Sir, I read your July 3, 2010 Washington Post, “Civil rights loses a champion in Bill Taylor” column with great interest (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/02/AR2010070204360.html).

As always, your writing makes for stimulating reading.

This was most recently the case with your June 19, 2010 column (‘On Father’s Day, Hypocrites Are All In The Family’) defending President Obama’s character from being assassinated by individuals such as Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, or those who revere them.

It is apparent why you are a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist.

I very carefully, over coffee, this morning read every single word of your most recent piece dedicated to celebrating the life and work of a Jewish leader Mr. Bill Taylor. I learned much about Mr. Taylor as a result of your witness and I thank you.

Your dedication to the subject of Black-Jewish relations is clear and because we both seem to share an interest in the quality of that relationship I am writing you.

In particular, I am reacting to this portion of your article:

“For more than 50 years, Bill Taylor gave his all for justice and equality. Taylor was “a proud Jew,” Rabbi David Saperstein said at the funeral, who “was particularly proud of the black-Jewish alliance in shaping the civil rights movement.”

Which makes it all the more saddening, sickening and infuriating that Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam would choose to go before a sold-out audience in Atlanta last Saturday and single out Jews as historical conspirators against African Americans.
Farrakhan told the gathering that Jews “have always tied themselves to black people. They attach themselves to our talent.

They are the managers, the agents; and they are the accountants. And that’s why our black artists loved fame and got fame but died poor because somebody else got their money, while the Jews sent their children to the finest schools and were able to continue to rule.”

Taylor’s pride in the black-Jewish alliance was well placed. This was no sham of backroom Jewish operators attached to out-front black talent.

The men and women who came together over the years to craft the Little Rock school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education, civil rights and fair housing laws; who destroyed barriers and opened up equal educational opportunities covered the spectrum: blacks, Jews and non-Jews, Southerners and Northerners, women and men.

That spectrum was on display at the service for Taylor in the Tifereth Israel Congregation synagogue in Upper Northwest. They assembled to honor and say farewell to a man whose core principles made him a champion for justice and a civil rights icon for the ages.

How dare anyone dismiss the work of people such as Marshall, Jack Greenberg, Dorothy Height, Joe Rauh, Clarence Mitchell, Roger Wilkins, Marcia Greenberger, Elaine Jones, Wade Henderson and Taylor, and the relationships they forged as African Americans and Jews, as nothing more than a symbiotic yet parasitic relationship between manipulative Jews and unsuspecting blacks?

That was the gist of Farrakhan’s recent message, which he attempted to buttress with a newly released 456-page second-volume edition of “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.”

I won’t dignify Farrakhan with another word.”

Sir, I must say that initially I felt your weaving this statement about Minister Farrakhan into a column dedicated to the life of a recently deceased person was inappropriate. My mind went to the Bible, specifically Hebrews 9:16-17 which places emphasis on the testimony that a life leaves of itself. In a sense, perhaps, Mr. Taylor’s legacy should have spoken louder than your editorializing on Minister Farrakhan. In that sense your words distracted me from seeing Mr. Taylor’s contributions more clearly.

However, you are a better knower than I about the etiquette of such things at The Washington Post.

I did learn interesting additional details regarding his life in the New York Times obituary of him: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/us/30taylor.html) on which I would have liked to have the benefit of your insights.

Your decision to not speak or write ‘another word’ regarding Minister Farrakhan is both positive and helpful because it opens the door for you to reflect and perhaps receive and learn some important and relevant facts, and hopefully decide to again revisit the subject in a future column.

Your expressed view I believe is indicative of what is both very right and very wrong with Black-Jewish relations today.

What is right is your personal testimony to the history regarding what black people suffered in the South as a result of Jim Crow laws. As you wrote, “Nearly 50 years later, we look back on that time, happy that the Department of the Army didn’t order me down south where, in 1961 — and despite a Supreme Court decision — local laws and customs made restaurants and waiting rooms in bus stations off-limits to couples who looked like us. Access to good schools and to the voting booth wasn’t much better for the same reason. Believers in the status quo were known to enforce Jim Crow laws, often with bloody violence.”

What is very wrong is that in a nearly 3 hour speech, last weekend, Minister Farrakhan deals extensively with aspects of that Jim Crow history, yet rather than quoting relevant portions you construct a caricature and utilize the straw man’s argument (reacting to that caricature as if it is real) with these words, “Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam would choose to go before a sold-out audience in Atlanta last Saturday and single out Jews as historical conspirators against African Americans.” Your characterization of this remarkable speech sounds eerily similar to the June 29th press release issued by the Anti-Defamation League, condemning it.

Mr. King, it is as if you relied upon their mischaracterization of his speech and his book, and reacted emotionally to their description without having listened carefully to the speech for yourself and certainly without having read the book to which it consistently referred.

Regardless to your view of Minister Farrakhan – is your reaction to his speech in keeping with the highest standards of your profession, the scientific research method and due diligence?

I sincerely appreciate your not using the descriptive label ‘Anti-Semitic’ or ‘Anti-Jewish’ in reference to the speech, the Minister, and the book. It suggests something very positive to build upon.

The casual use of this phrase by the ADL, in particular, has actually diminished and distracted from the very real problem of anti-Jewish thought and action, which the Nation of Islam strongly opposes.

Minister Farrakhan put it best in his June 24, 2010 letter to ADL National Director Abraham Foxman (http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/National_News_2/article_7101.shtml)when he wrote, “As you have constantly labeled me and done everything within your power to hinder me and us from the civilizing work that Allah (God) has given to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and myself to do, I ask you to find one act committed by me or those who follow me that has injured one Jewish person, stopped Jews from doing business, hindered their education, injured their families, sullied or desecrated their synagogues. You will not find one.”

Unfortunately what is wrong with the current state of Black-Jewish relations is the unwillingness of Black intellectuals, columnists, pastors, activists, entertainers, talk show hosts, politicians, and businesspersons to admit in the public and state directly to the Jewish Political Establishment that while Minister Farrakhan and the Nation Of Islam have no such record of violence, economic sanction, deliberate mis-education, and denial of the freedom of worship of a single Jewish person, much less a whole neighborhood and community – there does exist such a record, not against only a single Black individual but entire Black communities, organizations, and neighborhoods at the hands of some members of the Jewish community.

Mr. King, you will find that scholarship represented in Minister Farrakhan’s speech particularly the attention he gave to the Jim Crow South.

That this fact, documented by Jewish scholars, historians and economists, cannot be spoken without one being labeled ‘anti-Semitic’ is perhaps the problem in the relationship.

Mr. King, did you know that this dynamic was a factor in the labeling of civil rights icon Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr. as ‘Anti-Semitic’ and ‘Anti-Jewish’?

Here is what Dr. King is quoted as saying, “I think we all have to admit that there are Jews in the South who have not been anything like our allies in the civil rights struggle and have gone out of the way to consort with the perpetrators of the status quo.”

And certainly, as a great student of the Civil Rights movement you would be aware of the fact that major Jewish-owned department stores had become so well known for their racist policies - toward customers and employees - that Dr. King and civil rights activists often targeted them for protest.

This is obviously not information originated by the Nation of Islam.

Yet, the Jewish political Establishment refuses to acknowledge it, and Black opinion leaders continue to avoid it.

Any discussion of Black-Jewish relations has to include the scholarship of respected Jewish scholar and historian Dr. Jacob Rader Marcus who wrote, “that most antebellum Jews, those in the North as well as in the South, cared little about the moral issues of human bondage.”

What are we to make of the question asked by Rabbi Leo E. Turitz and Evelyn Turitz in Jews of Mississippi, “What sociological phenomena would lead the Southern Jew to fight so fervently for the principle of slavery? Why was he willing to sacrifice his life so readily for a cause that he knew was contrary to religious principle?”

And the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience has referred to the postwar period of 1865 to 1910 as ‘the golden age of southern Jewry.’ This at the height of the Jim Crow experience you lament at a time when no Jim Crow laws applied to members of the Jewish community, and sadly, when members of the Jewish community occupied key political offices and dominated the economy of many Jim Crow towns and cities.

Your quoting of Rabbi David Sapperstein regarding ‘a Black-Jewish alliance’ is interesting to me.

The Rabbis in the Black-Jewish history who stand out to me as exemplary in some aspects are Rabbi David Einhorn of Baltimore (pictured); Rabbi Sabato Morais of Philadelphia; and Rabbi Bernhard Felsenthal of Chicago.

Why aren’t these Jewish leaders regarded as icons today by members of the Black-Jewish alliance of which Rabbi Saperstein speaks.

To me, their strong stands against slavery despite the ‘Anti-Black’ views of their congregations deserve our attention and respect. They also set a standard, I think, for a new era of ‘relations.’

Incidentally, I learned about these three men from reading Volumes I and II of The Secret Relationship of Blacks and Jews.

Mr. King, I am writing you out of a spirit of respect and love, not only for you (and I do love you), but for our ancestors who suffered in untold ways and for Black and Jewish youth who deserve better than the repetition of this cycle of vitriol, hatred, bitterness and cowardice which has marked Black-Jewish relations for too long.

We have to stop beating around the bush and thoughtlessly repeating talking points fed to us by interest groups. Let’s not trivialize either the beautiful aspects of Black-Jewish relations or its lesser known more unpleasant side.

I want to be clear that I am not writing you because you are critical of Minister Farrakhan.

Whatever opinion you may have of him, I simply want it to be an informed one, that’s all.

Having said that, I must state for the record that he has the most beautiful heart of any human being I have ever met in my life. I have been blessed to be with him in various settings and even one-on-one in private. Not once have I ever heard him say anything derogatory about the Jewish people. If you listen to him carefully, as I have, you will notice how frequently he speaks of the ‘human family.’ If you got to know him (and his words) better you would learn more of the acts of kindness he has performed on behalf of all members of the human family – including many Caucasians and Jews who absolutely love and admire him for the beauty of his spirit as well as his courage, kindness, and truthfulness. I personally know some of them. You may be surprised to know of the profound respect that some members of the Jewish community hold for Minister Farrakhan.

Can a man with an ugly heart have lasted this long, speaking as he has for over 30 years? Would approximately 14 million people tune in to him on a Saturday night last week if there was not something compelling and substantive in what he represents?

Could it be that you have failed to appreciate that part of the appeal of the address, ‘Who Are The Real Children Of Israel?’ is what it spiritually suggests about ending the dual complex of White supremacy and Black inferiority (which is a factor in your brilliantly expressed view of how the character of President Obama is juxtaposed to that of leading White conservatives) – even providing a key to solving the Middle East Crisis?

So, sadly, Mr. King I found your column, aside from a profound witness of the life and legacy of Mr. Bill Taylor (which I did learn from), to be based upon conjecture and not the kind of analysis of a speech and book that a mind as brilliant as yours is capable and which we all deserve and badly need.

In a sense what you inserted into your column regarding Minister Farrakhan represents the kind of disputing without knowledge that impedes the establishment of right relationships.

Here is just some of what the Holy Qur’an says about conjecture and disputing without knowledge:

Surah 6:116: “And if thou obey most of those in the earth, they will lead thee astray from Allah’s way. They follow naught but conjecture, and they only lie.”

Surah 3:66: “…why then do you dispute about that of which you have no knowledge?”

Mr. King, it is clear you wrote your column without knowledge of the book Minister Farrakhan quoted and referred to. Does that not make it impossible for you to determine whether or not what he described is accurate? Yet you write, “That was the gist of Farrakhan’s recent message, which he attempted to buttress with a newly released 456-page second-volume edition of “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.”

How can you dismiss the message while being ignorant of what supports or buttresses it?

You also write, that the Minister in his speech chose to “single out Jews as historical conspirators against African Americans.”

Aren’t you charging the Minister with what so many journalists do – single out, or rather write out some from the record as ‘historical conspirators.’

For example, exactly one year later what Black columnist at a major mainstream newspaper has written a full-length column about the news that only The Financial Times of London made front-page – that documentation was found linking Nathan Meyer Rothschild the 19th century patriarch of arguably the most powerful Jewish family that ever lived to slavery?

For years Minister Farrakhan’s criticisms of certain practices of the Rothschild family –including how they gained a significant portion of their wealth through cotton picked by slaves and sharecroppers – have been dismissed as ‘anti-Semitic.’ No major Black journalist that I know of countered this charge with the historical record. Even after a paper as respected as The Financial Times documents the facts, there is silence – from even the ‘Black-Jewish alliance.’

You can read the article and what I wrote about it on June 27th last year at:

http://www.cedricmuhammad.com/securitization-as-satan-ii-n-m-rothschild-linked-to-slavery/

In a way, Mr. King, Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam may look so radical because it appears he and we are part of a very small group of Black people unafraid to simply do…..well, basic research and report it.

Why is that so controversial and what is producing the silence if not a form of fear and cultural, political and economic paternalism, at best?

We do great harm to Black-Jewish relations when we write out of conjecture and create a caricature of the truth and truth-tellers - devising strawman arguments based upon partial facts or even worse, the viewpoints of others based upon outright lies and the desire to deceive.

An example of this is the attention that both you and the ADL pay to this:

Farrakhan told the gathering that Jews “have always tied themselves to black people. They attach themselves to our talent. They are the managers, the agents; and they are the accountants. And that’s why our black artists loved fame and got fame but died poor because somebody else got their money, while the Jews sent their children to the finest schools and were able to continue to rule.”

Again, this is partly a device (I don’t believe you on your own decided after listening to the 3 hours to lift this quote in particular. You either used it because the wire services prominently refer to it or you are quoting the ADL press releases on the speech) to avoid the scholarship and scriptural arguments the Minister made regarding the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Jim Crow south.

However I must ask you a question?

Sir, are you familiar with the practice of crop liens and the role that the cotton factor played in the Jim Crow South?

If you are, you will know that financial illiteracy and deceptive accounting practices are at the center of the share cropping relationship that existed between Blacks and Jews on the plantation.

Those two dynamics – financial illiteracy and deceptive accounting practices – continue to mar the relationship between talent and business management in the entertainment industry, especially the music industry.

[The pivotal role of crop liens and the cotton factor are described in detail in Volume II.]

Both sides must bear the responsibility for entering into a more equitable and accountable relationship today.

Those who are serious about improving Black-Jewish relations have a lot of work to do. And romanticizing about only the more pleasant part of that relationship is simply not equal to the time.

So, I applaud you for deciding to not write ‘another word’ about ‘Farrakhan,’ provided the decision will allow you time to more carefully study his speech; study his letter to Mr. Foxman, and review Volume II of The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews (http://store.finalcall.com/?Click=3821).

Then, I think I’ll recognize once again, the work of that brilliant Pulitzer Prize winner I expect the best from in each of his columns at The Washington Post (smile).

If I can be helpful to you in any way please do not hesitate to contact me directly at cedric(at)cmcap.com.

You have all my best wishes for your continued success…

With Love and Deep Respect,
Cedric Muhammad

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