor teacher. He may be a promy doctor. He may be all these things. But the irrational thrust. How do I answer the fact that I am a lousy Jew dash? What do I do with the word Jew? And it's racism. And you cannot blunt it with any other thing. Why get into any discussion about the reason that I as a Jew? No, I as a person am against it.

Because it only gives the next guy the chance to be racist about the black, the Indian, the Mexican, et cetera, and so forth. Point of information. I've got to ask, you know, just question. In other words, you don't want to be referred to as a Jew. Not if it's an irrational mark. If you say his religion is fine. But if it comes up, in other words, I don't want you to say, well, he's a Jew principal. I object to it. What's it got to do with the price of fish? I don't agree. I'll show you, you know, we all have another notion about it. And what I find as a radical horrendous about anti-Semitism is that it seems to me to be a reflection of black people picking up the worst aspects of the white society that I abhure. Now, that's why I don't accept the notion that what you have to do if a black militant organization, or it doesn't even have to be a militant organization, publishes an anti-Semitic poem, or a poem which is conceived of with some legitimacy as being anti-Semitic.

I think there's only one thing to do, Dick. And that's not to take ads in the New York Times. It's not to publish these kind of things. It's to get down right down here with this guy and say, look, you're not the enemy because I happen to be labeled a Jew. The enemy's out there, out there, all of God damn miserable society, we're both trapped in. But what's happened has been, Luke, is that now because of the political situation, the anti-Semitic question has come back on the agenda, and all Jews in my belief in America, all Jews, are somehow deep in their consciousness. They really believe that they're on a temporary leave of absence from a pogrom. I have the impression that Negroes think that Jews are hung up on anti-Semitism too much. Is that your feeling? And this is the hysteria that I read in the press and elsewhere. All of a sudden, in quotation marks, black anti-Semitism is on the rise in the black community.

It's becoming virulent, it's poisoning the system, it's poisoning the body politic of the country, and it has to be stopped at all costs. I really don't understand this. We may be. I will grant that we may be to a certain extent, anti-Jewish, vis-a-vis Jews in the United States of America, and more precisely vis-a-vis Jews that become in contact with our day-to-day activities. But to say that we are anti-Semitic and condemn an entire group on the basis of their religion, this is the shearous and the most denigrating kind of fabrication that I have ever encountered. If I say nothing else at all today, I want to say that. But John, that's really not so much the issue, because the real problem is not to describe the phenomenon,

which I think you describe accurately, and which I don't disagree with your description. The real problem is, what do people who are in positions of leadership do vis-a-vis their own communities in this kind of a situation? One of the tasks of leadership is to explain. Yes, it's true. People, we people who live in the ghettos, have to deal with Jewish slum-lords and Jewish gun-of-sustela from us in the store and the credit and all the rest of them. But they're not the only ones. You're saying what he said to you. Don't he say, don't stereotype me? No, I'm saying more than that. I'm saying he's got a responsibility. Okay, let's go on from there. Okay, you both say, don't stereotype us. People are meeting, I do not belong to one organization. Well, the pawn broker. You said these are not the only people these people are meeting. Who are these people?

The people, the black people, again. Because I do not today belong to one organization in Detroit, whether it's Congress, or Hadassah, National Council of Jewish Women, who have not got, and my temple, groups of women working in the inner city. And one of the things I must admit, you talk about criticism. Well, there's positive criticism. I think what you better do is check the level of intercity that you're talking about. Well, I talk- I'm talking about schools in Detroit in a city where there are many, many women, Jewish women who are working on a personal basis, a one-to-one basis, with children. I know that some of my own Jewish students who are working in interracial committees, in other words, I do not agree at all that the only Jew that you see in the inner city is the pawn broker and the shopkeeper who very often is not even Jewish. There are other people working in there, and I haven't heard one word about these people. I don't know me.

When I was a kid, you are. I can tell you the truth. But you know these people. No, the times they are changing. No, I understand one thing. And that's all just one thing that the agencies, those people are working in, are the agencies that are hated by the inner city people. You see, that's the very thing that Paul wrote about in his book, Prelude to Riot, and we make this great big mistake of thinking that we try our little hindpots as down to Watts, and we sit in our inner city, Detroit, etc. And we sit in these little agencies, and those agencies are hated by the black people on the street to begin with, which caused- It caused kicks your problem, you see, you do it alone. So, don't give the idea to expose yourself there. You know, this year is a year is a year is a year is a year is a year. And constant involvement with, but landlords, and pawn brokers, and shopkeepers, and social workers, and case workers, and all the mother mothers. Sponsored, I want to get certain facts. One, instead of the use of the term anti-Semitism, let's assume that we are in a semantic, and good Lord,

forgive me, hang up. And we have this problem for it. We have this problem of the use of the term anti-Semitism. Maybe it's a wrong term. Does it still make the anti-Jewishness any better or worse? Because John said, we are not anti-Semitic, we are anti-Jewish, and I think herein lies the telling point. I'd like to know, what do you mean you're anti-Jewish? Wait, no, I'd like this. I don't ask every one of us. Whether or not we're anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish, and all of us will tell you unquestionably, we are not white. And I'm not anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish. And I venture to say that. I stick my neck out this far, but I say, take a poll right now. No, I asked John, he had made the same. But I didn't ask you. He said he was anti-Jewish. He said he was anti-Jewish. He did not say that. That's what I gathered.

If he didn't say it, I'd be very good to ask. Am I even cheating with you? Do you consider yourself John? Do you consider yourself to be anti-Jewish? He didn't say he is anti-Jewish. I'm asking about him. No. Okay. Are you a communication test? Are you, are you alive? I was a member of the July jury. I was when I was 12, you know. Are you not alive? No, not alive. Are you a charlatte? What is that? I'm not anti-black. Wait, wait a second. So maybe we need some anti-Semitic, thinking black people in here. Yeah, right. The following just as soon as you get through. John made it very clear, you know, we went into this whole thing about the black experience and the black reality. These are the, you know, relationship to Jews. In the ghetto, right? Right. And that, you know, Jewish merchants and all of them cats that we deal with in the ghetto. In that context, other ghetto, you know, people have got to be anti-Jewish, right? Because the guy who's doing it to them, they're anti-white, right?

Can I have one question? No, no, of course I must stop you here. Because the people who are going to stop you here. Stop me. Are you? Let's assume I go to... I don't live in that kind of ghetto anymore. Wait, let's assume I go to a ghetto. Yeah. Which does not. Offhand, I can't think of one, because I don't know all the urban ghettos. But let's assume I go to one in which the exploiter or the exploiting class is not Jewish. And they'll be anti-Ian. No. No. No, they won't. No, they won't be an Indianapolisist Jewish. They really... Tell you that it's San Francisco. Wait a minute, it's San Francisco. He's right. San Francisco. No, wait a minute. It's San Francisco. They don't like communities, they think that. They talk about Alliodo and his goddamn mafia running the city. They don't Jews there. It's all, it's Alliodo. And they'll be anti-Jewish. Don't blame that mass media on us. We don't own it. It's a daily, I don't think... What are you saying? What are you saying? Are you anti-Jewish? Are you anti-Semitic Smith? No. Are you anti-Jewish, hasn't it? No. Are you anti-Jewish?

No. And then he says, and you white people, are you anti-black? No, no, not me, I'm not anti-black. I love blacks. Nobody said that. I didn't say I love black people. I said the only guy that's saying it. I said black people. They said we're not anti-black. Is that enough? I'm talking meaninglessness at the same time. I want the toucher. Right. They may not be anti-black, but they are racist. As Paul, as all white people in the continental United States are racist. And this is the fact that we have to face up to. What does that mean? I have to go. What does it mean? If you let me finish it, I'll let you finish it. You condense. You did. Because you should ask one other question. You condense. You know what I mean about people in this room as white? And I would probably give you another answer. I don't want you to be like white people. Come on, don't condense. I'm anti-black. Yeah, don't condense. Don't give us, you know, about how sweet and how we're all white people. I don't want white people.

We're believing this seems like. God damn we don't. I don't really believe it, people. Unless I'm an AI. Then why use the term Jewish? All right, let's stick to it now. You got it. Now why use the term Jewish? Why edit? to a Jew in positive and if I refer to him in a negative then you know it's a bad example you know when I went to Israel they made it very clear to me that they wanted to be referred to as Jews and never again that they not want to be able to stand up and say I'm a Jew and I'm proud to be a Jew you see and you see now now if I'm gonna do that if I'm gonna say boy look look at that Jewish scientist what that beautiful what he did then I'm also allowed to say look at that Jewish bastard and what he did right but you don't but is that anist you don't mention the scientist you don't mention the bad well then you don't know much about black history then oh you ought to just listen to our spirituals where we mentioned it what really is existing is our power struggle right now and we might as well lay that on the floor and we can't hide behind black feelings or or or Jewish feelings or any other kind of

feelings right now the black community is demanding control over certain institutions within its community right now it is the economic system this may shock you to know but whereas a great deal of planning being done of how we gonna take on the mafia because they still control our vice you see and that's that with them be called anti-attalion but we want control of our schools first and secondly we want control of the economics in our community and we want those two things now and it's that whole transferring of power where we rub in each other and it just so happens in too many cases it is Jew and black we know something about the black community and I get a feeling around this circle here that there are people who are not accepting you know what we what we what we know it to be true you know right I mean like here we are talking about it and someone saying well I don't know about that you know I'll believe anything you tell me about the Jews I will you know sorry anything you

know this collective group says about Jews and Jews and and the Jewish experience and the Jewish reality the whole thing but but this is no good at all you know unless you're going to accept what we say about the black I'm willing to accept it that's a way I would see what's happening here in the group the and it's I see it has been in a worse still I guess the one that you're stating that we are so sick and tired of trying to explain it to somebody who isn't listening that we don't need very much evidence that they're not listening before we check them off really honestly would like to know why do you say I'm a racist and what basis or

anyone I mean you said me and Mrs. Mandelbaum you know what how do you evaluate this earlier we spoke of being honest you know truthful not mine truth of the matter is that I'm like the late Gandhi I simply don't trust the overwhelming majority of white people with whom I come into contact I mean if I sit here if I sit here and call you a Jewish bastard that's an attitude I possess what is it that I'm doing but the calling of calling you a Jewish bastard isn't going to rob you of your dignity but when an entire country says to every black person man woman and child somehow you just don't quite measure up that does something to them it kills us physically it kills us mentally it

kills us in every way and this is what I've been saying that by the statement you're making this is what's happening you're not willing to identify or able to identify to tell me what am I doing I want to permit me to generalize and I don't want to generalize in here he's generalizing about me I'll get you you I challenge you want to you challenge day in and day out are you willing to lay your life on the line for me do you challenge the racist institutions do you get out there day in there more than you do how do you know that I haven't answer your question I'm not going to make any difference yeah you're not allowing you to make any difference to you John does it make any difference to you for example that the America is Congress of the neighborhood or any organizations have floor have picketed have have or that I have put my life on the lobby have taken you keep that on these guys here have taken cases to court or do you or you dismiss that we do have options but when I say you yes I am

generalizing not if you want to personalize I can call you by name but I'm saying that what happens we do have choices before us but racist white America has never allowed us to exercise these choices there are three choices we have free choices and by expressing it in this fashion this is not so much anger this is the way in which I articulate it's not anger one choice is total physical separation from what some of us believe is a country so rotten it's not worthy of integrating with that's one choice that is the acquisition of physical territory inside the continental United States that will be ours we will run it as we see fit that's one choice the second choice is what I call psychological separation that is this my asthma of racism is killing us we don't want to have anything to do with it now there have been enough critiques out on

it so I don't I don't have to go into that I think it has been positively critiqued that others who are white have said that this is a racist society and that the chief problem of the continental United States is white racism I didn't just say it all by myself all right so the second choice is a psychological separation from this kind of condition the third choice is integration no United States each time we have tried the choices the response of white America even though the rabbi here says he's not directly involved in this response but the response of white America is no I know you called me a racist I want to know why I'm explaining why the response is then you'll be into integration no no we can do this in partnership or by ourselves that is we can save it in partnership or we can you know I may be able to convince Paul

Jacobs that to come on over to my side it helped me if we feel this is a choice destroy it down to the rock bottom I'm trying to do it right now I'm trying to do it right now I don't think this dialogue is taking place yeah because somebody somewhere some nationalist somewhere I guess he's a nationalist I don't know suddenly it's out of vogue for black people to say anything about Jews then it becomes anti-Semitic but I maintain this when I was a little kid baby little kid the Jews in strawberry mansion hated our guts to a large extent proof of the matter as soon as we moved in they cut out but I didn't see any dialogues going on about anti Negro feelings in the Jewish community and I maintain that right in Los Angeles today outside of a few cats will get up and you know but on the scale such as this where was the concern want to ask a question and come

back to what John Hatchett said he said there were three choices I'm asking it let's assume that I am a white racist in America but that now I have a genuine desire to do something positive now we banged around here yelling at one another about how evil each of us is not interested anymore I asked simply there are three choices if you agree that there are three choices and we have three different groups in the black society preaching these three choices and I am an official in a serving a black community and I am presented with these three choices where do I go oh I'm asking I'm not asking you no I'm asking Lou or John Hatchett I'm asking him I got a right answer that

question because you see what you do as the principal of a school affects my life just as much as it affects his we are enabled first of all it's hard for us to say that because we always think the racist is the science but where do you go from there then what we do is we're trying to figure out a how we got here that and that's not easy because the history of this country's been false you went through that the asked yourself about the institutions that you deal with and of which your report he's in a school system which is rotten miserable utterly destructive of the people in the one thing in New York City that you'll find in common between the very poor and the very rich is they don't want their kids to go to the goddamn schools that's the one thing it's more like you're telling me to negate it let me finish then I'm sorry if I get wound up on this when you see when we examine the institutions of the society in which we

participate that means every institution the society then what you have to be doing when you get back to Indianapolis is about as follows you gotta go down to the welfare bureau to the welfare system but you can't shake your head you want to know what you can do how do you know I'm not doing well I assume you are now but you got to go to the welfare system you got to go to the educational system you got to go to the unemployment offices you got to go to the health offices every single health offices you got to examine every single institution of the city of Indianapolis and when you examine those institutions you will find that as they impinge upon the life of the poor and especially of the minority poor that this notion of racism this notion of white superiority over all other groups and the notion of a kind of a white manifest destiny this is a white man's country actually has functions inside the very fabric of the institution it's in its codes it's in its employee relationships okay now so so the answer then is what we what has to be done is that white people who are

concerned about their own institutions have to do somebody inside their institution I'm not listening I am talking about black already importantism no you see I have a great revolution excuse me are you talking about a black and free feminism that seems to me we're completely departing from I start picking apart the institutional fabric of the society that's when you see this this so unfortunately it's not the kind of so that when you pull it like that you just you see an eruption of pus and you can give it a gigantic shot of penicillin and that'll disappear it's much more like it it's a disease that affects the very fabric now we're already talking about the issue I'm facing up to it what you're bringing up and we've been talking around it up until now well no the he's bringing up the issue of the institutionalization of racism which I think you know begins to deal with one of the basic factors I don't think the basic factor is the antagonism of Jew for for Negro even if I were to grant that that I don't think it would

mean a damn to the problem ultimately because that you just doesn't have enough power to count in America vis-a-vis the black question and black freedom and black dignity so that I think it is really the racist nature of the institutions of America that have to be confronted coming up on six I think we ought to take a break and give ourselves and the good people around us some peace and come back here in 15 maybe we might start with Lou and Naomi and we're talking at the end continued to meet for a while here you think it would do so much damage to black children if there was a white teacher working under a black principal I think that depends entirely upon to teach you so it's not a

question of race I ask you John are you doing in every black person here who claims to seek black authority and black responsibility do you feel that black is a qualification that a teacher must have in order to teach in black children or not the point is when the school we were being taught by the white teachers and an all almost all black school you weren't doing this any good so why not give us a chance we were just as hurt mentally and physically when you were teaching in a predominantly black school and there were no black teachers maybe a janitor every once in a while kid could see that great damage you know shine shine shuffle shuffle but we were just as hurt as you claim to be now can I you say that there were lousy Jewish teachers I'll agree with you there allows you there were lousy teachers the question is

whether their whiteness or their Jewishness disqualify them from being a teacher today and you and Mr. Hatchin in view of your ages are both products at least in some measure of an educational system that included white teachers you are a man I would say and I say this without prejudice a brilliant mental dimensions the man who sits next to me is a man of brilliant cultural dimensions yet each of you have had white teachers and I was thrown out of high school in the 12th grade as being unedurable and that's the extent of my education and they don't call series of them and they they shipped me off to a vocational school to finish up in the manual arch now I take issue because if you want to tell me what's wrong spell it out don't tell me what's wrong that it is lousy because you're making a generalization you have no right to make don't tell me that you have destroyed the black child I'm not going to defend it on

your basis how the hell can I on what what am I going to defend I'm going to beat my breast here and say look at the marbles we produce Jonas Sorky went through New York City he went through City College and he gave us this I can do the same stupid argument that I feel is being done here I think we ought to quit it now see what what I don't understand because I because I wasn't there I supposed to understand it is what I don't understand is how did this attack by blacks on the teachers become a question a Jewish question pro or con maybe somebody could just give me a little history about because mr. Hatchett and others identified these teachers as Jews not as we do say in Los Angeles we identified that where the where the Mexicans call them anglos no they were identified as Jews and presumably then this has question I'm serious now presumably then if if Hatchett and the other people who are mounting this attack if they had said you know we got to get rid of these bloody hunkies or

these damn o-phase or these whites then the Jewish community would not have said this is a Jewish question I should have said I've got none of these rosy teachers why did they just say the rosy teachers it's simply this that in a school system that is controlled by Jews and it's a fact in a school system in which you have an organization known as a Jewish teachers association what the Jewish teachers association 20,000 are more strong which means that they don't mind under certain circumstances being identified as a Protestant Catholic teachers association to yes but I'm I'm focusing on this but in response to this and African American all right so we want to be identified this is my point and I'm trying to answer Paul's question we felt that why not identify Jewish teachers as Jewish teachers this is a sickness that the community call all right

let me let me exercise for once a personal prerogative the thing is that I didn't start this it was already there now I focused attention on a situation hoping that some clarity would come out of it and what happens I'm labeled by his organization among others not his organization alone but his three organizations as writing an article that expresses and heavens knows what this is black Nazism now I wasn't prepared for this kind of paranoia and I think I've done damn well under the circumstances in terms of not responding to it in a violent you know vicious kind of manner but specifically to answer your question I can't answer it because I really don't understand it if Italians can open the admit that they control by virtue of being Italians a sanitation department then why can't Jews admit by virtue of their control the school

system that as Jews they control it not as white but John if you felt that by identifying Jewish teachers as castrating education the children and committing genocide under the children if that was your idea of how to start a dialogue with the Jewish community and have some nice talk on how together arm and arm we can go a black and white together into the future that's crazy and you should know better you know it's crazy why because you know you accept the thesis that somehow criticism of Jews is you know you can't do this the Jews are the people of the book and we take words like genocide and castrate and other words very seriously in the second place I think it put your finger on it yourself John I don't believe your anti-Semitic because I believe you and I like you as a person but when you say that these children he was taught not by a white but by a Jew that reveals so much about you and about this bag this hang up that you

are and I got the hang ups and yours I'll tell you why because that teacher didn't have Jew on his forehead he was white that teacher that you had was white white white white you couldn't tell you said a few minutes ago you said you couldn't tell he was a Jew now for the first time and you you say be honest you know talk about honest the first time I am angry we have much more justification for fear of genocide than any other group on the face of God's earth because 200 million of my ancestors were either killed or destroyed in some other fashion during the slave trade both by white westerners and by Arabs the preponderance of it was done in the white west those who survived those who got to the ships when they found out what was really happening to them they killed themselves rather than submit to that kind of degradation and you're going to

tell me that words do destroy well if words do destroy the no black people should be in this country no black people should be in this country if words alone destroy there are two things I'd like to say one that you know I think a black man has a certain and ten eyes and this is sensitive to that which is going to impinge on his blackness and in the same way I think Jews have and ten eyes and they have certain conflicts and and divilences in the area of their Jewishness which I hope you've seen demonstrated today and and this and ten eye right away 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

the situation is insensitivity right and I accuse you all of racism you know of not recognizing the visibility what the teachers do with those Yiddish remarks they don't speak Yiddish food 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 Schwarzer was because their mama knows what a Schwarzer was because he doesn't they work for them right 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 dimensions 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 and I came out very clearly in what you said I think Murray and now you're saying we don't have that right here in example in SCLC and ACP core I was deeply involved and then 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 prepared 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 .

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