Nice rejoinder from dNa on my earlier post where I distinguish black antisemitism from black Semitiphilia (WTF? Is that a word??):
Actually, I think it's often the same sector. Jews see that kind of admiration as threatening, because to them it sounds a lot like traditional anti-Semitism, especially when you get into stuff like "Jews only spend money in their community" type stuff. But even when the most anti-Semitic black nationalist starts talking about the Jews, there's this grudging respect, like "you're ruthless, but we wanna be like you and run shit."
But even the idea that Jews "run shit" is based off anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, yeah there are a lot of Jews in high places, but the vast majority of people in high places are white gentile men. Stating that "white men run things" is simply stating the obvious, although don't say it on TV because Fox News will run a clip you you saying that one phrase for the next three months.
I think he's right, in that certainly there is great overlap between the NOI types who think Jews ran the slave-trade and those who hold a begrudging respect. That said, speaking as a guy who grew up around a lot of black nationalists, I didn't really hear a lot of those sorts of conspiracy theories. I heard a bunch of anti-white ones, no doubt. But that whole "Secret History" crap didn't hit me until college. One thing people have to remember is that in the 80s and 90s there was still some tension between the Farrakhan cats and Kwanzaa cats because many of them held him responsible for Malcolm's murder. I knew like one or two people who were NOI when I was a kid--but I knew a ton of Kwanzaa Nationalists.
The point I'm making is that the "gutter religion" crowd isn't always the same as the "be like the Jews" crowd. There's another place this sort of thing comes from--a sense that black people have a preternatural inclination for effing up. The latter probably annoys me more because I am constantly, constantly, constantly exposed to it. Chris Rock--much as I love him--wouldn't have a career if black folks didn't believe that they--more so than other groups--were their worst enemy. The Kwanzaa Nationalists especially believe this. There's probably some antisemitism there, but if you think about (from the perspective of a black nationalist) there's a lot to admire without dipping into antisemitic conspiracy. Obviously the biggest example is Israel--Garvey himself held great admiration for the Zionist Cause.
The Kwanzaa "Kinara" is obviously a straight rip off of the Minorah. The idea of having a language--be it Yiddish or Hebrew--is also another thing that would attract the envy of a Kwanzaa Nationalist. I can remember hustling books for my Dad and brothers coming up to the table and hitting me with the Habari Gani. Now, it's quite possible that some of these same folks held some conspiracy theories. But I think that there are plenty of very real aspects of the Jewish tradition that the black Nationalists will always envy.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Speaking as the former black nationalist who celebrates Kwanzaa and who was in fact there at the beginning, there is a kind of 'run shit' aspect to Judaism that evoked admiration, but that was really secondary. What appealed to me was the vibe I called 'vida sin corazon'.
Back in the day when I was a huge fan of Granta magazine, I read a story about a woman or a man whose father was a grave and distant jew. He was in fact a Holocaust survivor who eventually made it to the US. He was an unsentimental, hard and bitter man who was acceptably kind to his children but very demanding. There was a place you simply didn't go with this man. He had faced death in the camps and so there was nothing that the world of business in America could do to intimidate him. And so he eventually made a small fortune and respectability.
The story was ultimately forgiving of the harsh and emotionally distant father who had faced unspeakable horrors and therefore could not be questioned for not being Mike Brady.
That is the gangsta jew. It is the subtext of NAS' NYC and all of the hard-bitten ex-cons. It's OK to be Eldridge Cleaver and screw over white women because the black man has faced his own American Holocost at the feet of the Bull Connors of the world. And as hard as any black man can be, like Michael Moore said this week, no white man can judge because we've suffered the ultimate indignity.
'Nobody' begrudges the Survivor's bitterness. This is the mojo black nationalists desire - to stare down the whole American COINTELPRO conspiracy and use that card to get out of moral jail free. My black life is hard. Was it Flavor Flav or Professor Griff who said, "I got a right to be hostile, my people have been persecuted"?
That's the juice. All that unity crap, well, that's about getting black people en masse to respect those whose hard knock life makes them the natural leaders. It continues symbolically in the narratives of 'political' hiphop.
The NOI actually did make for the discipline. Cultural nationalists had none, nor any real organization. Instead I say most went the way of the WASP, blackified. Check out the charters of enough National Association of Black fill-in-the-blank of the 1970s and I think you'll find all that Kwanzaa cultural nationalist sentiment.
Posted by Cobb | May 7, 2008 1:08 PM