Our friend John Podhoretz notes that defenders of Derrick Bell ought to explain why it is they are protecting someone who expressed and was an apologist for black anti-Semitism. Specifically, in a 1994 interview, Bell “explained” how there was a “context” for hating Jews and that any discussion of black anti-Semitism had to be “understood” within that context.
It goes without saying that President Obama ought to be among those explaining their support for someone who said that “Jewish neoconservative racists” were “undermining blacks in every way they can.”
But what is even more troubling than Obama’s silence is the fact that young blacks seem to instinctively feel the same way Bell did.
Among those whom Bell urged blacks “really admire” was Louis Farrakhan, who just happens to have given a speech in California this past weekend where he once again expressed hatred toward Jews.
Invited to open the Afrikan Black Coalition Conference at UC Berkeley on Saturday, Farrakhan didn’t disappoint. Among other racist pronouncements, “(Farrakhan said) that Jews control the government and that you need to be their friends in order to be successful, that Jews control the media. To me, that was just so hateful and horrible,” said Noah Ickowitz, a UC Berkelely ASUC Senator.
But what might be horrible to a Jew wasn’t so horrible to the intended audience, young blacks.
“What I got out of it was how we as black students can take our education and utilize it to build the black community back up,” said Stephan Montouth. “We’re looking at the minister’s statements in terms of how to empower the black community not all of the other controversial things that he may have said in the past.”
Seems in 2012, young blacks understand exactly what Bell was getting at in 1994: There is a “context” in which Jew-hatred is completely accceptable.