Our skin is different and that is really the
only difference.
We share information.
We agree and we disagree.
At my table, we're not here to argue.
We're here to share information.
The brothers share information.
You're here to share information.
And the only way we're going to be
able to get to where we need to go as human beings
that we have to learn.
And then once we learn, we research information.
So at my table, we're not here to argue.
We're here to share information.
Can I interject something?
Hold on.
Did you finish what you had, Wesley?
Did you finish your talk?
Yes, I have to see.
OK, you, right?
I'd certainly like to share some information.
And whereas there are those who think
that everything is rooted in the Bible,
that's perfectly legitimate.
The term anti-Semitism doesn't appear in the Bible.
The term anti-Semitism was invented
by a German journalist by the name of Wilhelm Marz
who was coined in 1879.
The term was invented by somebody
who intended it to be discrimination against Jews.
There was no intention by the individual who coined
the phrase that would have anything to do
with anyone who wasn't Jewish.
I didn't say the word anti-Semitic was biblical.
I asked.
What I'm saying is that anti-Semitism
has a certain meaning.
And I used it in that context.
And I'll continue to use it.
I understand that, Sir.
But I really raised a question on the origin
of the word Semite.
And that's basically what I've begun my
discourse on.
And that is a biblical word.
And that word is in the book of Genesis.
And I perfectly went through Genesis 10:22 to
explain it.
OK, right here.
Can I say something?
One of the things that I've done with these
kind of programs
before, nothing kills the progress of this but attitude.
Thank you.
I think anything can be said with the right tone.
And you're trying to teach us, but it's the tone.
I have no problem learning anything
from anybody at this table.
But if your tone and your body language is off,
guess what?
Me and nobody else is going to receive it, OK?
So I'm just saying that we need to watch tones
and attitudes.
This is, I go back to what he's saying.
I think this is a very emotional thing for everybody
at this table.
One word I would like to come up with,
with the history and what he said,
the two gentlemen that talked about the collaboration
between blacks and Jews have been historic.
And we could not have gotten here.
We could not even have Barack Obama in presidency
had it not been the collaboration of all of us.
So I really think that attitudes, body language that
is defiant, needs to, I just, I can't receive it.
I get hard-headed and I can't hear.
OK, all right.
Can I respond to that?
No, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
Excuse me.
At my table, excuse me.
Excuse me, brother.
Excuse me.
At my table, we will not argue.
We will have dialogue.
We will share information.
You share your information.
I'm going to do it around the table. OK.
I think what brings us together and is a very
important thing
for me, a perfect example, late 80s.
And I was invited as a speaker to Highland Park
Country Club.
I'm an alcohol drug counselor, former.
I do other kinds of counseling now.
I was invited to be a speaker at the Highland
Park Country
Club for the alcohol and Drug counselor
for this statewide meeting.
Except until about the mid 80s, no Blacks and
no Jews.
And I had to refuse that invitation,
as much as I would have loved to have
the opportunity for my career.
I had to turn it down with a note that
said, when you let Blacks come into Highland
Park Country Club
and you let Jews come in, I'll come and speak
with you.
And until then, I'm sorry.
That's the stuff.
I know that what you're saying has
good fact and good stuff for people to learn.
And at the same time, what brings us together
is that we have some different experiences,
but we have some experiences in common from which
we can learn together.
Because what you're saying, Peter,
about the idea that with Obama being president
on the 20th,
they're going to come in front of your place, Elliot,
and start marching.
Come on, folks.
We need to be together.
It's more subtle, but it's here, and we need to
address it.
That's my own feeling.
OK, right here.
Reverend Slovonsky, and then I'll come to you.
I want to share the appreciation of the fact
that the Jewish community has certainly
aided and advanced in the cause of civil rights.
But I also think that we have to be
honest about the historical relationship
between African-American and Jews.
When I was growing up, Elliot, you
referred to the fact that you can be in a situation
and people not know you were Jewish because
of the color of your skin.
When I was growing up, the people
who oppressed our neighborhood were Jews
who had the businesses, Jews who had the money,
Jews who actually discriminated against African-Americans.
This is not to argue about the relationship
and the importance of the Jewish sowing into
the civil rights movement.
We know that.
But I think that we also have to be
honest about what that relationship has been.
And there are still a lot of African-Americans
who remember that type of discrimination.
So while we certainly lift up and remember and honor
the good part of the relationship,
we also have to realize that there is another
side of that.
The other thing that Les and I was talking
about when we came
in was the fact that there's a difference
between the Jewish
religion and Jewish people who were Jewish by
their culture
or by the fact that the real definition of Jew
is a person who was born of a Jewish mother.
I think we have to consider the fact
because it has to be unraveled if we're really
going to get to the point where we're addressing
the real root cause of why there is so much dichotomy
and so much difference in how we understand it.
OK, hold on a second.
Right here.
Exactly, we should talk about it.
OK, excuse me, brother.
I think the information you have,
we received a lot of intellectual.
I was interrupted, though.
No, no, no, no.
Excuse me.
You interrupted me.
I'm chairing this, so I hear what you're saying.
We'll come back.
And your point that you made, those are very
good points.
And I think it's some part of what he's talking
about, too.
So unraveling information.
So we'll talk about how we unravel information.
Not that we can do all the day.
So let's hear from here.
As we're talking about facts, I'd
like to mention what Reverend Stowe was just saying.
Unfortunately, as African-American people,
we have a history of being discriminated against
in this country by almost everybody.
And that includes some of our own.
The literature, the attitudes that we
hold toward each other are tremendously negative.
That's the first point.
So it isn't a matter of who.
Folks, we've caught Eric.
The second point I'd like to make
is the real clear information from biology
and from science that, believe it or not, folks,
race is an artificial construct.
It's a construct, but it's artificial.
We are so much like everybody else
with the intermingling and so forth
that it makes absolutely no sense.
It's only useful in this country because people
have acted
on an artificial construct.
The third point.
Brother Elliott.
Oh, fourth, Brother Peter, we're waiting for
the third book.
Those two books that we've heard about, Brother Elliott.
We need your book about the experience in Dallas.
I've been lying about writing that book for 30 years.
We'll wait for it, Brother.
I would put an early request on it
because that needs to be up, too.
But to Brother Elliott, what he said
about the dislike of the unlike.
One of the things we face, which is
a difference between African-American racism
and maybe anti-Semitism is that racism in this country
has trumped even the likeness of that class,
for instance.
Blacks, the middle class, have still
been perceived as blacks, not been
able to get the benefits of middle class.
The same thing with skin color.
Light-skinned blacks, who can't tell.
You can't tell my daughter.
They can't be told from one of my daughters.
They can't be told from overseas.
They can't be Cuban or Hispanic, and so forth.
But in America, it didn't matter.
If it was perceived, it could be trumped.
So I think that we need to just clarify those
kinds of facts.
But then I think we need to recognize that traditionally,
there are really some things we need to have a dialogue,
because our Jewish and black experiences have
been different.
For instance, on the issue of quotas,
which everyone in America is against,
the Jewish community, it was really limited.
That was something that limited opportunity for
Jewish people.
For African-Americans, that was something
which we never had, that was an access.
It was a real possible access, as it
has been in South Africa and some other places.
Really asking here, because it was never really
tried here.
So I'm suddenly saying that we need
to talk about maybe where we have a common ground,
or working out something.
Because it's clear that affirmative action
has the benefit of the rest, if anyone
has seen the papers the last few days about the set-asides
that was supposedly at the FW.
I'll just make one more point.
And then the other areas where I think
that we need to have a dialogue is
on the question of immigration, where clearly African-American
communities are hit hard by America's great welcome
of immigration.
And once again, for the Jewish committee,
this was a thing in their history where it was limited.
It was kept out, tied to a Holocaust experience.
We need to understand both of these things.
And then the final thing, which should be for dialogue,
I hope that we will have a dialogue,
is the question of, for African-American people,
just as for Jewish people, when you see hurt
around the world,
we tend to identify with the issues of justice
and hurt.
And so some policies of Israel, just
like policies of the United States,
that may be out of where there is condemnation
from around the world, we need to have a
discussion on this.
We need to recognize these kinds of things
and hopefully get a discussion and a dialogue that
will help to get understanding for everybody.
My point has long since passed.
I was just going to say, when the young man was talking
about all the changes of names, I
know the one thing that my mother always said
in our house
was that we were black people.
Because when people see me, whether I'm in Swaziland,
or if I'm in Japan, or if I'm in South Dallas,
I'm a black person because they see my pigmentation.
So I was never a Negro, never colored, never
any of that.
I was always black.
And I'm not African-American because I
have other bloodlines.
I could be called Native American
because I have that in my bloodline.
So I'm black.
But as far as my relationship with Jews,
again, it comes out of my understanding
of my mother's relationship with Jews
because most of her jobs came from Jewish people
as a young black woman here in Dallas.
So I have a great appreciation for them.
But the Jews that I know, as a person of my age,
I'm in my 50s, as Charles was talking about,
they don't seem to have the root of the Jews
that I knew that are my mother's age.
They don't have any affiliation to their
culture as Jews.
They identify themselves as white people.
A white person, to me, could potentially
be an enemy if you don't connect yourself to
any ethnicity,
if you don't say I'm Italian-American.