The Final Call

Abraham Foxman's 'Jews and Money' is not very funny

What's your opinion on this article?

(FinalCall.com) - In Jewish tradition, gifts given on the sixth day of the recently passed Hanukkah holiday should reflect “solidarity or the spirit of unity.” But neither solidarity nor unity has ever been the goal or mission of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL).

Louis B. Mayer

On Day Six of this Hanukkah, Foxman issued a press release to promote his new book “Jews & Money” (See FinalCall.com: “Jews and Money: But Foxman Forgot the Blacks!” ) which he claims “looks at some the [sic] modern-day purveyors of anti-Semitic stereotypes including Louis Farrakhan … and others who have dabbled in notions about Jews and money ....”

First, Abraham Foxman carries on a long ADL tradition of intimidating the negro world into believing the fairytale that the White-skinned Jews have been the greatest friends that Blacks ever had. He has skillfully used this threadbare subterfuge to direct the affairs of the negro race the very same way J. Edgar Hoover used to. But Foxman ought not use Jewish holidays to thrust his crooked caucasian finger in the direction of the greatest leader of our time, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.

Let's scratch the surface of that shadowy Jewish fraternity behind Foxman's ADL known as B'nai B'rith (founded in 1843 by 12 German Jews) to examine its alleged history of “friendship” with Black people. Let's forget the fact that its earliest members were owners of and investors in Black slaves; and let's ignore the fact that the Lincoln administration considered them to be a “disloyal organization” that “help[ed] the traitors.” And let us put aside for a moment that B'nai B'rith leaders publicly ridiculed the struggles of Blacks in Jewish newspapers. Instead, let us look a little later in time at the era when Black leaders like Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois were struggling to gain some dignity and respect for Black people. Foxman's own organization was spreading some of the most wretched, anti-Black stereotypes imaginable. The year 1925 was one of the most perilous and violent years for American Blacks, but the B'nai B'rith Magazine was printing in its pages racist “jokes,” including this mockery of Black intelligence the editors titled “Darktown” [read carefully; this is exactly how they printed it]:

Stepin Fetchit

Cicero: Whoffo'? Nigguh, who do yo' calkerate yo' is?

Rastus: Yo' nigguh! mah family am quality folks an' ahm a pusson of rank.

Cicero: Huh! ah'll have yo' triflin', Rastus, to know that ah'm ranker than you is.

And here B'nai B'rith Magazine pushes the idea of Black thievery:

Mose: Dat's a purty shirt you has on, Rastus, How many yards does it take for one ob dem shirts?

Rastus: What you all talking about, Nigger? I done got three like them in one yard last night.

And this mockery of Black Christian preachers:

A colored preacher who was explaining the story of creation to his congregation told them that the Lord made man out of mud and stood him up against a picket fence to dry.

And then a colored brother in the back pew got up and asked: “Ef Adam wuz de fust man, den who made dat picket fence?”

Whereupon the old preacher declared: “Hit's jest such questions as dat dat ruins religion!”

“Nigguh”!? “Nigger”?! “Rastus”?! “Darktown”?! The meticulous depiction of “negro dialect” for Jewish amusement?! Believe it or not, at this very same time the ADL was on a campaign to ban “objectionable and vulgar” anti-Semitic slurs like “kike” in American newspapers, even while “nigger,” “coon,” “pickaninny,” and “darky” appeared in its own Jewish magazine.

These were not isolated Jewish racial insults. The entire field of blackface minstrelsy was an almost entirely Jewish enterprise, and the images coming out of Hollywood were consistently horrible to Black Americans. Jewish financial and promotional investment in notoriously racist films like “Birth of a Nation,” which became the main recruiting tool of the Ku Klux Klan, was substantial. Legendary Jewish movie mogul Louis B. Mayer made so much profit on “Birth of a Nation” that he started the legendary MGM studio—which continued to spread more anti-Black stereotypes for years to come! Facts like these, by the way, will not be found in Abe Foxman's book, “Jews & Money.” He doesn't have the courage to face up to how Jewish wealth was actually created in America.

And the ADL leadership was perfectly aware of the deleterious effects of these demeaning racial images. The ADL's own founding charter of 1913 recognizes this fact: “[A] tendency has manifested itself in American life toward the caricaturing and defaming of Jews on the stage, in moving pictures. The effect of this on the unthinking public has been to create an untrue and injurious impression of an entire people and to expose the Jew to undeserved contempt, and ridicule ....”

Neal Gabler wrote in his book “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews invented Hollywood,” “What is amazing is the extent to which …the Hollywood Jews created a powerful cluster of images and ideas-so powerful that, in a sense, they colonized the American imagination ….Ultimately, American values came to be defined largely by the movies the Jews made.” Blacks have suffered endlessly as the butt of these Jewish-manufactured images; indeed, these racist B'nai B'rith “caricatures” have been incessantly recycled to the point that they are now the foundation of American popular entertainment.

The very images of the criminal negro, the black rapist, the chicken thief, the fat mammy, the cunning whore, the shiftless, dull, listless and inferior negro have always been the stock-in-trade of our “Jewish friends” in the so-called entertainment industry. Hollywood, said screenwriter Dalton Trumbo,

“[made] tarts of the Negro's daughters, crap shooters of his sons, obsequious Uncle Toms of his fathers, superstitious and grotesque crones of his mothers, strutting peacocks of his successful men, psalm-singing mountebanks of his priests, and Barnum and Bailey side-shows of his religion.”

The noted actor/director Rob Reiner was clear about who promoted these images when he said that Hollywood is “all run by Jews, even Disney…” Is it any wonder why White Gentile Americans who imbibed these hateful images came to hold an “untrue and injurious impression of an entire people”? [The Final Call discussed how these racist images strategically benefit Jews in “Jews Scapegoating Blacks: A Long History of Hate.”]

But it gets worse. In that same hilarious year of B'nai B'rith's “darky” humor—1925—fifty-one Black human beings met their gruesome end at the hands of hooded white American mobs by fire, by bullet, knife, or rope. Not a single mention did the ADL's Jewish magazine make of these crimes against Black men, women, and children. That same year the NAACP's Crisis Magazine with W.E.B. Du Bois as its editor was clearly distressed at this Jewish mockery and indifference to lynching. It confronted this ugly aspect of the Black–Jewish relationship and asked, “IS THE JEW A FRIEND OF THE NEGRO?” Their answer was revealing and historically accurate: “The [Jews] may hate with less intensity, but they are by no means united in support of the Negro ….

The successful Jewish merchant does not want the Negro as his neighbor. He will move just as speedily as his White, non-Jewish acquaintance from a residential district invaded by black men...”

In that same year—1925— 40,000 hooded and robed Ku Klux Klansmen, many of whom were probably Jewish, paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in the “greatest public demonstration in the history of the Klan.” As B'nai B'rith's public relations director proudly explained, “The manufacturers of the ubiquitous Klan night-gown have frequently been Jews.” Also in 1925, and amidst the racial murders all around them, Atlanta Jews held a fundraiser with two Klansmen attending as “guests of honor.” One Jewish author wrote that in Birmingham, Alabama the German Jews got along better with KKK members than with their own Eastern European brethren! Still laughing Mr. Foxman?

No, Abraham Foxman ought to leave Our Minister's name out of his befouled mouth lest more of this hateful but hidden Jewish history spills into the Black public. The Minister's release of two books, “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” and “Jews Selling Blacks,” should have put these unclean and historically hateful birds on notice that Jewish people will no longer freely insult Our Minister and Our Nation. And those timid negroes who like running with Mr. Foxman and his frat boys ought to reassess who they call friends, and who they call enemies. If the words of our great Brother Minister are too much for their delicate yassir-boss ears, maybe the words of Jesus Christ in John 8:31-59 are more agreeable. In truth, they are identical.

(Tingba Muhammad is a citizen of the Nation of Islam. For more information on this topic, visit http://www.BlacksandJews.com and join the conversation @ http://twitter.com/blacksandjews.)