How Farrakhan kills the joy in identity politics
I was darkly amused by the sorrow-sounding plea pinned to the top of Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan's Twitter page earlier this week:
"What have I done to make Jewish people hate me?"
What, indeed? Where does one begin?
Here, for example, are a few quick quotes from his speech to the Nation's recent annual Saviors' Day program in Chicago's Wintrust Arena:
The "powerful Jews," he told the audience of thousands, "are my enemy."
The Jews are also "the mother and father of apartheid," he said, and "responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men."
"Farrakhan has pulled the cover off the eyes of the Satanic Jew and I'm here to say your time is up, your world is through," he said, getting thoroughly revved up. "You good Jews better separate because the satanic ones will take you to hell with them because that's where they are headed."
That's ironic. If my black American experience has taught me anything, it is how much minority groups resent being told how they're the "good" ones who should separate themselves from the "bad" ones.
I've seen Farrakhan play that tendency like a champ since he emerged on the national scene while providing Nation of Islam security to the Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign in the mid-1980s.
Now a remarkably healthy-looking 84 and surrounded like the rest of us by new generations of more conventional black community leadership, Farrakhan has become a litmus test for black politicians, especially if they are trying to reach out for white votes.
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