Jewish World Review Nov. 23, 1999 /14 Kislev, 5760
David Horowitz
MLK is no doubt spinning in his grave
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
You could be forgiven for thinking that I'd hired
Jesse Jackson to launch his campaign in behalf of the "Decatur 6"
to promote my book Hating Whitey. The book is about the moral degeneration of the civil
rights movement into a hustle designed to keep "racism" alive.
The book opens with a tour of the National Civil Rights Museum,
which is housed in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where
Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, and which features among its
exhibits a large portrait of Elijah Muhammad, the racist kook who
founded the Nation of Islam. It is as though a portrait of the leader
of the Hale-Bopp comet cult were to be placed inside the Jefferson
Memorial.
The Decatur 6 are a group of low-life gang-bangers who
participated in an explosion of thuggery at a high school football
game in the small town of Decatur, Ill., spreading panic through the
stands and endangering the safety of innocent bystanders, including
women and children.
Apparently, the incident was a rumble between members of the
Gangster Disciples and the Vice Lords -- self-identifications which
tell you more about who the Decatur 6 are and what they aspire to
than you probably wanted to know. Yet, the Rev. Jackson refers to
these predators as "our children," whom whitey is trying to
persecute and keep from access to educational opportunity. He got
himself arrested Nov. 16 to protest their expulsion and demand
they be allowed to return to their school.
For their part, the villains in Jackson's case --
the seven white members of the Decatur school
board -- reacted swiftly to the outrage, expelling
the six delinquents in an effort to punish them
and make them an example to others.
Like many other school boards, Decatur's had
adopted a policy of zero tolerance for violence in
the wake of the Columbine shootings and similar
terrifying incidents. Discipline, it should go
without saying (but can't, apparently, in the
present racial context), is an absolutely crucial
element in the creation of a productive
educational environment. Youngsters who go to school in fear are
not going to be able to focus on their studies. Youngsters who
disrespect authority are not going to learn at all.
There is no sector of the population that needs to hear and heed
this message more than young, inner-city African-American males.
One in three among them is a convicted felon. Homicide is their
No. 1 cause of death, and their killers are mainly other young
African-American males. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to
conclude that restoring social and individual discipline in the inner
city (having a zero tolerance for violence) is one the most crucial
tasks facing this nation if it is to increase the opportunities and life
expectancies of its most disadvantaged inhabitants.
Yet here is Jesse Jackson in Decatur, breaking the law and getting
arrested Nov. 16 to support criminal rioters, and attempting to turn
them into civil rights heroes. What a message!
Jesse Jackson has betrayed the civil rights movement. He has
squandered the moral legacy that the movement inherited from its
founder Martin Luther King Jr., and has turned it into a ritual of
blaming whitey for every failure in the African-American
community.
"The march on Selma had to do with access to voting, equal
protection under the law," Jackson intoned in one of his fatuous
statements to the press in Decatur. "The march on Washington:
access to public accommodation, equal protection under the law. In
Decatur: access to quality education for all children, equal
protection under the law."
This is pure doublespeak like the Orwellian slogan, "Slavery is
freedom." Quality education and equal protection under the law are
what the members of the Decatur school board are ably defending.
To sustain these principles it is absolutely imperative that Jesse
Jackson be convicted and remain in a Decatur jail until he has
served his time for breaking the law, which in his case is officially
and appropriately called "contributing to the delinquency of a
minor."
Let the punishment fit the crime.
What has happened to the civil rights movement? It has been clear
for several decades, now, that "civil rights" leaders like Jesse
Jackson have run out of legitimate causes. From Tawana Brawley
to O.J. Simpson, from lawsuits against gun manufacturers (because
too many blacks are killing each other), to racial preferences
(because some black homes do not provide proper educational
support for their children), the civil rights movement has become
first a caricature and then an outright betrayal of its former self.
Under the new dispensation, Al Sharpton -- anti-Semite, freelance
racist, convicted liar -- is now a "civil rights activist," and not just by
self-appointment. He is accepted as a legitimate African-American
spokesman by Democratic presidential candidates Bradley and
Gore, and by first lady and senatorial aspirant Hillary Rodham
Clinton. But Sharpton has merely trod the path that Jesse Jackson
and other more mainstream leaders have carved out for him.
Jackson and NAACP chief Kweisi Mfume embraced the
race-hater Louis Farrakhan before Sharpton.
What a contrast this moral myopia is with the standard set by
Martin Luther King. During his lifetime, King would not appear on
any public platform beside Malcolm X because of Malcolm's
virulent racism. King was not alone in ostracizing the Nation of
Islam leader. NAACP head Roy Wilkins and Urban League
President Whitney Young also refused to be associated with the
Nation of Islam demagogue. The purpose of this ostracism was to
draw a clear moral line between what the civil rights movement
stood for and what it was against. If blacks like Elijah Muhammad
and Malcolm X were racists, the civil rights movement was as
opposed to them as it was to racists who were white. It was a
matter of principle. As simple as that.
In those days no civil rights leader made
excuses for the bad behavior of blacks. No civil
rights leader invoked "400 years of slavery" to
exculpate criminals, or claimed that blacks
themselves couldn't be racist, or that juvenile
delinquents were victims, too. In those days civil
rights leaders set down a single standard for all
-- regardless of race, color or creed.
Their stand had an effect. Malcolm X himself
became a convert. When Malcolm renounced
racism in the last year of his life, King agreed to
be photographed with him. But this picture has
now become an icon, as though their conflict never took place. It
has erased the distinction that King made. In the years since King's
death, Malcolm X has been raised to canonic status as a patron
saint of the civil rights movement, and his portrait now looms larger
than life on the wall beside Elijah Muhammad in the memorial at
the Lorraine Motel.
This blurring of distinctions between Martin Luther King and
Malcolm is a template of the moral confusion that has overtaken
the civil rights movement under the leadership of epigones like
Jesse Jackson and Sharpton. Perhaps the most depressing aspect
of all this dereliction is the absence of prominent voices within the
African-American community (a handful of conservatives
excepted) dissenting from this tragic betrayal. Not since the death
of Rep. Barbara Jordan has there been an African-American
figure on the left who has had the courage to call this wayward
movement to account in the terms it deserves. In a memorable but
un-honored keynote at the Democratic Convention of 1984 she
declared:
"We are one we Americans, we are one. And we reject any
intruder who seeks to divide us on the basis on race and color. We
must not allow ideas like political correctness to divide us and
cause us to reverse hard won achievements in human rights and
civil rights. We reject both white racism and black racism. Our
strength in this country is rooted in our diversity -- our history bears
witness to that fact. E pluribus unum, from many one. It was a
good idea when the country was founded, and it's a good idea
today!"
Here is the heroic voice of black America that we are missing
today. It is the only voice that Americans who are not
African-American and who are not politically left will respond to. It
is the only voice capable of leading Americans into a pluralistic and
integrated future.
To be sure, there are plenty of racial incidents in America today
that require vigilant public attention. But these incidents are
perpetrated by people of all colors and all ethnicities in the
population at large. This may not be readily apparent to those who
depend on a liberal media that likes to have whitey as the villain. A
month ago, for example, even as the trial of Matthew Shepard's
homophobic killer was concluding, two homosexuals -- one black,
the other white -- raped and murdered an adolescent white
youngster. There was little or no news coverage of this incident, no
national hand-wringing over a politically incorrect hate crime. Do
we need a white heterosexual civil rights movement to redress this
injustice?
What we need, as Barbara Jordan so eloquently declared, is a
single standard for all Americans when it comes to judging what is
just and what is unjust. If discipline works for white youngsters, it
should work for black youngsters as well, Jesse Jackson and his
supporters notwithstanding. If it is wrong to hate "people of color"
and to scapegoat them for every social problem, it is equally wrong
to hate white people and scapegoat them for every problem that
afflicts others.
Jesse Jackson is now the leader of the uncivil rights movement. It
is the members of the Decatur school board who are the true
heroes of this political hour. If they can only stand their ground,
they will perhaps have produced a turning point in the battle over
the nation's current hypocrisy on race. In particular, they will have
struck a mighty blow for access to educational quality and to equal
protection under the
law.
JWR contributor David Horowitz is editor of
Front Page Magazine and the author of several books, including, Hating Whitey, Art of Political War, Radical Son : A Generational Odyssey . Comment on this article by clicking here.
11/10/99: Finding the American Center
11/02/99: Reflections on The Road Taken and Not
©1999,
David Horowitz
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