Louis Farrakhan [View all]

When I was in my 20's and 30's, going to hear Louis Farrakhan speak was a big deal. His was the voice of power and possibility. And the voice of the worst anti-semitism in our community. It never occurred to me that I was allowing his vitriol to affect me. That a part of me thought that some of what he was saying might be true, that maybe there was a conspiracy, that maybe the Jews financed the slave trade, that maybe Jews controlled the media.

With the attack on the synagogue today, I am re-thinking the reality of my own anti-Semitism. And it's there. Farrakhan planted seeds of hatred and intolerance, and I did not reject them. I did not reject HIM.

I remember when Obama distanced himself from his preacher. I did not understand it at the time. But I see it now. If you have to put someone else down in order to build up your people, something is wrong. If you have to put whites down in order to build blacks up, something is wrong. If you have to put Jews down in order to build blacks up, something is wrong. Not all whites are racist. Not all Jews are rich, and they definitely don't control everything.

Today, I am rejecting Louis Farrakhan. It is very hard, and very necessary. I think he has probably done a lot of damage. i have no idea how many people like me heard his ugliness, and said "there may be a grain of truth", instead of rejecting it, recognizing it as twisted and ugly and WRONG.

Maybe I am the only one here that ever looked up to Farrakhan. If so, more power to you all for rejecting him. But if you got sucked in the way I did, please examine whether you could have been poisoned.