A Dissenting View
by John Henrik Clarke
The following is Dr. Clarke's response to "Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars"
In reference to the OP-ED of Henry Louis Gates Jr. the New York Times (Monday, July 20, 1992), entitled "Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars," I am raising the following questions: At once, I questioned the title of Professor Gates' article. He should never refer to anyone as a demagogue unless he's ready to call the names of the demagogues, singular or plural, and point out the nature of their demagoguery. He should never refer to any scholar as being pseudo, unless he is ready to name the scholar and prove the pseudo nature of his or her work. To disagree with a scholar does not make the scholar a demagogue.
Most of the old and new Black scholars asking for a total reconsideration of African history, in particular, and world history, in general, are using neglected documents by radical White Scholars who are generally neglected by the White academic community.
In African history I am referring to scholars like Gerald Massey and his work, Egypt, Light of the World, (two volumes), The Book of the Beginnings, (two volumes) and Natural Genesis, (two volumes).
I am also referring to Gerald Massey's greatest English disciple, Albert Churchward, whose book, The Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man, asks for a reconsideration of the role of people outside of Europe and their role in human development.
Your attention should also be called to the work, Anacalypsis, two volumes by Godfrey Higgins, published in 1837. These books deal with the dispersions of African people throughout the world.
Many of these Black scholars, whose work Professor Gates questioned, were reading works by Whites in French, German and other languages that spoke positively about African American achievement long before Mr. Gates' parents were born.
This school of Black scholars are neither demagogues nor are they pseudos; they are the forerunners of the present propagators of Afrocentricity. They know what Professor Gates doesn't seem to know: that African people are the most written about and the least understood people in the world.
If Professor Gates has not read the works of the White pioneer scholars about the role of African people in world history, it stands to reason that he has no understanding of the senior Black scholars such as Yosef ben-Jochannan, John G. Jackson, Cheikh Anta Diop, Jacob Carruthers, Chancellor Williams, Lao Hansberry and myself.
Professor Gates' reference to Black anti-Semitism is an exaggeration. A new Black awareness is causing Blacks, young and old, to question everything that has any influence on their lives. We are realizing that Jewish people have an influence on our lives far out of proportion to their numbers in the population. I totally disagree with Professor Gates that anti-Semitism among Whites is on the wane in the country. Quite the contrary, I think it is increasing in this country and in the world, and Black people are not the cause of it.
What you have in this new charge of Black and Semitism against Blacks is the most pathetic of all tragedies, a scapegoat looking for a scapegoat. Because of Black Americans' reading or misreading of the Bible, we have always had a sentimental attachment to Jewish people and, to a large extent, most of us still do. During slavery, we wanted to attach ourselves to a people who had escaped from bondage. So, the Exodus story in the Bible became more real to us than to the Jewish people. Right now, in a large number of Black Baptist churches, you can get a large number of the congregation to shed real tears of sympathy over the three Hebrew boys in the fiery furnace. Most of tganized White hate groups in the United States. I know of no overt attacks by the Jews being made on any of them. Yet, Jewish people have attacked Louis Farrakhan more than they have attacked the leaders of the Aryan Nation or the American Nazi Party. Are the Jews in America looking for an easy victory or the Truth? Black Americans have never been their enemy. And they, the Jews, have never been our friends unless it was to their convenience. Neo-Nazism has fully re-emerged in Germany and in other states in Europe. These are people with a nation structure and armies. Why is it that a group of weak Black Americans are getting more attention from the Jews than these powerful White forces rising against them?
I'm sorry that Professor Cornell West saw fit to make a statement about this false charge of Black anti-Semitism. I could agree with his statement if the statement were true. What Black people are realizing in this country, in the Caribbean Islands and in Africa is that the Jewish people, of European descent, are a part of the world apparatus of European control. And, in the matter of White control over the world, their position is no different than that of other Europeans. I am not saying that the Jews of Europe are more bent on world dominance than other Europeans; I am saying that they are not radically different from other Europeans in this regard. Internal disputes between the Jews and other Europeans is a form of European domestic racism. European racism has spent itself out outside of Europe. During the Nazi regime in Germany, that racism turned inward on itself and created what is referred to as The Holocaust. This was a problem started in Europe by Europeans that should have been resolved in Europe by Europeans.
Repeatedly I have said that Europeans are geniuses at draining the diseased pus of their political sores on the lands of other people. What is now being called anti Semitism among a newly awakened Black intellectual class is that they are beginning to look at the people referred to as Jews as part of the totality of European world dominance. We are not saying that the European who is a Jew is any more of an imperialist than any other of the Europeans, but that he is basically the same. We are not saying that the role of the Jews in the slave trade was any different then any other Europeans, but that it was basically the same. When they saw the opportunity to make money in the slave trade, they took advantage of this opportunity the same as other Europeans in the same business.
I do not choose to deal with Jesse Jackson's opportunistic appearances at the World Jewish Congress and the statements that he made. Jesse Jackson has his own agenda that is unrelated to the Liberation Movement of his own people. He was catering to his Jewish audiences for reasons unrelated to Black people and their liberation movements.
Black people are becoming increasingly conscious of people who exploit their community and hold them in contempt. We make no exceptions when these exploiters are non-European.
In referring to present-day anti-Semitism and the attempt to trace it to having roots in Christianity, Professor Gates shows his lack of understanding of the manifestation of Christianity among American Blacks and how that interpretation of this religion is part of their humanity. Their interpretation, in no way, relates to anti-Semitism.
I wonder if Professor Gates would explain the words in the Negro spiritual:
Go down Moses ...
Tell ol' Pharaoh
To let my people go.
or the words:
Deep river,
My home is over Jordan.
This is African identification with the Biblical people of the Hebrew faith. It would help if Professor Gates would read a towering masterpiece in three volumes by James Fraser, The Folklore in the Old Testament and another contemporary book, Hebrew Myths, edited by Robert Graves and Raphael Patai.
I do not think that Professor Gates completely read Michael Bradley's The Iceman Inheritance before referring to it because in it Michael Bradley has very little to say about the Jews. The book, in essence, is about the rise of a certain kind of temperament that changed the world-the European Personality. This personality has shown little or no respect for civilizations, cultures and ways of life that it did not create. Cultures and people that the European did not understand were declared primitive.
In the last 500 years especially, European historians have inferred, or said outright, that the world waited in darkness for the Europeans to bring the light. In fact, the Europeans destroyed more civilization than they ever created. They destroyed civilizations that were already old before Europe was born.
Michael Bradley was characterizing the Europeans as "Icemen" is not totally incorrect, if it is incorrect at all. I wrote the Introduction to the new edition of this book, because I considered the book to be of some significance in explaining the origin of racism. I did not say the book was a masterpiece of the greatest achievement in writing. It was good basic research and told honesty about Europeans' beginnings and the impact of racism on the broader world. I have also written the Foreword to another book by Michael Bradley that will be even more controversial, Chosen People From The Caucasus: Jewish Origins, Delusions Deceptions, and Historical in the Slave Trade, Genocide Cultural Colonization. (Third World Press, Chicago).
My writing on Black-Jewish relationships is not new. I participated in forums on this subject in the old Harlem History Club in the 30s. In my latest book, Notes for an African World Revolution: Africans at the Crossroads, (Africa World Press, Trenton, 1991), Chapter Four is called 'Africa, Zionism, and Friends Without Friendship." This is an analysis of 500 years of African-Jewish relationships. I am not writing about an historical Black-Jewish affiance, because the one often referred to is a myth. There can be no successful alliance between weak people and strong people.
There have been times when it was to the best interest of the Jews to support certain Black causes, and they have supported them. When it was no longer in their interest, they withdrew from them. The Jewish people have practiced what all people on this earth have a right to practice the essential selfishness of survival.
Indeed, I have criticized multiculturalism and Jewish control over the education system in New York City and the education system in the United States, in general, especially the Teachers Union. Jews have had no compunction in fighting for a holocaust curriculum. And in many schools it is mandated and Black students must learn about the Holocaust before they learn about their own history.
Over the years, I have said repeatedly I am not willing to argue whether Hitler killed 6,000,000 or six. He was wrong if he only killed six. I think he committed one of the greatest crimes in history. No human being would ever approve of this crime. If we are honest about historical information, we would know that the mass murder and what is referred to as the Holocaust was a small event in comparison to other mass murder events in history. The Belgians killed three times more people than this in the Congo. In an island near Australia called Tasmania, the British killed every man, woman and child. In the years of the slave trade, Africa lost, over one hundred million people. For every African captured, three were killed. The Arab slave trade in East Africa that started a thousand years before the European Atlantic slave trade and the Atlantic slave trade that lasted approximately 300 years was a holocaust against African people, which started 500 years ago and is not completely over to this day.
If the four policeman in Los Angeles had been beating a dog instead of Rodney King, they would have been put on trial and convicted. It is time to speak of the Great Holocaust in history. The European holocaust, I repeat, was small in comparison to some of the others.
When Professor Gates refers to me as the paterfamilias of the Afrocentric movement," I'm not too clear about whether this is a compliment or a thinly veiled insult. I did not go to the dictionary to look up the words because I never use dollar words in 25 cents situations. But, as a matter of fact, my interest in African history and world history in general started when I was a Baptist Sunday School teacher in Columbus, Georgia, where I grew to early manhood. I could not find the image of my people in the Bible, so I began the search through the literature of the world until I found them and learned why some people considered it a necessity to leave African people out of the respectful commentary of history. I became active in the old Harlem History Club at the Harlem YMCA soon after arriving in New York City at the age of 18 in 1933.
The study of African history, culture and politics and world history in general has been the all-prevailing passion of my existence. It is something I do, like breathing is something I do.