Obama Sells Out to Israel, So Black Americans Should Be Grateful? I Don't Get It...

gretavo's picture

Oh brother, here we go!  As Rahm Emanuel's father has made clear, it is Arabs that are now incharge of sweeping the floors, but are Arabs the ones sweeping things under the rug?  America elects a black president and suddenly it's all about what great friends to black people Jewish people have always been... but is that so?  Does this mean that Jews are suddenly going to begin advocating for slavery reparations with the same gusto that they demand holocaust reparations?  And I guess Jewish support for Obama had everything to do with their love for black people as opposed to say, Obama's pro-Israel groveling?

 

http://www.forward.com/articles/14569/

Black, Jewish Vote for Obama May Signal a Renewed Tie
But the Historic Allies Still Disagree on Many Issues

After months of predictions to the contrary, American Jews voted for president-elect Barack Obama in higher proportion than any demographic group besides African Americans. For many Jewish liberals, this was a watershed moment, marking a return to the days when blacks and Jews were thought to have a special relationship founded on a shared language of suffering and joint efforts to promote civil rights.

Indeed, the numbers — 78% of Jewish voters went for Obama, as did 96% of blacks — suggest that the fabled political alliance between the two groups is in some respects alive and well. But voting for the same candidate doesn’t mean thoroughgoing political alignment. On many issues, public opinion and exit polls suggest, blacks and Jews occupy different corners of the Democratic Party’s big tent — and so, going forward, there remains the question of whether the issues most important to each group will be those that bind them together or those that drive them apart.

“Liberalism is not of one piece,” said Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. “Blacks are far more liberal in economic matters than are Jews. Jews are far more liberal on social issues.”

On Election Day, nowhere were those ideological discrepancies more noticeable than in California, where it appears that blacks and Jews voted very differently on an initiative to ban gay and lesbian marriage.

Statewide, about 70% of African Americans voted to ban gay marriage, according to exit polls. No statewide figures are available on Jewish voting patterns on the initiative, but in Los Angeles, only 16% of Jewish voters (versus 45% of black voters) supported the ban, according to a research group at the city’s Loyola Marymount University. Last year, a study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 79% of Jews believed “homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society,” compared with 39% of members of historically black churches.

“Partly it has to do with religious commitments in the African-American community, and I say this as an Orthodox Jew,” said Mark Mellman, CEO of the polling firm The Mellman Group. “Every community is more religious than the Jewish community, by and large.”

The discrepancy between blacks and Jews on gay marriage fits into a larger picture in which these groups, like others within the Democratic Party, may be Democrats for very different reasons. Indeed, the party’s triumph this year was rooted in its ability to form a coalition of groups as ideologically different as black and Jewish communities frequently are.

“There’s an assumption that we’re all in this together,” said Ta-Nehisi Coates, a blogger for The Atlantic who has written extensively on race politics during this election season. “Were it so. I wish it were!”

In reality, Coates said, African Americans’ loyalty to the Democratic Party is founded largely on the idea “that the Republican Party hates black people. It’s not really a disdain for Republican policies.”

The Pew study found that 48% of members of historically black churches surveyed believed that the government should “get more involved in issues of morality,” while only 22% of Jews agreed with that statement. On the other hand, 53% of the Jews surveyed believed that the United States should actively participate in world affairs, while 64% of members of black churches felt that it was more important to focus on issues at home.

Despite these differences, some Jewish liberals are trumpeting the results of Obama’s election as evidence of a renaissance of the black-Jewish political alliance that reached a high point during the 1960s.

“I believe that the generation of Barack Obama is very connected to the Jewish legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.,” said Rabbi Marc Schneier, who heads an interethnic dialogue group called the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. “It took a generation to reconnect with the legacy of the black-Jewish alliance.”

The divergence on the gay marriage vote is indicative of a different trend in black-Jewish relations: On many issues, the communities disagree but are not in conflict. Because gay marriage isn’t of primary importance to most members of either group, it reveals differences between the two communities without being a source of tension between them.

“In the larger scheme of issues that will influence either black or Jewish voters, gay marriage is not going to be high up,” said researcher David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that studies black communal issues.

On issues that had been sources of tension between blacks and Jews, the groups have not necessarily converged on their opinions, but conflicts over them are less intense and frequent than in the past, observers say. In the late 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, as relations between black and Jewish communities in some cities faltered over control of local institutions, such as school boards, national and even international political issues fanned the flames of unrest. Affirmative action and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict frequently became the loci of tensions between the two communities.

Differences on those issues remain: In 2005, a study conducted by the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding found that 70% of blacks supported affirmative action, compared with 46% of Jews. And a 2002 study conducted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that 40% of black respondents had an unfavorable opinion of Israel.

But, members of both demographics say, these issues no longer create a rift between the communities the way they once did.

“It’s not like there’s aggressive Jewish opposition to affirmative action. And blacks haven’t made Israel a real cause célèbre in their community,” said Steve Rabinowitz, a Democratic strategist. “It’s not in the face of the other community like it used to be.”

That may become even truer with the advent of an Obama presidency. Black support for the Palestinian cause comes not only from a sense of identification with an oppressed group, but also from the belief that Jews have too much power in America, said Juan Williams, a National Public Radio correspondent and Fox News contributor who writes about the black community.

Williams said that now, “black people are in the game. They’re not standing on the outside, saying, ‘Why are you giving so much money to Israel?’”

Regardless of whether blacks or Jews shift on the issues, even some of the most detail oriented of pollsters believe that shared enthusiasm about an Obama presidency could “reinvigorate a black-Jewish alliance,” as Mellman put it.

“There are three groups that gave over 70% to Obama: blacks, Jews, and gays,” Mellman added. “I think that’s a chance to rebuild what’s frayed.”


Thu. Nov 13, 2008

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Exhibit One: Professor Tony Martin of Wellesley College

Professor Tony Martin

London Mayor Ken Livingstone, Blacks and Jews - A Black View

Flash 10/15/03 : Dr. Martin DIS-INVITED to Britain Black History Event

By Howard Campbell, Jamaica Observer, Sunday, September 15, 2002

 


Biography

TONY MARTIN has taught at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, since 1973. He was tenured in 1975 and has been a full professor of Africana Studies since 1979. Prior to coming to Wellesley he taught at the University of Michigan-Flint, the Cipriani Labour College (Trinidad) and St. Mary's College (Trinidad). He has been a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota, Brandeis University, Brown University and The Colorado College. He also spent a year as an honorary research fellow at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad.

Professor Martin has authored or compiled and edited eleven books, including Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts and the Harlem Renaissance and the classic study of the Garvey Movement, Race First: the Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. In 1965 he qualified as a barrister-at-law at the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn (London). He did his M.A. and Ph.D. in history at Michigan State University and the B.Sc. honours degree in economics at the University of Hull (England).

Professor Martin is currently working on biographies of three Caribbean women -- Amy Ashwood Garvey, Audrey Jeffers and Trinidad's Kathleen Davis ("Auntie Kay"). He is also nearing completion of The Afro-Trinidadian: Endangered Species/Oh, What a Nation and a study of European Jewish immigration to Trinidad in the 1930's.

Incident at Wellesley: Jewish Attack on Black Academics
by Tony Martin

In January 1993, I was minding my own business and teaching my Wellesley College survey course on African American History when a funny thing happened. The long arm of Jewish intolerance reached into my classroom. Unknown to me, three student officers of the Jewish Hillel organization (campus B'nai B'rith stablemates of the Anti-Defamation League), sat in on my class and remained for a single period only. Their purpose was to monitor my presentation. As one of them explained in a campus meeting later, Jewish students had noticed The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews among my offerings in the school bookstore. The book documents the considerable Jewish involvement in the transatlantic African slave trade, the dissemination of which knowledge they, as Jews, considered an "anti-Semitic" and most "hateful" act.

One hour and ten minutes undercover convinced these three young Jews that I was teaching this book as a legitimate historical work. They seemed to think that it belonged rather in the realm of "hate literature."

There appears to have been some prior collusion between the Hillel students and their adult counterpart, the Anti-Defamation League, for Hillel almost immediately began passing out ADL materials targeting the book. These included, inevitably, an ADL reprint of "Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars" by Harvard University's Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (New York Times, 20 July, 1992), African America's most notorious Judaeophile. In the weeks and months to come, Gates would be quoted in nearly every attack on my use of the book, as proof that "all" respectable, distinguished and right thinking African American scholars condemned it. The Jews unilaterally anointed Gates with the mantle of head African American scholar in charge of Black academia. He became, in their contrived and wishful thinking, the personification of the entire African American community.

The Hillel activists left my class and headed straight for the president, dean and associate dean of the college. They then went to the current chair of my own department, Africana Studies. Like their elders (for example in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, by whom Hillel operatives are formally trained in the art of deception and dirty tricks), they evinced a bulldog-like instinct for going after the jugular of their intended victims. For the last three decades of Jewish assaults on Black progress, that jugular has usually meant the economic livelihood of Black people.

By the time that four of the Hillel executive and their rabbi director came to see me they had already mobilized those they perceived of as capable of doing me grievous economic harm. Their task was made considerably less arduous by the fact that the dean of the college, incoming acting president, outgoing chair of the board of trustees, incoming chair of the board of trustees, head and deputy head of the student government, most of the faculty holding endowed chairs and a goodly portion of the tenured faculty, not to mention sundry other persons in high positions, were all Jews. The dean of the college is also on the advisory board of the Friends of Wellesley Hillel.

Dr. Martin's Self-Defense

In January 1993, on the eve of the Jewish onslaught against me (for teaching that Jews were implicated in the African slave trade), I already had some interest in Black-Jewish relations. It is difficult not to, if one teaches African American history. I had also done some research on Jewish refugee immigration to Trinidad in the 1930's and '40's. This research was facilitated by the cordial cooperation of Jewish informants in two Caribbean countries. United States Jews encountered in the course of the research displayed the gamut of reactions, from friendliness to suspicion to hostility. The idea of a Black man turning up at a Jewish archive to research Jewish history proved unnerving to some. (On the other hand, Jewish scholars are a familiar sight at Black archives, not only as researchers but sometimes even as staff archivists. One of the most prestigious of the Black archival repositories, the Moorland- Spingarn Collection of Howard University, is actually part-named after a Jew).

At one of the Jewish archives I visited, the lady in charge characteristically put me through the appropriate litmus test. "Do you know Len Jeffries?" she asked, with the mien of one presiding over an inquisition. "I wonder if knowing Len Jeffries automatically disqualifies me from using these archives," I mused to myself. But, like George Washington, I could not tell a lie, so I was constrained to be forthcoming. "Yes, I know him," I replied. "We are professional colleagues. I have known him for many years." She was visibly taken aback by this answer and I feared the worst.

She regained her composure, however, and the interrogation continued. "Have you read The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews?" "I have heard of it," I replied truthfully, "but I have not read it. Funny enough, though, I passed someone selling it on the sidewalk just a few minutes ago." My reading of the book was still a few months into the future, but already I could not fathom what all the fuss was about. "If it is established," I suggested to her, "that white people enslaved Africans, and if Jews were an important part of white society, then why should anyone be upset by a book that illustrates the Jewish role in the slave trade?"

My innocent question now appears to have been imbued with prophetic insight. Or maybe it was simply a case of famous last words. The fact that I cannot remember with precision what her response was, in an otherwise clearly recollected conversation, probably reflects the imprecision of her answer. She could not come up with a coherent rationale for her denunciation of the book. As I reflect in hindsight on that conversation, with the benefit of six months of the Jewish onslaught to guide me, it seems as if the major Jewish agencies issue edicts, as it were. Then the Jewish rank and file simply fall in line. "Theirs not to make reply,/Theirs not to reason why,/ Theirs but to do and die...." The power of the Jewish leadership over their constituency is impressive indeed, the presence of some dissenting voices notwithstanding.

But our conversation was not over yet. It was to take an even more unexpected turn. "Have you heard of the Crown Heights riots?" she enquired, referring to tensions between the Black and Hasidic Jewish communities in Brooklyn, New York. A confrontation had been triggered by the unpunished killing of young Gavin Cato and the maiming of his cousin Angela Cato by a Hasidic vehicle, as the children played on the sidewalk in front of their house. A Jewish student, Yankel Rosenbaum, was killed in the ensuing scuffles. "Yankel Rosenbaum was doing research right here," she said. "He was in here every day, reading the files, just like you. He sat at the same table where we have placed your materials." Even with my own personal Jewish onslaught still many months into the future, this revelation proved a sobering one to me. And as I ponder it with the benefit of a tempestuous hindsight, I wonder what inscrutable fate brought me to this archive, to this conversation, to Yankel Rosenbaum's table, at a time when my authorship of a book called The Jewish Onslaught would have seemed a bizarre improbability.

I could not know then that I would ere long be plunged into an intense reading of Jewish and Black-Jewish history, covering many lands and historical periods, as I sought to bring to my situation a more wide-ranging perspective. The onslaught of the last six months now threatens to turn me into an expert on Jewish history. For that I must thank the purveyors of intolerance with whom I have had to do battle of late.

What I offer here is an involved yet detached look at the onslaught against me, from my unique vantage point as both intended victim and historian. This is written in the heat of battle. Perhaps time, further study and more reflection may either modify or enrich the analysis offered here. But the immediacy of analysis can only be captured now.

Over the last six months I have been fairly deluged with articles, books, newspaper clippings, letters, unpublished documents and references for further perusal. As if obeying the orders of an unseen force, well-wishers (known and unknown) have seen to it that my crash course in Black-Jewish history should not be wanting in resource materials. Even the senders of hate and hostile mail have fit into the plan, for their clippings have been useful and informative.

Editorial Statement

Barely a week after the publication of The Jewish Onslaught, Wellesley's new president, Diana Chapman Walsh, has taken the extraordinary step of issuing a formal denunciation of the new book. In a December 9, 1993 statement disseminated to all students, faculty, staff, alumnae and "friends of the college" she declares as follows -- "We are profoundly disturbed and saddened by Professor Martin's new book because it gratuitously attacks individuals and groups at Wellesley College through innuendo and the application of racial and religious stereotype."

Due to President Walsh's newness on campus, it can plausibly be surmised that she has relied heavily on the opinions of her advisors. The baleful influence of these shadowy figures is plainly evident in the palpable one-sidedness of the presidential proclamation, in its reliance on sweeping derogatory generalizations and in its inability to support its assertions with documentation of any sort. In all these ways and more the presidential statement is reflective of official and quasi-official approaches of the last twelve months.

Our new president has squandered a golden opportunity to bring fresh leadership and even-handed tolerance to the present controversy.

Martin on the Presidential Denunciation of The Jewish Onslaught

The Jewish Onslaught
was published as a response to the unprincipled attacks, defamatory statements, assaults on my livelihood and physical threats directed against me for several months. These emanated principally from the Jewish community and its agents and were triggered by my classroom use of a work detailing Jewish involvement in the African slave trade. In The Jewish Onslaught I sought to put my subjective situation into the context of deteriorating Black-Jewish relations of recent decades. I also attempted to evaluate the tactics used against me in the context of the well-documented dirty tricks that the Jewish groups have used against me in the context of the well-documented dirty tricks that the Jewish groups have used against Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, David Dinkins, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Len Jeffries, Black parents in Ocean Hill-Brownsville (Brooklyn) and any number of Euro-American individuals and organizations.

The Jewish Onslaught is a book of analysis supported by normal scholarly documentation. There is not a single "stereoptype" or generalization in it that is not buttressed by evidence, either from my personal experience of the last year or from the historical record. I challenge President Walsh to move from her broad derogatory generalizations to specific instances to prove otherwise.

President Walsh, like many of the Jewish spokespersons, has a problem with my "recurrent" and allegedly "gratuitous" utilization of "racial or religious identification of individuals...." This is her way of saying that Black people are not allowed to respond to Jews as Jews. Even after being attacked primarily by the Hillel Foundation, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Congress, Jewish Community Relations Council and every Jewish newspaper and spokesperson for miles around, I am supposed to maintain the fiction that the onslaught against me is ethnically and religiously indeterminate.

A recent article in Black Books Bulletin mentions over twenty books on Black-Jewish relations in the personal library of its author. The author is aware of only two books by Blacks on the subject. If President Walsh (and the Jewish community) are to have their way, then this will forever remain a one-way discourse. I therefore ask again, as I asked in The Jewish Onslaught, "What makes Jews so special? By what dispensation in Adam's will do they enjoy monopolistic privileges over a debate that concerns Blacks as well as Jews? Who has placed them beyond the reach of scholarly enquiry and ethnic identification?"

President Walsh claims that The Jewish Onslaught "violates the basic principles" of, among other things, the "norms of civil discourse." Yet, in her zeal to uncover "innuendo" in my work she seems to have missed the blatant lack of civility in the many articles attacking me. Is she not aware of Professor Marcellus Andrews' Wellesley News reference to me as a "racist Pied Piper?" Did no one show her his description of Wellesley's Black women as "intellectually weak and morally lazy?" Did Mary Lefkowitz, Mellon Professor in the Humanities, neglect to send President Walsh a complimentary copy of her article in Measure (No. 118, September/October 1993), wherein she maliciously and scurrilously alleged that I called a student "a white fucking bitch?" Lefkowitz alleged further that "The young woman fell down as a result of his onslaught and Martin bent over to continue his rage at her." Did President Walsh not see, in her reading of The Jewish Onslaught, the text of a racist cartoon by a Wellesley alumna in the Boston Jewish Times? The cartoonist designated Black women as "Ms. Washington" (no different than the "Hymietown" remark that Jews claimed to be so scandalized by) and seemed to suggest that Black students be taught from the works of segregationists, Ku Kluxers and pseudo-scientific racists. Did President Walsh not read the Jewish hate mail reproduced in The Jewish Onslaught ? "I hate niggers to my very bone marrow," ran a typical sentence. "Not all Jews debate apes. Some of us want them all to die." I have been a veritable oasis of civility in the present debate.

I agree with Justice Holmes, as quoted by President Walsh -- "The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." The Jewish onslaught has consistently striven to stifle the "competition of the market" by its defamatory rantings and its demands for my dismissal. The present presidential proclamation regrettably ranges itself alongside this ignoble campaign.

But "the competition of the market" has yet managed to assert itself, as can be seen in the steadily shifting positions of the onslaught. From an initial denial that Jews had any role in African slavery at all, there slowly emerged a reluctant admission of minor and peripheral involvement. As the debate intensified and the Jewish denial of the undeniable threatened to expose its adherents to ridicule, the Washington Post (first among major newspapers, to the best of my knowledge), was finally permitted to admit the full extent of Jewish culpability. In a carefully staged (and not at all pro-Black article) of October 17, 1993 the deniers of Jewish involvement in the African holocaust were shown to be as wrong as they could be.

The present controversy demands honest dialogue, not crude attempts at demonization. If President Walsh desires to extricate herself from the hole into which she has fallen, let her collaborate with me (and with interested students), on the convening at Wellesley College of a serious scholarly conference on the role of Jews in the African slave trade. She can invite Skip Gates, Cornel West and anyone else acceptable to the Jewish establishment to argue their case. I will nominate an equal number of scholars to defend the perspective which I endorse. The spirit of Justice Holmes will be lifted.

As my mother used to say, "One hand can't clap." As Ray Charles was wont to soulfully sing, "It takes two to tango."

Anti Martin Hatred

Internet Threats
Amherst · An Internet computer message suggested the arming of Jews to kill Blacks immediately following a scholarly address on Black history to the University of Massachusetts community. This threat of violence appeared in the Discussion Group for the National Faculty Network, a collection of college professors throughout the United States. The message was posted to the network the night of the lecture in which Wellesley College professor Tony Martin outlined the oppressive structure of the African slave trade. The computer mailbox address indicated that the writer is a Jewish professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts who attended the event:

" Shalom all. I am still shaking right now....I just walked in the door....I know with the Hillel here we are together in a great community -- working on a response to the disgusting events of tonight...but for now I am asking all of you for a response. Learn to operate AK-47, and have good supply of ammunition, so you will be ready when they come to kill us....


And how do we stop these anti-semites from speaking? I doubt there is a way to stop them from speaking. They are more numerous and more prepared to use raw brute force. Even if you could take them to court and win an injuction against these bastards, it will just be seized upon by the rest of the blacks as further evidence of a Jewish conspiracy against blacks."

According to campus police, the gathering, sponsored by the Black student organization, was completely peaceful and the participants were law-abiding. Martin is the author of thirteen books and numerous articles and is the world's foremost expert on the Marcus Garvey movement. According to sources, Professor Martin was immediately informed of the threat but would not comment on security operations.



Jew stalks Black professor
Russian-Jewish stalker claiming to be "on a mission" threatened to attack Professor Tony Martin at his Wellesley College office. Martin, whose best-selling book
The Jewish Onslaught examines the role of organized Jewry in a slanderous attack on Afrocentricity, was unharmed and not present during the April 21 incident.

A "profusely sweating" Alexander Nechaevsky, 34, told campus police that after viewing a televised lecture by Dr. Martin he found him to be "rude and a racist" and came to "confront" him about his views. In the lecture Martin outlined the Jewish origin of the Hamitic Myth which claims that Black humans are cursed black by God and which provided justification for the African slave trade.

Nechaevsky ranted that "he was not a Jewish wimp and that he was from Russia where they know how to handle things." He then conversed at length with a Jewish professor who has led the campus onslaught against Martin.

Martin said that he is not surprised at the attack. "Part of the Jewish onslaught against Black thinkers is to create an atmosphere of intolerance which leads to violent confrontations."

Police ejected Nechaevsky and banned him from Wellesley College property. Later, Martin's office received telephone threats saying that "Tony Martin better watch his step."




 

Tony Martin wants to bring Garvey to a younger generation
By Howard Campbell, Jamaica Observer writer
Sunday, September 15, 2002

Professor Tony Martin has written extensively on Garvey's life and times

The suitcase and travelling bag in Tony Martin's hotel room at the Courtleigh Hotel were half packed though he had a full day left in his brief visit to Jamaica, a stay that was far more pleasant than his last trip to this country.

On Monday, the lanky Trinidadian was one of the speakers at the re-launch of the People's Political Party (PPP) which was founded in 1929 by Pan African icon, Marcus Garvey, whose work Martin has studied for over 30 of his 60 years. The function was attended by PPP members and Garvey scholars who believe the time is appropriate for the revival of this party which upholds black pride and upliftment.

To Martin, a professor in Africana Studies at Boston's Wellesley College, the second coming of the PPP is significant. "It was (in 1929) a major event in Jamaican history and hopefully Monday's launch is substantive because it's trying to recapture the essence of the Garvey movement," said Martin. "Garvey has amazing relevance to African people but in Jamaica, it's special."

Martin's relaxed demeanour was a complete contrast to 18 months ago when he attended the Kingston premier of the Public Broadcasting Service's (PBS) Marcus Garvey - Look For Me In The Whirlwind documentary at the Little Theatre.

Marcus Garvey as commander in chief of the Universal African Legion

According to Martin, he was so incensed at what he claims were inaccuracies in the film which was produced by African-American filmmaker Stanley Nelson, that he publicly took Nelson to task.

"There was stuff in there that Nelson made up. He had young boys stoning Garvey, there is nothing in the historical records that prove that," said Martin, who was interviewed for the documentary. "I still believe it was a deliberate effort to undermine Garvey's legacy."

Much to his, and the Garvey family's dismay, the PBS feature has been shown several times since it first aired and is still on the station's website. Martin says though its broadcast continues to cause discontent. The Garveys are not contemplating legal action. Says Martin, "That would be like a guerilla force taking on a superpower."

Despite the perceived inaccuracies in "Look For Me In The Whirlwind," Martin believes a bio-pic on Garvey's life would help introduce his message to a mass audience in the same way Spike Lee's epic 1992 film, Malcolm X, reignited interest in the slain Muslim leader.

"The Spike Lee movie was done by a black filmmaker who had a certain level of consciousness and maybe that's what we need for Garvey... somebody with that level of sensitivity to make a film," said Martin.

The idea to make a Garvey movie has come up before. Director, Perry Henzell of The Harder They Come fame tinkered with such a project seven years ago and was reportedly in discussion with prospective investors, but that has long fallen through the cracks.

Miguel Lorne, one of the convenors of the PPP, agrees with Martin that a feature film would place Garvey in a different light. "Once you get the right people (to produce the film) I'm all for it," Lorne told SunDay.

"It would bring home Garvey to a younger generation."

Through numerous books, documentaries and plays, a younger generation in North America, Europe and Africa are familiar with Marcus Garvey whose ideas and philosophy reached blacks around the world in the 1920s, long before the advent of mass media.

The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) he founded in 1913 had chapters throughout the world including Trinidad and Tobago where Martin said had fourth most offices in the Western Hemisphere.

The son of a civil servant father who later earned a law degree, Tony Martin was born in Port Of Spain. In the early 1960s, he went to England to study law at Gray's Inn but it was while studying economics at the University of Hull that he says he discovered the teachings of Garvey, a pillar of the Harlem Renaissance, who died in London in 1940.

"Here was this man who had done all these things we were trying to do 30 years ago. It was a revelation to me," Martin recalled.

After moving to the United States in 1969 to study African and Caribbean history at Michigan State University, Martin's interest in Garvey intensified. Over the years he has written extensively on Garvey including the book, The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Source:

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/lifestyle/html/20020915t130000-0500_32008_obs_tony_martin_wants__to_bring_garvey_to_a_younger_generation.asp

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Professor Martin on the History of the Slave Trade


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Transcript of Tony Martin Interview

http://www.truthinstitute.org/TEI_Discovery7.htm

Discovery Series VII: TEI Exclusive Interview With Professor Tony Martin

Professor Tony Martin
Though threatened with physical violence, targeted by censors for career ruin and the victim of repeated attempts at character assassination, Professor Tony Martin has weathered the storm and is still standing, as one of the foremost Africana scholars to be found anywhere today.

Professor Martin is currently semi-retired, teaching at Wellesley College during the Spring and spending each Fall in Trinidad.

We are pleased to bring you a very insightful and instructional interview conducted with Professor Martin. He ook time out of his schedule to answer questions from the Truth Establishment Institute Research Staff.

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Truth Establishment Institute (TEI): You are considered the pre-eminent scholar on the life and works of the Honorable Marcus Garvey. Those interested in studying his thoughts, formation of ideologies and activities often cite your works. What was the spark that lit the fire leading you to delve so deeply into understanding him?

Professor Tony Martin (TM): I discovered Garvey ca 1967 while a student in England. By then the Black Power movement had begun to influence us over there. I had heard Malcolm X speak at the London School of Economics in 1965. I met Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture when he visited in 1967. The West Indian Students Association at my university tried unsuccessfully to have Martin Luther King, Jr speak while he was in England. We hosted members of SNCC who were on a fundraising tour.

I was impressed by Garvey's success in building a movement based on ideas similar to those of the Black Power generation. I couldn't believe that I had grown up without ever hearing of him. It seemed that Garvey had invented the wheel and we, in our ignorance of him, were trying to reinvent it.

The book that I read (Black Moses),was the only one available at the time. It was under-researched and somewhat disparaging of Garvey and painted him as a buffoon. Still, Garvey's message could not be stifled. I asked myself the question that I repeated in the preface of my first book, Race First -- "What kind of a buffoon is this who builds the largest and most successful mass movement in our history?" My question led me toselect Garvey as my Ph.D. dissertation topic when I came to Michigan State University in 1969. Of course, Garvey was no buffoon. He was an inspired organizer with a fine grasp of history and politics and a well-honed intellect. He also had a superb mastery of the English language.

My dissertation (1973) was later published as Race First in 1976. I later wrote and compiled other works on Garvey which are now collected in the eight titles of The New Marcus Garvey Library, published by The Majority Press. Other volumes are in preparation.

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Truth Establishment Institute (TEI): Since publication and release of your book The Jewish Onslaught, what have you been doing and are you still being pursued and harassed by those behind the onslaught?

Professor Tony Martin (TM): The Jewish Onslaught diverted my attention for a few years but I have now returned to expanding The New Marcus Garvey Library and other works. I have recently published two articles on Eric Williams, for example, and have others in the works.

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Truth Establishment Institute (TEI): Over the years, The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B'rith (ADL) has been very strident in their opposition to you. How did you survive their attack – fueled by their annual average budget of over 48 million dollars – with your reputation and position still in tact?

Professor Tony Martin (TM): I am not sure how I survived the ADL's attack. As you say, they have vast resources at their disposal. Throughout the onslaught I tried to stay on the path of truth. I knew that truth was on my side, so there was never any question of backing down. One does not back down from the truth.

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Truth Establishment Institute (TEI): What are the dangers of allowing Black intellectuals and academic research from Black professors to be marginalized?

Professor Tony Martin (TM): Marginalization is a kind of death. The attempt to marginalize me has been intense, but I suppose that I have been more fortunate than most in that my academic reputation was already so strong that the onslaught could not quite demolish it. Several times in the past ten years the perpetrators of the onslaught have written scurrilous letters to prestigious journals that either published me or referred approvingly to my scholarship. The best antidotes to attempted marginalization are water tight scholarship and institutions (publishing houses, Africana Studies departments, community organizations, etc.) of support.

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Truth Establishment Institute (TEI): At any time during your research and mission, have you ever felt like giving up in your battle for truth and historical accuracy?

Professor Tony Martin (TM): No.

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Truth Establishment Institute (TEI): Do you have a person or an organization that you would consider your arch nemesis, or archenemy?

Professor Tony Martin (TM): I can't think of any single person or organization.

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Truth Establishment Institute (TEI): Can you tell us more about your appearance as a witness at Ernst Zundel’s Internet Hearing before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal?

Professor Tony Martin (TM): I was unaware of Zundel until his people asked me to appear as an expert witness for him. I read the materials they sent me from his website, including a pamphlet (I think the title was something like, "Did Six Million really Die?"which he had apparently republished, if I remember right. I stated in my brief to the tribunal that I had never studied the Jewish holocaust and had no basis for an opinion one way or another on the numbers involved. But the pamphlet seemed to me to fall within the normal range of scholarly revisionism. I pointed out that revisionism is at the very core of the historical profession and it seemed unwise to persecute people for differing historical analysis.

I was of course acutely aware of our own situation, where other historians have been whittling away with impunity at estimates of the numbers of victims of the Transatlantic slave trade. I was also mindful of the unprecedented announcement of the American Historical Association in the mid-1990s, that Jews were only marginally involved in the African slave trade.

This was at the behest of three influential Jewish members of the AHA. This tendency to decree historical interpretation from on high, rather than letting contending views compete in the marketplace of ideas I find very alarming.

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Truth Establishment Institute (TEI): What can students, researchers, and others who are interested in establishing truth and getting the word out regarding misrepresented historical realities?

Professor Tony Martin (TM): They must be diligent students. They must work hard at exhausting sources before they publish conclusions.

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Truth Establishment Institute (TEI): What are your future plans, and for those interested in assisting you, what is the best way to do so?

Professor Tony Martin (TM): I am now semi-retired. I plan to do a lot of writing, especially on Marcus Garvey. I suppose that reading my books is as good a means of support as any.

Truth Establishment Institute (TEI): Thank you.

casseia's picture

Substantive critique of Martin

is not surprisingly NOT to be found in the two one-star reviews of The Jewish Onslaught at Amazon (where it is available for cheap, btw)

1.0 out of 5 stars Unfounded Idiocy, October 17, 2001
By A Customer
What Tony Martin has written here is neither masterpiece nor reliable. On the contrary, it is anti-semitic, anti-intellectual, and vindictive. The only thing that can be extrapolated from Martin's lifelong career of anti-semitism and bigotism is that these two problems still exist in our society. We can begin the process of ridding our society of these problems by refusing to subject our minds to his pollution. Supporting Martin by buying his book only feeds into his sickness.

16 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Distasteful, self-aggrandizing tripe, June 17, 2002
By "tompk932" (Moscow, ID USA) - See all my reviews
Martin's work clearly demonstrates the caliber of his scholarship--slipshod and biased. This book is only of interest to bigots or those pursuing the study of paranoid anti-Semitism in academia. Alas that 'zero stars' is not a rating option.

Thanks, reviewers! Because you couldn't back up your critiques with even a single factual remark, I am even more likely to check this out!

gretavo's picture

there's a problem when someone is only either trashed or ignored

and when an article like the one from the Forward assumes the latter position. why not be honest and say "Among the issues that have divided Jewish people and Black people is the case of Prof. Tony Martin whose examination of the role of Jews in the trans-atlantic slave trade has been a source of some controversy."

But no, we can't actually have people understanding where the disagreements lie because, well, Obama knows best and neither he nor "responsible" black academics like Henry Louis Gates have any interest in supporting Prof. Martin in any way.

gulu's picture

No Criticism

 Unlike any other group there seems to be no criticism or reference that would shed a negative light on jews historicaly.Although many groups were involved in the slave trade,and at the time it was considered a legal and an excepted practice,it is deemed anti semetic to expose Jewish participation. On a similar note is Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book Two Hundred Years Together.A book still not printed in English(hmmmmm) that has a few chapters that speak of the Jewish role in the communist revolutions genocide and secret police.This book is considered controversial I assume because it mentions the you know whos in a not so positive light.

            Solzhenitsyn breaks last taboo of the revolution

               http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/25/russia.books

gretavo's picture

BOLO: Zionists claiming MLK equated anti-Zionism & anti-semitism

casseia's picture

Yeah, that's a trip.

I saw that elsewhere. And people are still publishing that freaking "Letter" as if it's real!

gretavo's picture

New York City teachers' strike of 1968

Friday, Nov. 29, 1968
Strike's Bitter End

The New York City teachers' strike, which denied 1,100,000 children formal schooling for 36 school days in three separate walkouts this fall, finally ended last week. As might be expected in so bitter a battle, the terms of settlement—reached after a 27-hour weekend negotiating session—did not really please anyone. In the long view, the militant United Federation of Teachers may have lost far more than it won.

The terms of settlement named a state-appointed trustee, Associate Education Commissioner Herbert F. Johnson, for the experimental Ocean Hill-Brownsville decentralized district, which was the focus of the dispute; he will remain in charge of the area's eight schools until tensions have relaxed. Three principals named by the Ocean Hill-Brownsville local board were suspended from their jobs pending a court decision on the legality of their appointments. A three-man committee was designated to hear teachers' complaints. U.F.T. Leader Albert Shanker won reinstatement for 79 of his teachers who had been transferred out of the district or walked out of their jobs in sympathy; four nonunion teachers accused of hostility toward U.F.T. members were transferred out of the district. Administrator Rhody McCoy was suspended until he would promise to cooperate with Johnson. McCoy reluctantly did so, was reinstated.

Extra Classes. Ending the strike still left the schools with a lot of lost time to make up. The Board of Education initially announced that the school day would be extended 45 minutes daily for 14 weeks. In addition, there would be ten days of extra classes carved out of vacation periods. Protests from teachers and students led officials to make the ten days optional. While the extra sessions cannot compensate for all the instruction time lost, they will provide enough overtime for teachers to recoup most of the pay lost during the strike.

The U.F.T., which includes 55,000 of the city's 57,000 teachers, wanted to close the schools down completely during its strike. It failed to do so. Perhaps 350,000 students were able to attend classes—either in schools that remained open or in makeshift classrooms set up on parental initiative. At least 7,500 U.F.T. members violated union orders by teaching outside of union-authorized schools. In many areas, parents physically occupied their schools to make sure they stayed open; at P.S. 84 on Manhattan's upper West Side, parents took turns guarding the doors and patrolling the halls to make sure that the building was not locked by custodians sympathetic to the U.F.T. The city's school lunch program, which normally provides 400,000 lunches daily, served more than 160,000 a day during the strike, mostly in ghetto schools.

A crisis situation produced imaginative crisis response. In many parts of the city, parents improvised schools in churches, storefronts, brownstone basements and apartments. Other parental groups packed the kids off for tours of the city's museums, galleries and exhibit halls. There were cram courses in basic subjects on both educational and commercial television. Despite the potential for mischief in so prolonged a period of youthful idleness, police reported that there was no significant rise in juvenile delinquency. A feeling expressed on both sides was that it was the kids who, by their restrained conduct, showed themselves to be the real heroes of the strike.

The schools reopened the day after teachers voted to approve the settlement, but the fragile nature of the truce was illustrated when eight union teachers were prevented from entering an Ocean Hill-Brownsville school. Shanker threatened to call the teachers out on a fourth strike if they were not admitted quickly. Swift action by Trustee Johnson averted more trouble, and the schools went back into full session.

No Friends. As for the deleterious effects of the strike, Psychologist Kenneth Clark, a member of the state board of regents, argued sarcastically that many New York schools were so bad that "the children weren't getting that much education anyway." What worried him more was the growth of hostility between Negroes and Puerto Ricans, whose children constitute a majority of the city's public school students, and Jews, who dominate the teachers' union. U.F.T. pickets shouted charges that Ocean Hill-Brownsville residents were using fascist tactics and teaching "antiwhite racism," and blacks accused the union teachers of purposely holding them down. Ghetto residents generally believe that decentralization is a valid solution to the complex ills of the New York City schools. And the union's calculated attack on the Ocean Hill-Brownsville experiment was not likely to persuade many Negroes that they had a lot of friends among teachers.

Unmistakably, the goal of the U.F.T. was to cripple the decentralization experiment, which it fears might lead to a dissolution of its bargaining power by giving local communities control of hiring and firing. Ironically, the strike seems to have furthered the cause of decentralization. Thousands of previously uninvolved city parents, white and black, who had been content to let the schools run themselves, became personally involved in their children's schools, and their operation. Those who were "radicalized" by the strike are not likely to continue to let the professional—teacher, supervisor, board-of-education bureaucrat—have full say in the question of what should be taught and how.

Click to Print Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,841534,00.html

gulu's picture

Hey gretavo

I happened upon this site and to my suprise they list you as an Ideoligical bigot.Scroll down to the list of offenders.I dont get it. http://vehme.blogspot.com/2007/11/ideological-bigotry-on-internet.html

casseia's picture

Short answer

and reason that shouldn't be a surprise: there are many nutty people on the internet. Sometimes we get to know them. Thanks for not making that a live link :)

gretavo's picture

he got banned

for being, or pretending to be, a white separatist. in a nutshell, I recall it being slightly more complicated but whatever.