Don't Fight Fire With Fire

The decision by the Black Students Association (BSA) to sponsor Wellesley Professor Tony Martin's speech at Harvard on the topic of racism and The Bell Curve was a highly irresponsible and blatantly offensive action.

Martin, who teachers Africana studies, is a well-known anti-Semite who claims that Jews are members of a 2000-year-old conspiracy against Africans. He is also the author of The Jewish Onslaught, a book which charges Jews with organizing a systematic campaign of racism against Blacks.

His speech, entitled, "The Bell Curve in Historical Context," was little more than a diatribe which sought to label Jews as the sole progenitors of racism-and later the slave trade-in Europe. The basis of his argument consisted of a portion of the Babylonian Talmud, a 2,000-year-old collection of religious writings, which contain a myth that describes Africans as a cursed people who are doomed to a history of servitude.

Martin then linked the slave trade to the Talmud by asserting a 1,500-year-old "Jewish monopoly" on racist ideas that began with the Talmud and continued until the advent of Black slavery. According to Martin, the Jewish people carefully nurtured these racist ideas for a millennium and a half until the rest of Europe decided to join in.

BSA President Kristen M. Clarke '97 said after the speech "Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed Black intellectual who bases his information on indisputable fact." She's right. Martin is intelligent, he is well versed and he does base his claims, loosely, on fact. The Talmud does contain some racism. And racism against Blacks has been rampant in Europe for at least 500 years.

But these facts are not related. Martin is so disturbing because he attempts to pull out of thin air a direct, causal relationship with his ridiculous rhetorical concept of a "Jewish monopoly."

Racism is a phenomenon, which has existed since the beginning of time and throughout the world. To say that Jews are responsible for the ills of Blacks today is a venomous and thoroughly unfounded charge, with implications of conspiracy that echo The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Martin is a smooth, persuasive and well-practiced anti-Semite who pursues his ends for the same political reasons many in the past have persecuted the Jews-we make convenient scapegoats. When challenged, he asserts that he is not an anti-Semite, but merely an oppressed truth-teller. His version of the truth however, is manufactured from lies and half-truths and falls apart under close scrutiny.

In his Harvard speech, he condemned those who believe "that anyone who criticizes a Jew is ipso facto an anti-Semite." I agree. The essential difference here is that Martin is not criticizing a Jew, or even a number of Jews. He is criticizing Jews as a whole, the entire Jewish people. This is the essence of bigotry. To listen to Martin, one gets impression that merely to be Jewish is to be guilty of a crime against the Black race. This collectivization of guilt is an abhorrent concept, which must be combated.

In practical terms, Martin was a poor choice to carry out the necessary task of debunking The Bell Curve While he made some good points, other statements of his belied his knowledge of the book, and he even admitted to the audience at one point his ignorance regarding basic population statistics, the underpinning of The Bell Curve's argument.

I can name many scholars off the top of my head who would have done a better job of carrying out the ostensible purpose of the event, and would have done so without spewing bigotry: Henry Louis Gates, Stephen Jay Gould, Anthony Appiah, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Cornel West and Martin Kilson, to name a few.

It is the ultimate hypocrisy for Martin to stand around and label The Bell Curve as pseudo-science when his own teachings and research are the essence of prejudice masquerading as scholarship.

Debunking this book is vital, but the only way to do so is in an honest, informed, intellectual manner. The BSA has severly undermined its moral credibility by inviting a bigot to fight racism. I sincerely hope this was merely bad judgment on their part and not an indication that they condone his particular brand of hate.