Sounding alternately fiery, tolerant and tepid, Jewish leaders responded with mixed emotions to the inclusion of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in the NAACP’s African American leadership summit this weekend.
While some are planning to position themselves outside NAACP headquarters in Baltimore where the summit will be held, or meet behind the scenes with black leaders, most of the main-stream American Jewish groups are adopting a wait-and-see attitude.
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center and a board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, downplayed the emphasis on Farrakhan’s inclusion.
“For the Jewish community it is far more important what comes out of the summit as a consensus of the black community than who is invited,” Saperstein said.
After a season of heated media exchanges between black and Jewish leaders over overtures toward Farrakhan by the prestigious civil rights group, Jewish leaders are now taking a more low-key approach.
Mindful of the backlash that resulted when Jewish groups pressed mainstream black leaders to condemn Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic rhetoric earlier this year, many Jewish leaders are backing away from ultimatums.
“We’re not drawing lines in the sand,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “We will continue to work with them,” he said, referring to the NAACP.
Foxman and other Jewish leaders have basically followed this line since a meeting in February with the NAACP. The meeting was precipitated by the NAACP’s acceptance of Farrakhan’s handling of Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a top Nation of Islam aide who had made anti-Semitic statements.
It was the ADL that had first publicized Muhammad’s remarks in January. After Farrakhan subsequently distanced himself from the tone, but not the substance, of Muhammad’s comments and fired him as national spokesman for the Nation of Islam, the NAACP said it was “satisfied” with Farrakhan’s actions. At the same time, it invited him to participate in the leadership summit.
JEWISH GROUPS DISAPPOINTED BY NAACP
Jewish groups responded with disappointment to the NAACP’s willingness to accept Farrakhan’s claims.
In February, leaders of the ADL and the NAACP met to try to work out a joint agenda, but were unable to reach agreement on how to deal with Farrakhan. They did, however, pledge to continue working with each other.
In addition to Farrakhan, approximately 100 black community, political and religious leaders, including Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), the Congressional Black Caucus chairman, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, were invited to the leadership summit, scheduled for June 12 to 14.
A series of meetings will address strategies for economic development, community empowerment and moral and spiritual renewal in the black community.
NAACP Director Benjamin Chavis said Farrakhan will attend, but a spokesman for the organization would not confirm whether the Nation of Islam leader was scheduled to address the summit. The spokesman said that all invited guests would have an opportunity to speak.
The summit follows the reaffirmation on May 20 by the NAACP’s board of directors that the 85-year-old group is a “mainstream civil rights organization,” in the wake of criticism that the group had been taking on a separatist bent.
Donald Rojas, NAACP communications director, rejected the separatism charges outright.
“Inviting one of over 100 African American leaders to sit down with other African American leaders, how does that make the NAACP not a mainstream civil rights organization? That’s quite a leap,” Rojas said.
CHAVIS WANTS TO REACH OUT TO ‘ALL ELEMENTS’
Rojas said Chavis would continue to reach out to “all elements” of the black community, explaining that Chavis believes in “the principle of dialogue and inclusion.”
But while mindful of the need of black leaders to address problems facing the black community, many Jewish groups still expressed concern over Farrakhan’s inclusion in this event.
“They’d like to have it both ways,” said Stephen Steinlight, director of the AJCommittee’s national affairs commission. “They’d like us to understand and remain allies and they’d like to have this relationship” with the Nation of Islam.
“This embrace is absolutely impossible and endangers enormously our ability to work together,” he added.
Steinlight explained the NAACP’s association with Farrakhan as an attempt to appeal to the younger, disenfranchised black community, to whom Farrakhan has broad appeal.
“The NAACP is an aging organization which is concerned about being irrelevant, at a time when so much of the African American community is in crisis,” said Steinlight.
But even within the NAACP, the invitation to Farrakhan has met with controversy.
Joseph Madison, a member of the NAACP’s board of directors, said the board was not consulted on who would be invited to the conference. He said the vast majority of board members are “very, very concerned” about the NAACP’s relationship with the Nation of Islam.
He dismissed the notion that the group was reaching out to Farrakhan as a means of attracting black youth, pointing out that the NAACP already runs the country’s largest secular black youth group.
Karen Senter, co-director for national concerns at the National Jewish Community Relations Council, said the Jewish community does not need to overstate its message. “Whatever the African American community has to do to deal with these issues, they know how we feel and they know where we stand,” she said.
But some other Jewish groups, including one led by activist Rabbi Avi Weiss and another co-sponsored by Tikkun Magazine Editor Michael Lerner and New York Civil Rights Coalition Director Michael Meyer, plan to stage protests outside the NAACP meeting this weekend.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
