Fair Game

...Nor do I believe that they are anti-Semites just because they hobnob with the former LeRoi Jones, who once wrote, "Smile, jew...

...Having allowed themselves to be cajoled into a house of ill repute, they have not the stomach either to go upstairs with the boys or depart the premises, but sit in a corner clucking their tongues, trusting that their presence will have a refining effect on the party makers...

...The separatists have little future in this country, I believe or hope, but I do not doubt their potential for damage...

...White politicians are customarily held to account for whom they are willing to do business with in the pursuit of aims and careers...

...Diggs and Hatcher have not issued a separate statement...

...A cochairman of the convention as well as its host, Hatcher remonstrated that when politicians in the Congress or a state legislature or a city council lose on a vote, they do not thereupon resign from the body and denounce it...

...The NBPC is not yet exactly an institution...

...But do not such endeavors as the National Black Political Convention mark a stage in black political awareness...

...Not roywilkins...

...Unfortunately, he is exerting a kind of pressure that black politicians find difficult to resist...

...As an organization supported in great part by liberal whites, among whom is a disproportionate number of Jews, the NAACP would have been hard put appealing for funds while supporting such measures...

...Tell me you love me, jew...

...But from all appearances Hatcher is under a misapprehension...

...What is clear is that the event was directed mainly by a small band of black nationalists and honky-baiters who speak for no one in particular, with such worthies as Hatcher and Representative Charles C. Diggs (D.-Mich...

...I got the extermination blues, jewboys...

...I got this thing, goes pulsating through black everything universal meaning...

...Surely, any political leader of whatever color who still hopes for an integrated society has an obligation to block that passage...

...Black Separatists Given the record of white America in responding, or failing to respond, to the needs of most black Americans, it is not surprising that the separatist position holds considerable attraction in black communities, especially among the young...

...No, they are not anti-Semites and they are not separatists...

...On this subject, the Messrs...

...If that were the case, then Roy Wilkins' behavior would indeed have been most strange, and possibly illegal...

...By taking exception to this or that extravagance, while maintaining a presence at the festivities, they believe that they can maintain their credentials in all worlds...

...FAIR GAME BY WALTER GOODMAN Black Politics When Roy Wilkins pulled the NAACP out of the National Black Political Convention (NBPC) last month, he was rebuked by Mayor Richard G. Hatcher of Gary, Indiana...

...It means compromise, though not to the point of corruption...

...If Imamu Ameer Baraka, born LeRoi Jones, the preeminent figure in the NBPC, wishes to argue for separatism as opposed to integration, or for the Arabs as opposed to Israel, that is his privilege, even his duty...

...I got something for you, like you dig, I got...

...Witness the following lines set down by the black nationalist in his poetry-writing days: Roywilkins is an eternal faggot His spirit is a faggot His projection And image, that is to say, that if i ever see roywilkins on the sidewalks imgonna stick half my sandal up his ass In response to the NAACP walkout, Baraka, keeping his sandal on, commented, "It is stupid to me to destroy our own institutions because we can't agree on Israel...

...Few whites—and, I would hope, not many blacks—are prepared to join in celebrating the Third World as a model for this country, or in promoting the ambitions of Baraka on the grounds of his color...

...But for him to contend that one's Negritude obliges one to follow his National Black Political Convention wherever it may go is theology, not politics...

...Relations between Wilkins and Baraka have never been warm...

...It means alliance, though not to the point of self-destruction...

...But the overt issues were only symptomatic of a deeper division between integration-ists and separatists over the political courses open to black Americans...

...That, however, does not mean that it makes sense or that every black man is obliged by virtue of his color to act as though it did...

...What are we to conclude...

...blacks lies in the setting up of their own educational, economic and political institutions...

...The Jewish leaders who, almost to a man, have denounced the Jewish Defense League, have surely shown greater political maturity than the Hatchers and Diggses who consort with Baraka—and perhaps greater maturity, too, than the estimable Shirley Chisholm showed when she smilingly accepted a $1,000 campaign contribution from the Black Panthers...

...Certainly not...

...If he wishes to set up a group to promote those views, that is entirely within the national tradition...

...Black Leadership Genuine political leadership is never a surplus commodity, among blacks or whites...

...But who raised the subject of Israel in this convention of black Americans...

...Ameer Baraka is exercising it today, by his special lights...

...So far so good, but there is something peculiar about holders of public office, elected with both white and black votes, associating themselves with a demand for a constitutional amendment to provide for a minimum of 66 black congressmen and 15 black senators...

...Yet to write off in this patronizing way the designs of a Baraka-Jones or the fumblings of a Hatcher is a disservice to men like Roy Wilkins who are trying to stand fast against this year's fashions in tribalism—not only racial but ethnic and religious as well...

...Roy Wilkins has been exercising it for some decades...

...Just who was represented at the NBPC, and for what purpose, is far from clear...

...Now I do not believe that the numerous black officials—including the members of the Congressional Black Caucus—who took exception to the embarrassing resolutions on busing and Israel, but had not a word to say about the black-nationalist theme of the NBPC, are all separatists...

...A substantial part of white America is ready to support black Americans in their quest for education, housing, jobs...

...But institutions, basic or no, are not created by mere labels...

...These positions did not satisfy Diggs or Hatcher either, and were somewhat modified after the fact...

...Yes...

...Dance, jew...

...One can understand the reluctance of blacks in public life to create divisions in their hard-pressed constituency, and sympathize with the strong impulses toward black identification, yet still not confuse any of this with political maturity...

...The mayor seemed to be suggesting that the NBPC was a representative group of some sort whose delegates had been duly elected, sworn in and commissioned to take political positions in the name of America's black population...

...As for Mayor Hatcher and Representative Diggs, they are funking the job...

...The nation is going through a fit of ethnic identification today?which, as it works itself out on the streets, seems to add up to what in more innocent times we understood to be group glorification, narrowness, prejudice, and general distaste for anybody on the outside...

...Must this reasonable criterion be suspended in the case of black politicians...

...It makes one long for the old melting pot...

...On tactical grounds as well as on grounds of principle, the NAACP is well out of any organization under Baraka's influence...

...Political maturity is not easily defined, but perhaps Ameer Baraka would agree that it has to do with a reconciliation of tactics and principle...

...Two proposals in particular troubled the NAACP and occasioned or expedited its departure from the convention—a resolution that was cool, to say the least, to the idea of school busing for purposes of integration, and a resolution critical of "expansionist" Israel...

...another cochairman, performing the sort of service that liberals did for the Communists when Popular Front organizations were the rage...

...We feel obligated to point out," the two declared, "that in our judgment the resolution regarding Israel and the busing element of the resolution on quality education are not representative of the sentiments of the vast majority of black Americans...

...Such a demand makes sense only if one subscribes to the separate-nation theory...

...Baraka added, "We have to realize that we as a people have got to become mature enough to maintain our basic institutions and not destroy them because we disagree...

...so far it resembles more a vehicle on which rabble-rouser, ward-boss and anti-Semite Baraka hopes to transport himself, his cohorts and his ideology beyond Newark...

...I got something for you now though...

...The premise of the movers and shakers of the National Black Political Convention is that black America is a separate nation, that its condition is equivalent to that of black South Africa or black Rhodesia, that its appropriate models and heroes are to be found in the Third World, that alliances with whites are delusory, and that the true hope of U.S...

...So run the "explanations" for every "excess" committed by any black "spokesman...

...They hardly know what they are, except politicians in a dilemma, a condition that admits no color bar...