Pollitt on West

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Dan V decides to define the NOI as he pleases to see it--a black self
defense organisation-- though the only people it seems to have killed are
dissident black muslims. And from this arbitary definition he then claims
that it is not inherently reactionary. Why not define the NOI by its
history, its documents, its newspaper? Why not thumb through Sheharazad
Ali's Black Women's Guide to Black Men (sp?title? Why not read a simple
critical history like Marable's in a recent Race and Class or Reed Jr's
from the Nation in the early 90s? Dan V says that the debate about the NOI
is a black thing so he won't judge it. This just in: "Farrakhan's a
fascist."--Prof Donna Jones, black and proud. 

 If Vukovich is  not a Christian, then he better
keep shut next time Robertson and Falwell try to mobilize the Christian
Right. At any rate, what is presented as tolerance and respect is really
1. a suspension of reasoned analysis in regards to  black politics (for
example a careful analysis of what family arrangements Farrakhan prefers
or why he holds the matriarchal family, instead of other 'factors', as
responsible for the poverty from which blacks disproportionately suffer;  
or a study of how his social policy recommendations are in step with
Gingrichism; or some attention to the terrifying ways he wants to redefine
the educational process; or some concern with how his economic development
program, insofar as it can be deciphered, reduces to support of black
business; or analysis  of the internal decision making process of the
NOI--indeed Dan seems to know none of the disturbing history of the NOI;
this strikes me as disregard not tolerance) and 2. a vicious disregard for
the emergence of reactionary leaders who are not only  free from plebicite
or any democratic control but who will claim and have always claimed as
their first victims black people. 

And most of all, propagating the belief that whites are the creation of
the evil Dr Yakob (sp) is only 1. to tolerate forces of irratinality in
the  black community that would not be tolerable elsewhere and 2. to
encourage black people themselves to accept all attempts at resegregation
and 3. to understand themselves in terms of deep racial difference. If
your cultural relativism allows you to accept this with equanimity, then
you have the paradox to entertain of how anti racists become racists. 

Rakesh