Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin by Bayard Rustin Devon Carbado Don Weise

Author:Bayard Rustin, Devon Carbado, Don Weise
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2008-11-22T14:39:00+00:00

This is what Jews need to understand: that in the list of whom you attack, those you love come first. You attack those you have expected something from. You attack those who have in fact carried the banner. Before King's death, he and his nonviolence were the first enemy precisely because he had done the most. The argument went that if, after all the bloodshed, the bombings, the tear-gas, the water-hosings, and the dogs, King could not produce real victories, then he had fooled his people, exposed them to useless sacrifice. After his death, of course, a new situation was created. Now they had the opportunity to shift gears, to say that the greatest Negro was killed by a white. But when King was alive, it was a different story.

Next in the list of enemies of the frustrated come Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph. They are now the traitors to the cause. Listed too are the liberal community, which has fought side by side with us, and the Jews, who have made greater contributions than anybody else in the liberal community. Because of this reverse hate-affection syndrome, Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, the liberals, the Jews, the labor leaders who lifted almost two million Negroes out of the lumpenproletariat into the working classes are all bastards now.

The point is that if Jews are under attack by the extreme left in the Negro community, they are in the same basket with Negro leaders and even the most progressive political leadership. Jews are not likely to feel better simply because others are also under attack; nevertheless there ought to be an understanding of what the problem really is.

In the anatomy of frustration, the long-time leadership is rejected. But heroes must be found somewhere, and so the frustrated adopt heroes of foreign revolutions-not because they believe in their philosophy but because they want to adopt the extreme tactics that they believe have worked for those heroes. Thus Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung, Castro, and Fanon become heroes. This doesn't make the militants Communists. It means, rather, that they are so desperate for new methods that they reach into completely different kinds of situations, hoping that those tactics can be applied here. Of course, they cannot be, but the frustrated, by the anatomy of frustration, are convinced that the only thing left to do is to give everybody hell, to denounce everybody, and to call for revolt.

Consider the question of the Jew in the ghetto. Nothing that I say is justification for anti-Semitism, for I know that in a situation where anti-Semitism exists none of us is safe. Anti-Semitism must be rooted out. We have, however, an obligation to try to understand Negro antiSemitism without excusing it.

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