The Million Man March came about a half million short in terms of its explicitly stated goal, yet still it was an outstanding success. Not a success for America, nor Americans. Not a success for African Americans, nor even African American men. It was a success for Louis Farrakhan and for other like minded anti-Semites.

Farrakhan was on good behavior Monday. It was not anything like when he apologized for the tone in which Khalid Abdul Muhammad justified Nazi Germany’s extermination of Jews. There were no one-hour explanations of his non-anti-Semite status employing irrelevant semantic distinctions based on the definition of a “Semite.”

Speaking in front of more people than anyone reading this is likely to speak to during their entire life, Farrakhan seemed almost respectable.

This is, nonetheless, the same man who refused to repudiate the message delivered by Khalid Abdul Muhammad at Kean College. The same man that has mocked the suffering of Jews by saying, “You can’t never say ‘never again’ to God, because when He puts you in the oven you’re there forever.” The same man whose heretical Islamic sect (orthodox Islam does not recognize any prophets after Muhammad) is responsible for contriving and publishing anti-Semitic propaganda asserting that Jews were the originators and the backbone of the practice of shipping slaves from Africa to the Americas.

This part of Farrakhan’s message is simple: he is not at all afraid to relight the ovens of Auschwitz.

According to Clinton we need to separate the questionable “messenger” from the good “message.” What, however, is actually the message which underlies the Million Man March. It seems to be that there are at least a half a million African American men who are willing to support, or at least tolerate, anti-Semitism.

All discussions of the Million Man March must be placed within the context of the growth of anti-Semitism within the African American community. Several years ago, National Public Radio reported the results of a survey which indicated that African Americans are twice as likely as whites to have negative feelings about Jewish people. Evidence also points to the fact that anti-Semitism is growing on college campuses among young, well educated African Americans.

Within the past few years, a number of African American entertainers have shown a lack of sensitivity to Jewish people. The lyrics of rap musician Ice Cube have attacked Jews and Koreans, while other rap musicians simply regurgitated Farrakhan’s dangerous and absurd views. Last year talk show host Arsenio Hall gave Farrakhan an entire show to bring his views to a larger public and peddle the Nation of Islam book, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. Let’s not forget Whoopi Goldberg’s recipe for “Jewish American Princess” chicken, the lyrics of Michael Jackson’s most recent album and the subtle anti-Semitism of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”

In addition, the failure of leaders in the African American community to take a stand against anti-Semitism is particularly distressing. As A.M. Rosenthal wrote in an op-ed published last year in the New York Times:

“…the general silence of the leadership about rising black anti-Semitism helps make anti-Semitism respectable, pain-free and profitable.”

The African American community here in the United States has a problem with anti-Semitism. This is not to say the same problem does not exist in the white community or that there are not problems within the white and Jewish communities regarding racism toward African Americans. This is also not to say that all African Americans hold prejudices against Jews or that no African American organizations are willing to stand up to the Nation of Islam. It simply means that there is a problem and that African Americans should be acting to solve it. Heeding Farrakhan’s call to march on Washington does nothing to solve this problem, and probably does a great deal to augment it.

African Americans should remember the insight made by Frederick Douglass in his first autobiography regarding the affects of slavery upon the slave holder. Oppression can often be as dehumanizing to the oppressor as to the oppressed. Anti-Semitism is a disease attacking the health of any community within which it exists. Regardless of what was printed for headlines yesterday, following a person like Farrakhan harms the African American community more than it heals it.

Tyler Wayne Roach is a senior in philosophy, English and religious studies from Des Moines.