The Study of Racialism

In what passes for discussions on race these days, small problems are often blown up large, while real traumas are completely ignored. For instance, despite what President Clinton’s “Race Initiative” panel has said, the very rawest racial conflicts in present-day America don’t even fit into the tidy mold of white-majority-oppressing-colored-minority that activists constantly promote. Though civil rights groups and most of the media studiously ignore this fact, the nation’s most fractious racial battles are now conflicts between minority populations. Particularly horrific is the animosity directed at Asian Americans by blacks in low-income areas of urban America.

At age ten, I immigrated from China to Oakland, California, a city filled with crime, poverty, and racial tension. In elementary school, I didn’t wear name-brand clothing or speak English. My name soon became “Ching Chong,” “Chinagirl,” and “Chow Mein.” Other children laughed at my language, my culture, my ethnicity, and my race. I said nothing.

After a few years, I began to speak English, but not well enough to trade racial insults. On rides home from school I avoided the back of the bus so as not to be beaten up. But even when I sat in the front, fire crackers, paper balls, small rocks, and profanity were thrown at me and the other “stupid Chinamen.” The label “Chinamen” was dished out indiscriminately to Vietnamese, Koreans, and other Asians. When I looked around, I saw that the other “Chinamen” tuned out the insults by eagerly discussing movies, friends, and school.

During my secondary school years, racism, and then the combination of outrage and bitterness that it fosters, accompanied me home on the bus every day. My English was by now more fluent than that of those who insulted me, but most of the time I still said nothing to avoid being beaten up. In addition to everything else thrown at me, a few times a week I was the target of sexual remarks vulgar enough to make Howard Stern blush. When I did respond to the insults, I immediately faced physical threats or attacks, along with the embarrassing fact that the other “Chinamen” around me simply continued their quiet personal conversations without intervening. The reality was that those who cursed my race and ethnicity were far bigger in size than most of the Asian children who sat silently.

The racial harassment wasn’t limited to bus rides. It surfaced in my high school cafeteria, where a middle-aged Chinese vendor who spoke broken English was told by rowdy students each day at lunch time to “Hurry up, you dumb Ching!” On the sidewalks, black teenagers and adults would creep up behind 80-year-old Asians and frighten them with sing-song nonsense:

“Yee-ya, Ching-chong, ah-ee, un-yahhh!” At markets and in the streets of poor black neighborhoods, Asians would be told, “Why the hell don’t you just go back to where you came from!”

When it came time for college, I left this ugly world for a beautiful school far away. Finally, it was possible to pursue a life without racial harassment backed by the threat of violence. I chose not to return to my old neighborhood after college, but I am often reminded of the racial discrimination I endured there. On a bus not too long ago I saw a black woman curse at a Korean man, “You f---ing Chinese person! Didn’t you hear that I asked you to move yo’ ass? You too stupid to understand English or something?”

In poor neighborhoods across this country Asians endure daily racial hatred just as I did. Because of their language deficiencies, their small size, their fear of violent confrontations, they endure in silence. Unlike me, many of them will never depart for a new life in a beautiful place far, far away. So each day they grow more bitter against a group that much of America refuses to acknowledge to be capable of racism: African Americans.

In a fair and peaceful world, racial harassment will be decried without regard to its source. The problem today is that prominent black leaders rule out even the possibility of black racism. Activists like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson intone that racism equals “prejudice plus power,” and that since blacks in America lack power, they are simply not capable of practicing racism against anyone. John Hope Franklin, chair of President Clinton’s race panel, angrily insists that racism is something suffered, not dished out, by blacks. Many black professors, writers, polemicists, and politicians repeat the same mantra. What might appear to be black racism, writes syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, actually boils down not to racism but to acts of crime and rudeness from the perpetrators, and tough luck for the recipients.

Rationalizers of black racism ignore the fact that identical actions inflicted by whites would be universally decried as intolerable. Ultimately, their arguments simply grease the skids for further traumatizing of “unlucky” victims. And to real-life casualties of racial animosity, motivation is not especially relevant. Loss is loss. Pain is pain.

Unfortunately, Asian Americans-and especially their leaders-have failed to speak out on this matter. Complaints from wounded individuals regularly boil into public view, however. In mid-August, I attended a crowded press conference held in New York’s Chinatown to discuss Indonesia’s history of discrimination against ethnic Chinese (which peaked this May in a wave of bloody anti-Chinese riots). One woman at the event began to hysterically scream out her frustrations over black American racism against Asians. The woman, Mee Ying Lin, shouted, “Chinese suffer from racial discrimination by blacks every day. We should help persecuted Chinese overseas, but why is no one dealing with our own troubles in America?”

Rose Tsai, head of the San Francisco Neighbors Association, and candidate for a seat on the city’s Board of Supervisors, suggests that everyday Asians rarely defend themselves against ghetto racism because “Asian culture is just not that confrontational.. Asians are unlike blacks who got to where they are in politics by being militant.”

Tsai explains that Asian involvement in politics is at a nascent stage, that it is difficult for her organization even to convince Asian immigrants to vote, let alone make a political stink against racial harassment. “Asians are just not used to standing up for our own rights,” says another Bay Area Chinese activist with frustration.

That might explain the quiescence of recent immigrants who speak imperfect English. But what about the growing cadre of Asian activists? They are far from passive or non-confrontational. In just the past two years, organizations like the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, the National Asian-Pacific American Legal Consortium, the Organization for Chinese Americans, and others have voiced loud condemnations of “racism” in American society. But they have focused on events like the recent investigation of Asian donors of illegal campaign funds, the Republican opposition in Congress to Bill Lann Lee’s nomination as director of the Office of Civil Rights, a cover drawing for National Review that showed the President, Vice President, and First Lady dressed in Manchurian garb, and even a recent cover photo for this magazine that showed a handsome Asian male scowling angrily at the camera.

If vocal Asian activists are able to work themselves into a frenzy attacking everyday political tussles and editorial cartoons for their alleged racist motivations, they are obviously capable of confrontation. Why then do we never hear these national activists condemning black racism against Asians in our inner cities?

Some Asian-American activists say the reason they have not confronted anti-Asian racism among blacks is because the tension does not exist on the national level, but is merely confined to some local areas. Karen Narasaki of the National Asian-Pacific American Legal Consortium claimed in a recent interview that black animosity is different in each city and ought to be handled differently in each case by local organizations. David Lee, executive director of one such local organization, the San Francisco Voters Education Committee, concurs: “There may be a few communities and a few areas where tensions exist-so it is better for community groups rather than a national organization like the Organization of Chinese Americans to deal with such problems.”

Representatives of national Asian organizations also cite resource constraints to explain their quiescence. They say black-Asian clashes are not a serious enough national issue to expend scarce time and money on.

There is a difference, however, between not being able to expend effort and not wanting to. Asian activists on the national level also matter-of-factly justify black racism in inner cities as a direct result of competition between Asians and their black neighbors over limited economic resources.

Narasaki, while acknowledging she is not an inner city expert, insists that many black and Asian conflicts “have to do with the lack of economic opportunities” in cities. Echoing this refrain, Stanley Mark, program director of the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, asserts that “we can’t talk about race without talking about economic disparities.”

In this vein, Asian activists consistently mention that racial problems occur when Asian merchants move into predominantly black neighborhoods and flourish. The vicious year-long black boycott of a Korean store in Brooklyn in 1990, and the looting and burning of Korean stores in south-central Los Angeles during the 1992 Rodney King riots serve as shining examples of conflicts linked to economic disparities.

The excuse of economic disparities fails miserably to justify violence and harassment, however. For some observers, it also brings up memories of Nazi persecution of Jews, African attacks on Indian merchants, and recent murders, rapes, and robberies of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. All of these atrocities were committed against people deemed economically well off by larger masses facing difficult times.

In any case, the economic disparities rationale falls apart in the many instances where racism flourishes in the absence of class differences.

At San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point public housing complex, for instance, low-income Southeast Asian residents, who are in the minority, have consistently encountered racial harassment from their black neighbors. Racial slurs, physical threats, violence, and destruction of property have festered for years. Philip Nguyen of the Southeast Asian Community Center, who has worked on the case for years, notes that there are no economic differences between the Asian and black families in the complex. The Asians, he says, are very quiet and have made every effort to befriend the black residents, yet serious friction has persisted for ten years.

Joe Hicks, executive director of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission, painstakingly tried to bring blacks and Asians together after the Rodney King riots. He believes that “much of the hostilities are due to blacks’ jealousy of Asian economic success, a sense of alienation, and the self-perpetuating belief that blacks will always lose out in the racial equation in America.” He adds that “certainly economics gives a basis to many of the problems,” but asserts that “even if tomorrow we can have a level playing field for both racial groups, we would still have animosity and racial strife” because prejudices would still remain.

Asian activists who are not otherwise inclined to ignore prejudice are often strangely anxious to apologize for black racism. In interviews, they note that Asians harbor many prejudices against blacks too. This explanation, however, has no power to explain the kind of harassment I and many others like me experienced as young immigrant children beginning life with no animus toward anyone.

Asian prejudice toward blacks surely exists. But whatever biases might be harbored in the minds of Asian immigrants, many of whom had never seen a black person before arriving in the U.S., they certainly don’t rate at the level of destroying black people’s property, scaring their elderly folk, or threatening and assaulting their children-the kinds of pressures Asians in many urban areas now endure routinely. Asian youths in particular typically start out with little or no inclination to distrust or dislike African Americans. Young Asians are usually far more willing than their parents to accept a new country and new friends, including black ones. In many cases, it was only after innumerable frightening chases, assaults, and humiliations that Asian attitudes toward blacks turned defensive. Those of us whose open minds were confronted with hostility and hatred will never accept the insulting assertion that our suffering resulted from our own prejudices.

It seems that leaders of the Organization of Chinese Americans, the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, and related groups are disconnected from the real concerns of many of the Asians they claim to represent. David Lee, whose Bay Area organization is attempting to promote local dialogue among minority journalists, believes that a fundamental disconnection exists between the national Asian spokesmen and the new majority of Asians who are recent immigrants. The prominent Asian civil rights leaders, he notes, tend to be American born, to speak little of their ethnic languages, and to be unable to read the local ethnic newspapers. Many of them do not know or understand the problems in low income areas, because they live comfortable middle-class lives. And so “it is not surprising that they are silent about black-on-Asian discrimination,” Lee summarizes.

Bong Hwan Kim, executive director of the Korean Youth and Community Center in Los Angeles and an active member of the Black-Korean Alliance that attempted to bring African- and Korean-Americans together in the eight years before the south-central riots, describes a disconnection in the Korean community between first-generation immigrants and acculturated second generation residents with less familiarity with inner-city life. After the shops of Koreatown were looted or burned, he reports, the more suburbanized Koreans pushed inter-ethnic bridge-building efforts, while the first-generation immigrants who toiled in menial jobs, bridled at having to sit across the table from those who looted and burned their property. Meanwhile, few of the prominent national Asian organizations even condemned the violence perpetrated against Koreans in L.A.

Stanley Mark of the Asian American Legal Defense Fund argues in defense of the national Asian organizations that people hear less from the Asian leaders about black-on-Asian racism than white-on-Asian racism simply because there is less of the former than the latter. Mark insists he knows of no case where an Asian was seriously hurt or killed by a racist black American.

Underlining the disconnect between national and local perceptions, Liu Yu-xi, an organizer of the New York coalition of Chinese Americans that mobilized hundreds of thousands of normally politically apathetic Chinese to protest Indonesian violence against Chinese residents, chuckled at Stanley Mark’s ignorance of cases of black racism. Liu, who has known of many racially motivated physical attacks against Chinese in New York, observes, “Such crimes are reported often in the local Chinese papers, but the national Asian activists obviously do not know how to read Chinese.”

When asked why prominent Asians have said little about racial harassment by African Americans, Bill Tam of San Francisco’s Chinese Family Alliance flatly stated, “I think they are afraid to say anything.” To him, it appears that Asian leaders are often fearful of the national black leadership. National Asian organizations generally follow the lead of black civil rights groups like the naacp so slavishly, another Bay Area activist told me, that even when the latter’s stances (for instance, on quotas and preferences) are opposed to the interests and beliefs of many Asian citizens, the Asian activists don’t challenge their allies.

Rose Tsai of the San Francisco Neighbors Association was a little more blunt: “Most Asian leaders do not wish to acknowledge that there exists a problem because they do not want the minorities to fight amongst themselves.” As a result, national Asian spokesmen speaking for their brethren are without any inkling of the real problems they face, or what kind of racism is dragging them down. Recognizing the complex issues between blacks and Asians, Philip Nguyen of the Southeast Asian Community Center has a simple proposal: “Fight, not against or for any group, but against racial discrimination.”

Ying Ma, who immigrated to the United States in 1985, is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

African American Racism in the Academic Community.

Barry Mehler, "African American Racism in the Academic Community,” First published in The Review of Education 15 # 3/4 (Fall 1993). Revised and republished as "Addressing the Problem of African-American Racism in Academia," in Martyrdom and Resistance (Nov.-Dec. 1993). Slightly revised for posting.

"Nobody wants to talk about what the Jews did. They are always talking about what Hitler did to the Jews, but what did the Jews do to Hitler? That question is never asked or answered."[1] (1)

Khallid Abdul Muhammad

National spokesperson for Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam (NOI)

In a conference on the African "Holocaust" (i.e. slave trade), organized by NOI, Khallid Muhammad, Farrakhan's national spokesman, "hammered away at the Jews.... Nobody wants to talk about what the Jews did," he said, "They are always talking about what Hitler did to the Jews, but what did the Jews do to Hitler? That question is never asked or answered."[2] (2) Farrakhan and Muhammad are willing to ask that question and they have an answer. The "so-called" Jews were really the aggressors, attacking Hitler and threatening Germany. Hitler was merely defending himself and his nation. What happened to the Jews was the will of Allah against a people practicing "a dirty religion" based on exploitation.[3] (3) These classic expressions of anti-Semitism should surprise no one. What is surprising and disturbing is the extent to which such ideas are being promoted on American campuses and how little effort is being made to combat them.

The African American community has always had small groups of nationalists and separatist such as Martin Delany) and Marcus Garvey), but never has extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism, and Black supremacy been accorded such a sympathetic hearing in academic circles as it is today. The Leonard Jeffries controversy at City College of New York along with the riots in Crown Heights in August 1991 brought the issue to the front pages of American newspapers and magazines.[4] (4)

Despite the publicity there is little understanding of the network of Black Nationalist scholars on campuses across America propounding a racial nationalist worldview. While Jeffries is currently the most notorious, he is not a key theorist of the movement. This article is an attempt to examine the racial nationalist network within the African American academic community and assess its significance.

Before we begin our examination of racism in the African American academic community it must be stated clearly that the major victims of racism in America have been people of color, particularly people of African descent. Anyone concerned with racism in America must be primarily concerned with the impact of white racism on people of color. Furthermore, the motivation to understand and combat prejudice in the African American community must not be taken as an attack on the Black community or on the civil rights movement. Racism must be fought in all of its manifestation because it is ultimately extremely self-destructive. Those who fight white racism do not hate white people. Adolf Hitler was an enemy of the German people, not their savior. Ultimately, racism undermines a community’s strength and makes real solutions extremely difficult to attain. In America, racism in the African American community harms the civil rights movement.

Since the problem of racism in America is primarily white racism, activists in civil rights organizations have tended to ignore manifestations of racism in the Black community, dismissing it as of little consequence. For the past twenty years my own study of academic racism has been a study of white racism. The main body of my own research concerns academic theories of racial inferiority. My specialty is biological determinism and the eugenics movement in the United States. All of my writing to date has focused on white racism.[5] I knew that prejudice existed within the African American community, but I assumed it was insignificant both in terms of its impact on the Black community and in its impact on society as a whole.

Then, in April 1990, the New York Times carried a story on two professors at City College whose racial theories were causing turmoil.[6] One, Leonard Jeffries, chair of the Black Studies Program, had been preaching Black superiority theories. The Times quoted Jeffries as saying that "rich Jews" financed the slave trade. He was also alleged to have made disparaging remarks about Jews in his classroom.[7] The other, Michael Levin, a philosophy professor, had joined the growing ranks of American academics that are arguing that Blacks are, on average, less intelligent than whites.[8]

As a result of the New York Times article, I was invited to New York to discuss the rising tide of academic racism on the Jane Wallace Show - a syndicated cable network program.[9] While the turmoil at City College involved two professors - one white, the other black - the producers of the show only wanted to deal with white racism. They invited Michael Levin and J. Phillipe Rushton, the University of Western Ontario professor who argues that Blacks have smaller brains and larger genitals than Asians and whites. He claims they are the least evolved of all human races.[10]

When I arrived for the taping I was introduced to Clarence Glover, Adjunct Professor of African-American Studies and Director of Minority Affairs at Southern Methodist University who had been invited to join the debate. Mr. Glover had apparently been contacted at the last minute and was not aware of the recent controversy. He asked me to fill him in.

I pulled out a copy of the New York Times article that contained pictures of the two professors. Pointing to Michael Levin, I said, "He is a white racist who believes that on average people of African descent are intellectually inferior to whites." Pointing to Jeffries, I said, "and he is a Black racist...” Before I could say another word, Mr. Glover interrupted to explain to me that only whites can be racists. "Racism involves having the power to carry out systematic discriminatory practices through major institutions. Only whites have such power. Therefore only whites can be racist."

"But look at the kinds of things he says," I declared. "He calls whites `ice people' born cold and greedy while Blacks are `sun people,' born warm and humanistic."

That didn't phase professor Glover either.

"That's not necessarily racist. All he is saying is that environment influences evolutionary development."

Pressing the issue, I went on:

But he believes that Blacks are biologically superior to whites and that the cause of this superiority is the skin pigment melanin.

Professor Glover told me he had recently attended the Fourth Annual World Melanin Conference and began an impromptu lecture on the nature of melanin and its effect on physical and mental performance. He said that melanin was responsible for superior performance in Blacks in a number of areas. He handed me several Xerox pages of notes. According to professor Glover's notes:

Melanin, a dark pigmented chemical substance produced in human cells, is found most abundantly in the skin, hair, eyes and substantia nigra (in the mid-brain). The substantia nigra (black substance) serves as a catalytic agent in igniting starter impulses, which facilitate "the rapid and exact movement of specific muscle groups." It is found also, in internal organs and muscles. Now it looms as a factor in black expressive behavior... [and] in the regulation of some aspects of human behavior.... Melanin... appears to noticeably determine the quality of black expressive behavior, of soul.[11]

Melanin, according to the literature Glover handed me "is quite fundamental to the stuff that constitutes the very essence of biological life..." According to Dr. Leon Edelstein, associate professor of dermatology and pathology at the University of California Medical School, an abundance of Melanin produces a superior human being, both mentally and physically. Melanin is "at the very essence of life" (sic!).

I had never heard of these theories before, but once I was acquainted with them I began to notice their circulation within the African American community. For example, in 1990 Essence magazine, a widely circulated popular black magazine carried an article on the "Mysteries of Melanin." Citing Frances Cress Welsing,[12] author of The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism,

The quality of whiteness is a genetic inadequacy or a relative genetic-deficiency state or disease upon the genetic inability to produce the skin pigments of melanin, which are responsible for all skin coloration... (sic!)

The... psychological reaction of whites has been directed toward all people with the capacity to produce the melanin skin pigments. However, the most profound aggressions have been directed toward the Black, `nonwhite' peoples who have the greatest potential and therefore are the most envied and the most feared in genetic competition.[13]

The article also cited Carol Barnes, a "noted melanin researcher" who urges that these ideas be promoted "to raise Black self-esteem."[14] Carol Barnes is the author of Melanin: The Chemical Key to Black Greatness," it is privately published and distributed through Black specialty bookstores. While none of the sources for this theory meet even minimal academic standards, they manage to receive a respectful airing in the Black community.

In fact, a good deal of black extremist literature is published without ISBN numbers or other standard publication information. The material is distributed through Lushena Books, a wholesale distribution network that specializes in African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and African books, records, videos, and cassettes. Their 1991 catalogue contains some two thousand titles. Often there is no publication information at all. This is particularly true of the most racist and inflammatory of the materials.

It is through Lushena Press that Black bookstores stock the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and other explicitly anti-Semitic materials. Ironically, these materials are published by Angriff Press, a neo-Nazi organization whose titles include Henry Ford's "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem," and "The Palestine Plot," a 1948 volume which purports to show the link between Zionism, Communism, and Jewish bankers.[15]

When I returned from New York, I began discussing these issues with Mr. Raymond Gant, the Director of our Minority Affairs program at Ferris State University. I had worked closely with Mr. Gant since coming to Ferris. To my surprise, Mr. Gant was quite familiar with the ultra-nationalist literature. The Minority Affairs Office maintains a small library for students and faculty. He went to these shelves and began to gather material for me to read. These materials included a magazine, The Alkebulanian, a two-hour tape, "The African Origins of Judeo-Christianity," by Ashra Kwesi, and a tape of Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan speaking at Grand Valley State College in Grand Rapids in February 1990. Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan (usually called simply Dr. Ben) had been invited to our campus as a guest speaker for our annual Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration in 1990.

Mr. Gant asked me to review the materials and tell him what I thought. The Alkebulanian claimed that “racist dogs” wrote the Jewish Talmud[16] and that the Jews used the Holocaust as a means of tricking black people into forgetting that it was the Jews who were responsible for the African Holocaust (the slave trade).[17] The magazine further contended that the AIDS virus was manufactured by white scientists as a means of genocide against African people[18] and was injected into African people as part of a program to inoculate Africans against smallpox.[19] During his talk at Grand Valley State College Dr. Ben ridiculed Nelson Mandela and disparaged the African National Congress's call for "one person, one vote." He supported the call for "one settler, one bullet."[20]

I explained to Mr. Gant that in my view the material was virulently racist, anti-white, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian. I also made it clear that I thought the material inappropriate for the Minority Office reading rack. What I didn't know at the time was how widely respected and influential Dr. Ben had become among academic Black Nationalist. He is considered a founding father of the "Nile Valley School," and is revered as an internationally renowned scholar.[21]



Dr. Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan

As his name implies, Dr. Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan claims to be of Jewish descent, although he disparages Judaism and denies that European "crackers" are really Jews.[22] He is a part of the Black "Identity" movement that contends that white Jews are actually imposters.[23] Dr. Ben's Alkebulanian magazine claims that the "so-called" Jews "have learned to manipulate and control the Mind of the World (sic!), by colonizing the information of, in, and about the world."[24]

According to a biography published in The Alkebulanian, Dr. Ben has studied in Brazil, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Spain. He holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and another in Moorish history as well as an L.L.B. law degree. He also claims to be an architect. From 1945 to 1970, Dr. Ben was the Chief of the African Desk of the United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He has taught at Al Azar University in Cairo, Egypt and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He is chairman of the Alkebu-Lan Foundation that publishes The Alkebulanian. The Alkebu-Lan Foundation also published most of Dr. Ben's 28 works as well as other "educational materials." They run tours of Egypt and seminars on Africa.[25]

In a cover article in The New Republic on the Afrocentric School, Mary Lefokowitz, Mellon Professor of Humanities at Wellesley College, cites Dr. Ben as one of the founders of the movement.[26] I do not wish to discredit the entire Afrocentric School, I study extremism and I do not believe Martin Bernal, for example, is an extremist.[27] Nor do I believe that Dr. Ben's extremist views are characteristic of the Afrocentric School as a whole, although some in the movement shares them.[28] However, there is a strain within the Afrocentric school which claims that "white scholars" have "attempted to cover up the Black presence" in history "in a conspiracy to rob" them of their "rich and glorious" past.[29] Obviously, until recently, white scholars have ignored the history of all minority peoples, although one must note that this is changing and that many white historians have been pioneers in the study of African American history.[30]

The ultra-nationalist scholars have clearly emerged from obscurity in the past decade. The New Republic, Newsweek, and Time, for example have all carried lead articles on the emerging academic debate over Afrocentrism, which included references to extremists.[31] The highly regarded journal, Black Issues in Higher Education carried a lead article entitled, "Nile Valley Scholars Bring New Light and Controversy to African Studies" which cites the work of Ben-Jochannan and John Henrik Clarke as among those who "have set about the arduous task of telling the truth..."[32]



John Henrik Clarke

Dr. Ben's closest associate is John Henrik Clarke, Professor Emeritus of African World History at Hunter College in New York and editor of Malcolm X: The Man and His Time.[33] According to Clarke:

African people have been manipulated into agreeing with everything white, from a white Jesus to white bread. "A mere handful of people utilized the word `Holocaust' and made the entire world weep for them making Black people forget that it was this same handful who participated in the African holocaust (the existence of Alkebulanian/African enslavement).[34]

Clarke has vigorously defended Jeffries who "said nothing he cannot document." He has been equally vigorous in his condemnation of mainstream Black intellectuals such as Henry Louis Gates Jr., of Harvard and Cornel West of Yale whom he has called "enemies of their people" and "avid white behind kissers who do not have the nerve to be African or Black."[35]

Clarke also wrote an introductions to Michael Bradley's The Iceman Inheritance, a kind of Protocols for the white race. Bradley states his thesis simply enough: "This is a racist book." Racism is the "predisposition of but one race... the white race." According to Bradley "the problem with the world is white men" and the problem with white men is biological.[36] Clarke praises Bradley for his "bold admissions and revelations" about the European's attempts to dominate the world through racism. The book is a cornerstone of the thesis repeated by many of the extremist that the problem with the world is white men. The solution to the problem is a world without white men.[37]



Ashra Kwesi

Ashra Kwesi, a student of Dr. Ben, is another prominent spokesman for the racial nationalists. Kwesi is closely associated with the Alkebu-Lan Foundation. He participates both in their seminar programs and in their tours of Egypt. Kwesi is the director of Kemet Nu Productions in Los Angles, California.[38] Kemet Nu Productions distributes two long tapes of slide lectures by Kwesi - "The African Origins of Civilization," and "The African Origins of Judeo-Christianity."

Kwesi believes that white's are by nature violent, destructive, and sexually perverse. The tapes are peppered with such terms as "the faggot Pope," and "faggot America." Kwesi claims that white European's stole the humane religious monotheism of ancient Egypt and perverted it. He refers to the European Jews as the "so-called Jews."[39] The tape contains a long, bitter, and vulgar attack on Christianity and ends with a prophetic vision of world without white people. Kwesi contends that white men fear the superiority of dark skinned people for they realize that they are destined to extinction. It is this fear that motivates them to attempts of genocide against Black people. After viewing the tape, Leonard Jeffries commented, "This is the most powerful slide presentation I have seen, Ashra Kwesi has really brought our history to life..."[40]

To my surprise, Mr. Gant, our Minority Affairs Officer, did not seem to understand my concerns regarding the materials and was initially unwilling to remove them from the shelves. It took a year of discussion and debate before the issue was settled. Fortunately, I found allies among African American scholars all across campus as well as from the administration.

But, when I began to send copies of the materials with requests for more information to the major civil rights organizations in the United States including the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, the Center for Democratic Renewal, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, I was surprised to learn that they had little or no information on Dr. Ben, Ashra Kwesi, or the academic racial nationalists.

I even found some moderate civil rights leaders annoyed that I was concerned about the issue. Joann Watson, Director of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, was mildly hostile. She is quite influential in civil rights circles. She is not only the director of the largest branch office of the NAACP, but she chairs the YWCA Committee on Race Relations, and is on the board of the Center for Democratic Renewal. I had hoped that she would support my efforts to oppose the distribution of blatantly racist materials on my campus. When I wrote to her asking for information about Dr. Ben and The Alkebulanian - both located in Detroit, I got a lecture on the "unprecedented level of organizing by white supremacist organizations" on college campuses.[41]

I quickly wrote Ms. Watson back. "Please understand that I appreciate your point regarding the `unprecedented level of organizing by white supremacist organizations.'... But that is not the issue I am dealing with here and I was hoping for some help from you." I cited my record of civil rights related work and explained once again and in greater detail the problem I was confronting. I explained that Mr. Gant was offering these materials to our students and in 1990 brought Dr. Ben to our campus as a guest speaker. I also explained that I had discovered that Mr. Kwesi "is a regular lecturer on the college campus circuit. Mr. Kwesi sent me his promotional material that lists campuses across the country in which he has spoken. They included, Stanford, UCLA, The University of Illinois, and the University of Texas.

I had called Patsy Julius, the Program Director for the Student Union at The University of Texas at Austin and she enthusiastically recommended Kwesi to me as a campus lecturer. I specifically asked her about his use of terms such as "faggot America" and "faggot Pope." Oh yes, she replied, he is quite "controversial" but he is also "quite personable" and was always willing to "dialogue" with students who object to his terminology. She concluded that Mr. Kwesi was an excellent campus speaker who instilled pride in African American students.[42] Certainly, if virulent racists were to be called upon to help instill pride in Black students, civil rights leaders had to speak out - both for the sake of the students and the civil rights movement.

I concluded this letter with another appeal for help. I told Ms. Watson, that I was not criticizing her or the NAACP for not focusing their energies on racism in the Black community, but this was an issue that demanded attention.

On my campus, students are reading that `racist dogs’ wrote the Talmud. Last year the leading intellectual of this publication was an invited speaker. The material is directed specifically at minority students.... It is in this context that I seek your views on this subject.[43]

In response I got another lecture on the dangers of white racism. Not only did she ignore my plea for help, but she took offense at my letter. She seemed to think that I was challenging the NAACP's integrity.[44]

Thankfully, when I turned to faculty, administrators and friends on campus I found strong support from both Black and white colleagues. Dr. Phillip Middleton, an African American professor of African Literature forthrightly condemned the material. Dr. Middleton has taught extensively in Africa and is a specialist in African and African-American literature. He agreed to meet with Mr. Gant and myself to discuss the issues. In that meeting, Dr. Middleton pointed out that our students know little of Africa. He asked what value it was to fill such emptiness with The Alkebulanian when you could better subscribe to Africa Now, a scholarly non-racist magazine.

While I won that struggle, the problem continued. The next year in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday, our student chapter of the NAACP invited Rasul Muhammad, the State Representative of the Nation of Islam to campus. Once again I called the Minority Affairs office to discuss the matter. I spoke with Terri Houston, Assistant Director of Minority Affairs. I told her that I thought it was inappropriate to bring a speaker from the Nation of Islam to speak in honor of the memory of Martin Luther King Jr.. She answered, "I couldn't disagree with you more."[45] The point is not that these people are themselves racist or anti-Semites, but clearly black academic racism and anti-Semitism is not perceived as problematic, dangerous, or particularly offensive, even by academics employed to deal with minority issues.

By the end of my year of discussions with faculty, administration, colleagues, and civil rights leaders, I was convinced that this was an issue that needed more investigation and more attention. One of the things that struck me was how widespread I was finding the materials and yet how ignorant everyone outside the network of ultra-nationalists seemed to be. In March of 1992, I was invited to McGill University to keynote a conference on academic racism organized by the Canadian Center on Racism and Prejudice. When I got to Montreal I found that Dr. Ben had just left. He had been invited by the Black Students Network of McGill to keynote the Black History Month celebrations.[46]

While Dr. Ben was clearly well known to Black students and academics, I found experts in the field had never heard of him. In soliciting a professional opinion with regard to Dr. Ben, Ashra Kwesi, and The Alkebulanian. I wrote to Dr. Ernest N. McCarus, Director of the Center for Near Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Dr. McCarus replied, "No one at the Center is familiar with the magazine Alkebulanian or the lecturer Ashra Kwesi that you mention."[47] Dr. McCarus referred me to Charles Krahmalkov, their expert on ancient Egypt. Dr. Krahmalkov is a Full Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Dr. Ben is touted as a world famous expert on ancient Egypt, yet Krahmalkov had never heard of Dr. Josef Ben-Jochannan or The Alkebulanian. After reading a few passages from the magazine, he commented, "this is really outrageous. You are obviously dealing with a racist and a charlatan."[48] After calling Krahmalkov, I called Professor James Anderson, an African American scholar and historian of American education at the University of Illinois. I studied under Professor Anderson at the University of Illinois in an NIMH funded program on Institutional racism. He, too, knew nothing of any of these people.



The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.

In 1991, the "Historical Research Department of The Nation of Islam published a book, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.[49] The thesis of the book is that the Jews were principally responsible for the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery from the colonial period through the Civil War.

The book is meticulously, almost lovingly, researched and heavily footnoted. There is no question that the anonymous researchers who produced this book have scoured Jewish literature. As one who reads racist material for a living, this 334-page book appears to be an dazzling addition to the annals of anti-Semitic literature. I am sure that its influence and circulation will be impressive and long lasting.

Its publication was greeted with national controversy when rap idol, "Ice Cube" publicly endorsed the book. Bill Adler, a Jewish promoter and defender of rap music responded immediately. "I think the book and Ice Cube's endorsement of it are indefensible," he told the press," I work in the hiphop community, and he's of particular concern to me because he's so popular and influential."[50] Adler arranged to have Harold Brackman, a California based scholar, write a rebuttal to the book.

Brackman's refutation, with an afterword by Cornel West, a prominent African-American professor at Princeton, is scholarly and restrained. He demonstrates the overall absurdities of the book as well as it many errors of fact; its reliance on well-known anti-Semitic literature; and its biased use of selected materials from Jewish authors. A good short refutation of the book's argument is Saul Friedman's "An Old/New Libel: Jews in the Slave Trade," which appeared in Midstream in October 1991.[51] None of the refutations thus far have pointed out the absurdity of the Black Muslims stressing the Jewish role in the slave trade. After all "Africa's slave trade to the Islamic world began centuries before the Atlantic slave trade and lasted somewhat longer, in some places into the twentieth century."[52]

Black academics have come forward to condemn the book. Most prominent among them has been Henry Louis Gates Jr., who called the book, "the bible of the new anti-Semitism."

Sober and scholarly looking, it may be one of the most influential books published in the black community in the last 12 months. It is available in black-oriented shops in cities across the nation, even those that specialize in Kente cloth and beads rather than books.[53]

In the afterword to Brackman's pamphlet, Cornel West writes:

The vicious murder of Yankel Rosenbaum in Crown Heights this summer bore chilling testimony to a growing black anti-Semitism in this country...

In our present moment, when neo-Nazi like David Duke can win 55 percent of the white vote (and 69 percent of the white "born-again" vote) in Louisiana, it may seem misguided to highlight anti-Semitic behavior of black people - the exemplary targets of racial hatred in America. Yet I suggest that this focus is crucial precisely because we black folk have been in the forefront of the struggle against racism. If these efforts fall prey to anti-Semitism, the principled attempt to combat racism forfeits much of its moral credibility - and we all lose.[54]

As was expected the book quickly found its way onto college campuses. It is currently being used at Wellesley by professor Anthony "Tony" Martin, a member of the Africana Studies Department for his introductory class on African American history.[55] Selwyn Cudjgoe, chair of the Africana Studies Department opposed using the book saying it was "offensive to blacks and Jews alike, who find it more a prosecutor's brief (outlining the calumnies of the Jews as Jews) rather than a scholarly attempt to examine the role of individual Jews in the slave trade..."[56]

The University president issued a statement saying we, "respect Professor Martin's rights through academic freedom to put this book on his syllabus and teach it in his class. We owe it to him to tolerate his choice. However, we owe it to ourselves and to our community to know exactly what it is that we are tolerating."[57]

Cornel West argued that the growing acceptance of anti-Semitism in the African-American community represents "the bitter fruit of a profound self-destructive impulse, nurtured on the vines of hopelessness..."[58] For me, the self-destructive character racism is one of its most extraordinary characteristics.

At the same conference in which Khallid Muhammad accused the Jews of attacking Hitler, "biochemist Jack Felder" spoke. He is the author of the theory that AIDS is part of the campaign of genocide against Black people. According to these Black ultra-nationalists, the Jews are waging a campaign of genocide against African peoples the world over. Everything is seen in conspiratorial terms - drugs in the ghetto, violence, AIDS, etc. Everything is part of a genocidal war being waged by white people - all white people. This view has led for calls to avoid white doctors. Dr. Ben's Alkebulanian put it most starkly:

If you have small children you should think twice about letting them receive vaccination shots especially in public hospitals in Black neighborhoods and from white doctors. Remember that white people tricked 50-75 million Africans into receiving smallpox vaccinations that have been infected with the AIDS Virus. Rest assured that what they did in Africa they are doing right here in the U.S.[59]

It hardly needs to be mentioned that there is a rampant epidemic of preventable childhood disease in the poverty stricken black ghettos of America.[60] It is the height of folly to tell Black mothers not to bring their children to public hospitals for vaccination shots.

But the dangers of this kind of racism is much broader and less obvious than the above example would imply. The white racist embraces the Black racist. They feed off of each other and encourage each other. They also influence the most talented young Blacks in American colleges, encouraging their alienation. The message they sell is that there is no solution to racism. Blacks and whites will never be able to live together in harmony. Dr. Ben also expressed disdain for college education. He compared a Ph.D. to training a "seal to bark." Generally, the point made over and over in the literature is that everything one hears from white professors are lies. Such ideas will not help Black students graduate, rather they will exacerbate racial tensions on campus. Clearly, civil rights leaders and academics need to respond vigorously to this challenge.

First, more research needs to be done on the network. We need to understand the range of ideas being propounded. Some of the extremist hark back to Egyptian religion and culture, others claim that people of West African descent are the true Jews, while still others embrace Islam. We also need to appreciate the broader dimensions of their ideology. The State Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin is currently gathering a collection of this type of material.[61] We need to have such special collections to facilitate scholarship on the phenomenon.

Second, there is an apocalyptic element to the movement that has a vision of a world without white people. There is also a strong anti-Christian element to the movement. Whites and Christians do not respond to insults and attacks in the same way that Jews and other minorities do. The Jewish community is very sensitive and responsive when anti-Semitic rhetoric is voiced publicly, but I found the local Catholic Church completely uninterested. Catholics and whites simply ignore slurs. No doubt because they don't feel threatened by them. I think this is a mistake. When a minority affairs office or a Black studies professor makes derogatory remarks about any group, anti-racist academics must object. We should not turn a deaf ear to lectures that refer to the "faggot Pope" even if the local Catholic Church chooses to ignore the insult.

Third, there needs to be at least some civil rights effort aimed at combating this movement. We need educational literature that addresses the problem and offers advice on how to respond when extremist literature, professors, or speakers are on campus. I believe every civil rights organization should devote some energy to combating the growing racism within the Black community. At the present time, people like Ashra Kwesi can lecture on virtually any campus in the nation without any administration or faculty response. We need to respond.

1. "Muslims and Afrocentrics speak out at African Holocaust event" Amsterdam News (12/28/91) pp. 3 continued on p. 30. The quote is on p. 30.

2. "Muslims and Afrocentrics speak out," p. 30. The conference was held in 22 December 1991 in Brooklyn, New York.

3. "Transcript of Mohammad's November 9 Speech," Barnard Bulletin (11/23/92) p. 13. The entire speech was published in three issues of the Barnard Bulletin (11/23/92) pp. 12-13; (12/7/92) pp. 14-16; (12/14/92) pp. 10-17.

4. Joseph Berger, "Professors' Theories on Race Stir Turmoil at City College," New York Times (20 April 1990) p. B1 & B4; "Why the Delay on Dr. Jeffries?" NYT editorial (30 October 1991); Mervyn Rothstein, "CUNY Vote on Jeffries Pleases Few: Cuomo and Scholar Assail Probation," NYT (30 October 1991) p. B1 & B4; Samuel Weiss, "Outraged CUNY Officials Weigh Action on Professor," (9 August 1991) p. B3; A. M. Rosenthal, "This Ugly Echo," NYT (13 August 1991) p. A17; "Professor Shouldn't Be Dismissed for Views," NYT letters (20 August 1991) p. A26); Jay Hershenson (Vice Chancellor of CUNY), "City University Wanted to Continue Reviewing Jeffries Case," NYT letters (14 November 1991); "Professor's Racial Theories Fall Wide of the Mark," NYT letters (3 September 1991); "Watching Dr. Jeffries Self-Destruct," NYT (25 August 1991); Jerry Gray, "Educators Blamed for Race Remarks: CUNY Panel Decides Against Any Disciplinary Actions," NYT (24 March 1991) p. 34; Steven Lee Myers, "500 Rally to Support Controversial CUNY Professor," NYT (12 August 1991) p. B3; Jason De Parle, "For Some Blacks Social Ills Seem to Follow White Plans," Sunday Weekly Review NYT (11 August 1991); Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "Organizations Decry CUNY Decision," Detroit Jewish News (29 November 1991); "Lesson in Hate: Supporters of anti-Semitic prof threaten Jews and Post," front page New York Post (9 August 1991)

[5] For those interested in my work in this area see, "An Irresponsible Farewell Gloss," Educational Theory 40 #4 (Fall 1990) pp. 501-508. Co-authored with Jerry Hirsch, University of Illinois and Gordon Harrington, University of Northern Iowa; "Foundation for Fascism: the New Eugenics Movement in the United States," Patterns of Prejudice (London) 23 #4 1989 pp. 17-25; "Rightist on the Rights Panel," The Nation (7 May 1988) pp. 640-641; "Eliminating the Inferior: American and Nazi Sterilization Programs," Science for the People 19 #6 (November/December 1987) pp. 14-18. Reprinted in Martyrdom and Resistance, the journal of Holocaust survivors (Jan.-Feb. 1988); "Rewriting Mental Testing History: The View From the American Psychologist," co-authored with S. Gelb, G. Allen and A. Futterman, Sage Race Relations Abstracts (May 1986) pp. 18-31; "The New Eugenics: Academic Racism in the U.S. Today," Science for the People (May 1983); [this article was translated into French reprinted in Jean Belkhir (Ed.) Egalite Sociale, Diversite Biologique (Science Libre, Paris 1985) pp. 73-91]; "Genetics and Intelligence," in The Ku Klux Klan: A History of Racism and Violence (Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery 1981).

[6] Joseph Berger, "Professors' Theories on Race Stir Turmoil at City College," NYT (20 April 1990) p. B1, B4.

[7] It was specifically alleged that he said, "Jews are dogs." J.J. Goldberg, "Regarding Jeffries," The Jerusalem Report (13 February 1992) p. 4; "Lesson in Hate," front page headline in The New York Post (9 August 1991) pp. 1-3; 18; 20; J. Zamgba Browne, "Jeffries cancels speech in Los Angeles," Amsterdam News (1 February 1992).

[8] Barry Mehler, "Foundation for Fascism: The New Eugenics Movement in the United States," Patterns of Prejudice 23 #4 (1989) pp. 17-25.

[9] The Program aired 5/14/90. On the same day I appeared live on the Donahue Show debating Rushton.

[10] See my article on J. Phillipe Rushton, "Foundation for Fascism," Patterns of Prejudice 23 #4 (1989) pp. 17-25.

[11] The Xerox pages indicated the source as A.P. Pasteur, Roots of Soul. I have been unable to track down this book, and despite repeated requests, Professor Glover has never supplied me with a complete citation. However, all the claims made in Dr. Glover's material are contained in Melanin: The Chemical Key to Black Greatness by Carol Barnes (Houston: C.B. Publishers, 1988).

[12] Identified as a Washington, D.C. based psychiatrist.

[13] Allison Abner, "Mysteries of Melanin," Essence magazine v. 21 (November 1990) p. 30.

[14] Allison Abner, "Mysteries of Melanin," Essence magazine v. 21 (November 1990) p. 30.

[15] Lushena Books, Inc., 15 West 24th St., New York, NY). See, J.J. Goldberg, "Protocols of Hate," The Jerusalem Report (22 August 1991) pp. 28-29.

[16] Alkebulanian 1 #12 (January 1990), p. 18.

[17] Quoted in the Alkebulanian from a talk given by a member of the Alkebu-Lan Foundation at Wayne County Community College in Detroit, 18 June 1989. The Alkebulanian, July 1989, p. 3.

[18] "Aids: Genocide of An African People," Alkebulanian (January 1990) p. 15.

[19] The magazine cited an article in the London Times. The original Times article stated that researchers were concerned that the smallpox vaccine might cause a reaction in people who were HIV positive.

[20] Dr. Ben noted that this was the slogan of the PNC, a radical wing of the anti-Apartheid movement.

[21] "Ancient Egypt Revisited," Black issues in Higher Education," (28 February 1991).

[22] Alkebulanian 3 #6 (June 1991) p. 8.

[23] The Identity Movement has its roots in "British Israelism," a nineteenth century movement that claimed that the Anglo-Saxon Protestants were the true Jews - decedents of the lost tribes of Israel. Today the most virulent white racist groups in the United States identify with the Christian Identity movement. The best short survey of this topic is Leonard Zeskind, The "Christian Identity Movement: A Theological Justification for Racist and Anti-Semitic Violence, (National Council of Churches, 1986). The booklet may be purchased from the Center for Democratic Renewal, P.O. Box 10500, Atlanta, GA 30310. For a classic expression of the Black Identity theory see, Nabi Moshe Y. Lewis, History of Edom: The Imposter Jew (privately published by Yochanan Lewis, 1989)

[24] Brother Piankhi, "Degree of No Degree," Alkebulanian IV #1-3 (1st Quarter 1992) p. 11.

[25] Such as their "1992 African World Seminar" featuring six days of workshops by Dr. Ben, Ashra Kwesi, Dr. Arthur Lews, and Dr. John Henrik Clarke. Held 23 February through 29 February.

[26] Mary Lefkowtiz, "Not Out Africa," The New Republic (10 February 1992) pp. 29-36. Quotes from p. 32. She cites, Africa, Mother of Western Civilization by Yosef Ben-Jochannan (no publication information cited).

[27] Martin Bernal, Black Athena: Afro-Asiantic Roots of Classical Civilization (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1987).

[28] Another key claim is that Judaism and Christianity were also "stolen" from Africa.

[29] "Ancient Egypt Revisited," Black issues in Higher Education," (28 February 1991).

[30] Such as Herbert Guttman, August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, Gunnar Myrdal, Lewis R. Harlan, Martin Duberman, George M. Fredrickson, Carl Degler, Winthrop Jordon, David Bryan Davis, Vernon Burton, and Eric Foner.

[31] "Afrocentrism: Was Cleopatra Black? Facts or Fantasies - a Debate Rages Over What to Teach Our Kids About their Roots," Newsweek (23 September 1991); Mary Lefkowitz, "The Afro-Centric Myth," The New Republic (10 February 1992); Robert Hughes, "The Fraying of America," Time (3 February 1992).

[32] Joyce Mercer, "Nile Valley Scholars Bring New Light and Controversy to African Studies," Black Issues in Higher Education 7 #26 (28 February 1991) pp. 1 continued pp. 12-16.

[33] John Henrik Clarke (ed.) Malcolm X: The Man and His Times (New York: Macmillan, 1969).

[34] Speaking at Wayne County Community College in Detroit (Greenfield Campus) Sunday 18 June 1989 at program organized by the Alkebu-Lan Foundation. See Rose Enlow and Osafo M. Prempeh, "Two Pharaohs Speak," The Alkebulanian I #6 (July 1989) p. 3.

[35] John Henrik Clarke, "More reflections on Black-Jewish relations," The New York Amsterdam News (29 August 1992) pp. 4; 34. Quotes are on page 34. See also by Clarke, "Black demagogues and pseudo-scholars: a dissenting view," Amsterdam News (22 August 1992) p. 4; 33.

[36] Michael Bradley, The Iceman Inheritance: Prehistoric Sources of Western Man's Racism, Sexism and Aggression" with introduction by John Henrik Clark (New York: Kayode Publications, 1978).

[37] Bradley, The Iceman Inheritance (New York, 1978) pp. xii-xxiii.

[38] Kemet Nu Productions, 3870 Crenshaw Blvd., Suite 104-424, Los Angeles, CA).

[39] Kwesi shows a picture of an Egyptian Pharaoh with a long hairpiece known as a "horse's mane" which resembles a horse's mane growing down the side of the Pharaoh's head. Then he shows a side view of a Chasidic Jewish boy with his sidelocks that vaguely resembles the "horses mane." The demonstration is absurd in the extreme. The custom arose among Orthodox Jews at first in Hungary and Galicia in the 16th century! The Jewish sidelocks are worn on both sides of the head and bear no resemblance with the Pharaonic "horses mane." As with so much else that one finds in the Alkebulanian and in these tapes, the material often descends into the realm of absurdity.

[40] Quoted from promotional literature distributed by Mr. Kwesi. Ashra Kwesi to Barry Mehler October 30, 1990.

[41] Mehler to Joann Nichols Watson, Executive Director, NAACP, (2 November 1990); Watson to Mehler, 7 November 1990).

[42] Telephone conversation with Patsy Julius (10/30/90).

[43] Mehler to Watson, (14 November 1990).

[44] Watson to Mehler (4 April 1991).

[45] Conversation with Terri Houston 28 January 1992.

[46] Oswald Bartolo, "Dr. Ben-Jochannan and Dr. Henrik Clarke Give Stirring Lectures," The Afro Canadian (March 1992) p. 1.

[47] Ernest N. McCarus to Barry Mehler (11/26/91).

[48] Mehler to Charles Kramalkov (2/22/91); telephone conversation late February 1991.

[49] The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews (Boston: Prepared by the Historical Research Department, The Nation of Islam, 1991; second printing March 1992).

[50] Jon Kalish, "Jewish Promoter Raps Anti-Semitic Tract," Forward (24 July 1992) pp. 14/5.

[51] Saul Freedman, "An Old/New Libel: Jews in the Slave Trade," Midstream (October 1991) pp. 11-13.

[52] Janet J. Ewald, "Slavery in Africa and the Slave Trades from Africa," American Historical Review (April 1992) pp. 465-485. The quote is on page 465.

[53] Henry Louis Gates, "Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars," New York Times OP-ED (Monday 20 July 1992).

[54] Cornel West, "Black Anti-Semitism and The Rhetoric of Resentment," in Harold Brackman, "Jew on the Brain: A Public Refutation of the Nation of Islam's The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews (privately published by Bill Adler, no date) p. 67. The book can be purchased by sending $5.00 to Bill Adler, PO Box 541, Old Chelsea Station, New York, NY 10013.

[55] Dale Miller, "Book Inflames Wellesley: Defiant Professor Embracing Farrakhan's Views," Forward (9 April 1993) p.1/12.

[56] Miller, "Book Inflames Wellesley," p. 5.

[57] Dale Miller, "Book Inflames Wellesley: Defiant Professor Embracing Farrakhan's Views," Forward (New York: 9 April 1993) p. 1;5;12.

[58] Quoted from Gates, "Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars."

[59] Brother Shabaka, "AIDS: Genocide of an African People," Alkebulanian III #6 (June 1991) p. 15.

[60] Marion White Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund has a made a special effort to insure that ghetto children are immunized. See, "Kids' advocate stresses need for immunization all children," The Amsterdam News (12/28/91).

[61] For more information contact, James P. Danky, Periodical Librarian, State Historical Society, 816 State St., Madison, WI 53706,, FAX:.

I saw this article on ModelMinority.org, an Asian American site. This "article" was exposed there as a hit piece from a conservative "institute" (American Enterprise Institute) two or three years ago. It's anti-black propaganda, folks.

I saw this article on ModelMinority.org, an Asian American site. This "article" was exposed there as a hit piece from a conservative "institute" (American Enterprise Institute) two or three years ago. It's anti-black propaganda, folks.

The article serves multiple purposes: on one hand it further paints blacks in a bad light and reduces black claims against white racism. On the other hand, it helps to build prejudice amongst Asians against black.

There is no historic across the board anti-Asian racism racism against Asians by African-Americans. Are there individuals who have a bias? Sure. But culturally? No. Since the 1970s, there has been a well documented affinity for Hong Kong martial arts movies. Why? Because African-Americans saw in the Chinese martial artists non-whites who lived heroic lives. This is still reflected in popular African-American culture, like the martial arts movie program on BET or MTV's presentation of the Korean action film Volcano (in which all voices were dubbed by African-American hip hop celebrities).

Think of Dinesh D'Souza and his repeated anti-African American and anti-Latino writings. D'Souza serves as brown face, a member of the Asian model minority, who spouts the worst racist stereotypes and denunciations of the African Americans and Latinos. This article is the same kind of propaganda.

Claiming people who point this out are really colored hit men for the ideological side you don't like, downplaying the severity of the situation, or mischaracterizing what is written won't make the problem the person is writing about disappear.

Also, quoting the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is really bad. The guy is stooge for the right wing. Everyone knows that Rev. Peterson is bought and paid for by RNC. He has no constituency or power base. He's just a brown face paid to say hateful things about the "black"/mixed-race enemies of the Republicans.

Is there any evidence of this. If so, please post it. If not please state that this is your opinion. I am still waiting for your evidence that the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is bough and paid for by the Republican Party, something you said in 2005.

There is no historic across the board anti-Asian racism racism against Asians by African-Americans. Are there individuals who have a bias? Sure. But culturally? No. Since the 1970s, there has been a well documented affinity for Hong Kong martial arts movies. Why? Because African-Americans saw in the Chinese martial artists non-whites who lived heroic lives. This is still reflected in popular African-American culture, like the martial arts movie program on BET or MTV's presentation of the Korean action film Volcano (in which all voices were dubbed by African-American hip hop celebrities).