A MILLION MEN, MINUS ONE

By Jack E. White

EVEN IF THE NEED FOR JOURNALISTIC DETACHMENT did not preclude my participation, I would not join the Million Man March this week in Washington. That's not because I disagree with the march's stated purpose of inspiring a moral and spiritual rebirth among African American men; to the contrary, I applaud it. But however noble the cause, I will not rally behind any banner hoisted by the march's main organizers, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. As Mary Frances Berry, chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, declared in a letter to the Washington Post last week, "I do not trust Louis Farrakhan or Benjamin Chavis to lead us to the Promised Land."

There are plenty of other blacks who share this sentiment, but many are reluctant to voice it for fear of being branded race traitors. Their problem with Farrakhan, like mine, is not only his anti-Semitism but also his habit of selling wolf tickets--archaic black slang for making loud but empty threats. For all his cries about the need for blacks to develop economic independence, for instance, the Nation of Islam's enterprises are less than impressive: small businesses such as restaurants, the Final Call newspaper and security-guard companies that contract with public housing projects and similar institutions in many cities around the country. In all, the Muslims probably employ fewer blacks--perhaps a few thousand--than a couple of good-size auto plants. Much is made, and rightly so, of the thousands of black ex-criminals and drug addicts that the Muslims have helped to lead newly productive lives. But black Christian denominations have long worked similar miracles, on a larger scale, and without sinking into the swamp of ethnic scapegoating.

It is not that Farrakhan and his followers pose any serious threat to Jewish lives or influence. The real danger of Farrakhan's anti-Semitic fulminations is that they divert blacks from their real enemies--in much the same way that right-wing Republicans like Pat Buchanan blame immigrants and liberals for the declining living standards of average workers--and keep them from taking a clear-eyed look at what the Nation of Islam has done, or not done, to advance racial justice. The simple truth is that the Jews Farrakhan so often reviles contributed more in lives, money and effort to the civil rights movement than has the Nation of Islam. Trapped in a fantasy about setting up a separate black country as a solution to the race problem, the Nation of Islam sat on the sidelines while Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers, black and white and of all religions, put their lives on the line. Even today, Jews continue to vote for black candidates more consistently than any ethnic or racial group except blacks themselves. In contrast, it was not until Jesse Jackson's first presidential campaign in 1984, nearly 20 years after the Voting Rights Act emancipated blacks politically, that Farrakhan gave his followers permission to register and vote.

As for Chavis, it stretches credulity to believe that a man whose most recent accomplishment was helping to wreck the nation's most important civil rights organization is capable of leading a campaign that he claims will "stop the senseless self-destruction within the black community." Only last year, this self-appointed protector of "our black children, our families and our communities" was fired from his job as executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for the unauthorized spending of $332,400 in organizational funds to settle a sexual-harassment claim. Indeed, all the N.A.A.C.P. has to show for Chavis' 16 months at the helm is a $4 million deficit and an uncertain future. If Chavis wants to devote himself to a cause, it should be repaying the N.A.A.C.P. for the damage he's done.

The fact that hundreds of thousands of black men--and women--are rallying behind this pair of demagogues is a testament to the sorry state of race relations and the dearth of first-rate leadership on either side of the racial divide that have been appallingly evident in the wake of the O.J. Simpson trial. Black people are so hungry for a renewal of the struggle for racial justice that they are willing to overlook the bigotry and venality of the two poseurs who have summoned them to Washington this week. Even Jesse Jackson, who only a few months ago expressed ambivalence about the march, has now become so attached to the minister's cause that some believe he is trying to take it over. Jackson may think that playing a prominent role in the march will shore up his claim to being black America's undisputed head man, which has been threatened by the emergence of Colin Powell. More likely, it will only help cement Farrakhan's exalted position.

All of us, black and white, deserve better than this. In every previous generation, black America has produced leaders who brought out the best in their countrymen--people like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Thurgood Marshall and, of course, King, who broadened the American Dream by insisting that it applied in equal measure to everyone. Farrakhan and Chavis would substitute a cramped and insular nightmare for that all-encompassing and inspiring vision. Any march they lead is bound to be a journey to nowhere.