How Do We Fight Xenophobia?

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If we are to engage in a serious dialogue about blacks and Jews, and how best to fight xenophobia, we must not cast all anti-Semitic statements as pro- Nazi ones, vilify black anti-Semites and soft-pedal white anti-Semites (or Jewish antiblack or anti-Arab racists) or overlook the role of some Jewish conservatives as defenders of policies that contribute to black social misery. We cannot proceed if we assume the worst of each other -- that the majority of black people are unreconstructed anti-Semites or that the majority of Jews are plotting conspiracies to destroy black people. I have great faith and confidence in the moral wisdom of most blacks and Jews in regard to vulgar racist bigotry -- yet our communities are shot through with more subtle forms. This is why it is incumbent upon blacks and Jews to fight all forms of xenophobia even as we try to alleviate the poverty and paranoia that feed so much despair and distrust in our time.

As for my brothers, Khallid Abdul Muhammad and Minister Louis Farrakhan, I beseech you in the precious name of the black freedom struggle and in the compassionate spirit of Islam to channel your efforts of black self-help in ways that do not mirror the worst of what American civilization has done to black people.

We rightly will not permit a double-standard treatment that casts you less than human, but we also must not allow your -- or anyone else's -- utterance to tar the black freedom struggle with the brush of immorality. For the sake of Fannie Lou Hamer, Abraham Joshua Heschel and El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz -- and those many thousands gone -- we can do no other.