xoxodede
Superstar
I think too much fuss has been made of the case of Professor Jeffries who has said nothing that he cannot document. It is too often forgotten that most of the information Professor Jeffiies gave on the slave trade was taken from Jewish writers.
The book,The Grandees, by Steven Birmingham, set his search in motion. He read large numbers of documents over and beyond that book, such as more revealing books by Professor Ben-ram Wallace Korn: Jews and Negro Slavery in the Old South 1789-1865, (1961), and The Early Jews of New Orleans, (1969).
The story of Aaron Lopez of Newport, Rhode Island, is too well-known to be retold here.Conrad Muhammad and Kahlid Kahfah are not intellectual cohorts with Professor Jeffries. I doubt if he's met either one of them. Neither one of these men belong to the academic community, nor is either one well read enough to be classified as a scholar. They are mainly Moslem zealots; not too different from zealots of other religions.
I have no argument for or against the Learned Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I have not been able to authenticate it one way or the other. If someone assures me that it is a piece of fiction, I am not prepared to argue.
Professor Gates' complaint about the book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews seems without justification. The book is no masterpiece. It is a competent piece of research. The documentation is good. Instead of complaining about the footnotes, Professor Gates should read some of the footnotes and the books they refer to; especially he should read the works of Professor Bertram W. Korn, an able Jewish scholar whose writings about the role of American Jews in the slave trade is most revealing. Professor Gates should also learn that neither Blacks nor Jews can go on forever denouncing every thing that is not in their favor.
Honest sentiment and some very able research in favor of the Jewish people was started in the old Harlem History Club by Willis N. Huggins in the 30s. Some of the best known of these findings were published in the Chicago Defender and in the magazine, The African. The following quote is from Willis N. Huggins' article, "How Wrong ishytler?...On the History of Jews, Black Folk and 'Aryanism?'" (Chicago Defender, Chicago, January 28, 1939).
When the news broke in the American Press on July 15th that the Italians were ready to go tread "The Aryan Path," it evoked as much laughter as the world may get when news comes from Germany that Max Schmeling has been cast out of the "Aryan Fold" because "anonymous scientists" have discovered that he has a grandfather named Goldberg. "Political Aryanism," according to a prominent Nazi leader, "aims to turn its ire against Jews, Gypsies and the Negro races."
Since Jews are able to take care of their part of this "sentence" and, doubtless, the Gypsy does not give a hoot I should like to summarize thereactions of black folk to the new "Aryan Wave."
If we should look at the records we would see that the early Aryan language-groups stemmed from the black Dravidians who occupied southern India in remote times. 'My two peoples mingled freely. Thus, the so-called Indo-European movements around 2,500 B.C., were basically migrations of a Negroid folk which pooled itself in southern southeastern and southwestern Europe, around 2,000 B.C. Indeed black African races, The Grimaldi" had already covered most of Europe as early as 20,000 B.C. They left a secondary African base for art in ancient Hellas (Greece) and a primary African base for color in Austria, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal.
Willis N. Huggins also wrote a series of articles on the African origin of Adolf Hitler's racist symbols.
In my opinion, I think both Blacks and Jews are often arguing about the right thing the wrong way. Jews who lived in slave-trading countries participated in the slave trade as citizens of the respective country.
Slavery was a business, a dirty business, but still a business. Business people engage in any business where profit can be made. The same thing is true about business people living in colonial countries in relationship to African people. I place no special blame on Jewish people who are white Europeans. I offer no special vindication, either. Their behavior in relationship to non-Europeans is basically the same as other Europeans. The internal difference and difficulties that Jews have had within the White family does not alter or change what I have just said.
What Professor Gates, the Jews and some people referred to as "Black Conservatives" fail to understand is that the African people throughout the world have suffered a special catastrophe over and above that of other people of the world. When Europeans rose in the 15th and 16th century, started the slave trade, colonized history and information about history, they also colonized the image of God. They took away from millions of people the image of their original God-concept and replaced him or her by a god conceived in Europe. Again, I ask Professor Gates and other Black conservatives to try to understand that for 500 years we have lived in a European-conceived intellectual universe. I am willing to acknowledge that I am influenced by this conception, but I am, at least, at war against it because I realize that it is not only detrimental to my people, it is detrimental to the whole world. Professor Gates and other Black conservatives are the crawling dogs to this new design to continue European world dominance.
Professor Gates is snide in his assumption that "We can rarely bring ourselves to forgive those who have helped us." The truth is the contrary. African people have always over-rewarded those who have helped them, often to their detriment. I wish he would explain the nature of the help and the time it was given. All people that have come among us have taken more than they have given and have eventually done us more harm than good. If you forgive the modesty, I refer you to my pamphlet, Black, White Alliances: A Historical Perspective (Third World Press, Chicago, 1971).
Professor Gates keeps referring to an historical alliance between Blacks and Jews. I wish he would be more precise and say when this historical alliance occurred. I have been a teacher of African World History most of my life and a student of history in general. I know of no evidence indicating such an alliance. The earliest opportunity for a coalition between Blacks and Jews came in 1675 B.C., when an African people called the Egyptians took in the sons and daughters of Abraham, who were fleeing from hunger and starvation in Western Asia. After receiving food, clothing and shelter as well as the foundation for Judaic culture, language and religion, the majority of these a guests joined the invaders, the Hyksos (or Shepherd Kings) rather than form an alliance to defend the country of their African benefactors. They had found a greater acceptance in Africans than Africans have ever found in a European-dominated country. With this visit to Africa, the people whowould later be known as Jews conspicuously entered world history.
Professor Gates, Cornel West and other Black conservatives use beautiful words, sometimes to say nothing, sometimes to say what has already been said and sometimes to say what is not in debate. They display their ignorance of European history and history in general. They decry any form of Black nationalism and often call it racism without knowing that for the last 500 years the world has been controlled by European or White nationalism.
African self-assertion, the demand for a proper curriculum in the schools-- a demand that we stop praising a liar and a faker like Christopher Columbus who discovered absolutely nothing-- threatens an apparatus of European control set in motion by the Atlantic slave trade and continued with colonialism that ultimately laid the basis for present-day monopoly capitalism. No matter what Europeans say they believe religiously, politically or culturally, their main objective in the world is control. Everything that has ever been developed in the European mind was meant to facilitate mind control of the world. There are no exceptions, Left or Right politically.
Black conservatives are really frustrated slaves crawling back to the plantation, figuratively, letting their master know that they are willing to go back into bondage. One needs to question their words because, as slaves and enemies of their people, they will say what they are told to say and do what they are told to do. The Black conservatives have nothing to conserve except their miserable obscurity and their tragic cowardice. These pathetically lost creatures and avid White-behind kissers don't have the nerve to be African or Black.
To be African or Black with the understanding of all of its ramifications is, in itself, a commitment to the unification and uplift of all African people on the face of this earth. It is a commitment, also, to take Pan Africanism beyond its narrow base of Black nationalism to a concept of an African world union.
When the real tragedy of Black-Jewish relations is finally identified, I think it will be the dictionary and how we have misused its words. Here is a case where semantics change depending on who is listening and what they are listening for. Your listener will often hear what you did not say and stubbornly ignore what you said. The present controversy around Black and Jewish relations is a good example of a poor and unimaginative use of words.
What exactly do we mean by Black-Jewish relations? From these words we have no way of knowing that there are Blacks who are also Jews--members of the Hebrew faith.
There is a genuine conflict between Black and Jewish people, and this conflict has international implications. We cannot deal with this conflict honestly until we call it by its correct name and examine its origin and development African people the world over have no culture or religious fight with Jewish people. We come out of pluralistic societies, of our own making, where we lived side by side with a multiplicity of cultures and religions, most of the time in peace. Cultural and religious tolerance is part of our heritage as a people. If we were disposed to be against any culture or religion, it would probably not be Jewish culture and religion that had part of its early development in Africa.
Now that I have eliminated culture and religion as the basis of the Black-Jewish conflict, precisely what is the conflict about? It is about power and the emerging expectations of most of the world's people who until recently were mainly ruled by Europeans or people of European extraction.
The one thing the conflict is not about is anti-Semitism. There is a world-wide Black-White conflict which is part of the broader conflict between European and non-European people. African people are on one side of that conflict, and the people we refer to as Jews are on the other side.
When I use the words Jews or Jewish people, I am referring to White people of European descent, whose culture, development and political loyalty is European. This political loyalty to Europe and the part that Jewish peopl still play in maintaining European world-wide power, and not anti-Semitism, is the basis of the conflict between us. This conflict will become more fierce and tragic as non-European people challenge the power of European people all over the world.
With urgency I invite you to read Yosef A.A. ben Jochannan's book, We the Black Jews and the book by John G. Jackson, Christianity Before Christ. I believe that Blacks and Jews need a genuine partnership. Before one can be built both of them have to be honest in admitting that they have no partnership now. Figuratively speaking, the partnership between a horse and a rider is neither a partnership nor an agreement.
Today the Jews are aligning themselves with the forces of White supremacy that is diametrically opposed to the interest of most of mankind. I think they have made a political mistake of disastrous proportions, and I compare their present political position with the period of Joseph and his brothers in Egypt and the period and time that followed the loss of political connections with the Egyptian Court that Joseph made for them.
And I wonder will their present position lead to another time when a king will arise, figuratively speaking, who politically knew not Joseph.
Originally appeared in Konch Magazine.
This programs had a host of historians included - he was merely the host. I"m not a fan of HLG myself. But, I thank and appreciate this series.
