I talked with Colin Powell. Powell is my brother, and even though our views may differ on many different subjects, what harm does it do for my own brother to speak to, as I said, “your troops” [at the Million Man March]? General Powell was very warm in his conversation with me, and he said that should he find it possible to shift his schedule around, he would try to make it. And now his advisers tell him how he must beat up on Farrakhan. This is what I don’t like about politics. I understand that he [later] said the reason he didn’t come is because his presence might legitimize me. Legitimize me with whom? If a million black men showed up, I’m already legitimate. Though [Powell] is legitimate to white people, he’s not to black people. If they want to sanitize him so that he can’t even relate to his own people, they would hurt him. I told him that he didn’t even have to come personally–just send a message. He sent me a fax telling me he would address the concerns on Monday morning on CBS.
With the increased gang violence and the streets of black America being made very, very unsafe, I personally felt it would not be long before the same tanks we saw rolling in Tiananmen Square would be rolling in our own communities. From 1941 to ‘45, Germany, Japan and Italy were the enemies. No matter what happened – the dropping of the atomic bomb, the bombing of major cities in Germany, killing men, women and children–these acts did not evoke compassion because the [targets] were the enemy as described by the media–movies and newspapers and magazines–and by our political leaders. Now black people – the black male in particular – is looked at as the enemy. So if anything happens to us, who cares? There is no moral outrage.
Overseas, they don’t see the hardworking, family-oriented brother. They don’t see the corporate executive, the clean young college students. They see “Boyz N the Hood,” they see “Menace II Society.” [The day of the march] the whole world got a vastly different picture of the black male. There were no arrests [police report just one], no drunkenness–only the utmost courtesy of brother to brother. On reflection, I’m totally in awe of what God brought about.
White supremacy, when we come under it, produces in its wake black inferiority. And black-inferiority thinking always measures success by how close we get to that which we determine is superior. So if you get a big position with NEWSWEEK or I get one on the Democratic National Committee or something, I have ascended. Why? Because I’m closer to white people, to what they describe as success. That’s sick.
We are advocating no more party loyalty. We intend to create a Third Force or a Third Power out of Republicans, Democrats and independents. We’re not going to vote for anybody because he talks like Kennedy–no, no, no, no! That’s all over with.
Reuters asked about using the word “bloodsuckers,” and all I did was explain what the function of a leech is. It takes, but it never gives anything to what it takes. I mentioned [that] back in the ’40s and ’50s, some of the merchants who were Jewish owned the tenement buildings, the businesses, the pawnshops, and they drew from the black community. And later they were replaced by Palestinians and other Arab merchants, then by Vietnamese and Koreans. These are persons that generally take from the community but don’t give back. I said there are even some blacks who do the same thing. But they weren’t interested in nobody but the Jewish people.
When we got back from Washington, there were many faxes from rabbis and some Jewish organizations that wish to begin dialogue. [Other groups’] desire is for me to show them some signs that I’m changing in word and deed in an ongoing way. What they’re asking for, it seems to me, is to cut the heart out of a messenger’s message. My duty is to point out the wrong and the evil.
If you went back 2,000 years ago, this same man [Jesus] that everybody seems to love today was very hated. When you look at those prophetic voices who history now says were good men–but their contemporaries all saw them as evil–then Farrakhan is looked at that way, too.
