ESSAY: Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars: a Dissenting View, Prof. John Henrik Clarke, 1992

01 May 2024

Read John Henry Clarke’s response to Henry Louis Gates’s demagoguery as he maliciously deploys a critique “Black anti-semitism” to ingratiate himself with the white zionist power elite.

The malicious characterization of legitimate critiques of zionism as “anti-semitism” is nothing new. It is an old and effective strategy that works to not only silence the critique, but to besmirch and smear the reputation of the critic.

The “anti-semitism” charge has often been weaponized against those Black writers, scholars, and activists who recognize in zionism the devil of white supremacy, who see a fraternal cause in the Palestinian struggle, and who recognize that the road to Black freedom travels through the battle against zionism and white supremacy – and the liberation of Palestine. The charge has often been leveled at Black critics by Black critics, especially by those Black critics who believe that fealty to zionism gives them privileged access to (if not membership in) white supremacy.

Take Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for example. In 1992, Gates was given access to the New York Times, that staid, gray mouthpiece of zionism and peddler of IDF lies, to write a piece charging Black scholars of instigating a “new anti-semitism.” His editorial was titled “Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars.” It was a fear-mongering piece that not only attacked a range of Black intellectuals and Black politicos then popular in the Black community, but positioned Gates as the legitimate Black spokesman for the white power elite — hence, the placement in the New York Times (and not, for instance, in the Amsterdam News). Significantly, Gates used his powerful and prestigious position at Harvard to attack Black Studies scholars at CUNY’s Hunter College, including the venerable Prof. John Henrik Clarke.

Prof. Clarke was compelled to respond. Writing in the Amsterdam News, he chided Gates for his description of certain writers as “pseudo-scholars” and “demagogues,” while pointing out that there was in fact no, “recrudescence,” to use Gates’ word, of an anti-semitism that was specifically Black. Instead, anti-semitism in general was on the rise, including through the rhetoric of the Aryan Nation and the American Nazi Party, neither of whom Gates mentions. In fact, Prof. Clarke correctly wondered, “Why is it that a group of weak Black Americans are getting more attention from the Jews than these powerful White forces rising against them?” Prof. Clarke, nevertheless, points to a growing awareness of the participation, among Jews of European descent, in whitesupremacist domination of the world. But he was careful to state that the issue here is not about being Jewish, but about identifying as white. This is, in part, the basis of the current battles over the US university: the attempt to preserve it as a bastion of whitesupremacist and zionist elites against the challenges of those who seek social justice, restitution, and peace. Gates, ensconced at Harvard and embedded in the New York Times, has little to say about this.

We reprint Prof’s Clark’s response to Gates below.

Black Demagogues and Pseudo-scholars: a dissenting view

Prof. John Henrik Clarke

In reference to the New York Times op-ed of Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Monday, July 20, 1992), entitled “Black Demagogues and Pseudo Scholars,” I am raising the following questions.

At once I questioned the title of Professor Gates’s article. He should never refer to anyone as a demagogue unless he’s ready to call the names of the demagogues, singular or plural, and point out the nature of their demagoguery.

He should never refer to any scholar as being pseudo unless he is ready to name the scholar and prove the pseudo nature of his or her work. To disagree with a scholar does not make the scholar a demagogue.

Most of the old and new Black scholars asking for a total reconsideration of African history in particular, and world history in general, are using neglected documents by radical White scholars who are generally neglected by the White academic community.

In African history, I am referring to scholars like Gerald Massey and his work, Egypt, Light of the World (two volumes), The Book of the Beginnings (two volumes) and Natural Genesis (two volumes).

I am also referring to Gerald Massey’s greatest English disciple, Albert Churchward, whose book, The Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man, asks for a reconsideration of the role of people outside of Europe and their role in human development.

Your attention should also be called to the work, Anacalypsis (two volumes), by Godfrey Higgins, published in 1837. These books deal with the dispersions of African people throughout the world.

Many of these Black scholars whose work Gates questioned, were reading works by Whites in French, German and other languages that spoke positively about African American achievement long before Gates’s parents were born.

This school of Black scholars are neither demagogues nor pseudos; they are the forerunners of the present propagators of Afrocentricity. They know what Gates doesn’t seem to know: that African people are the most written about and the least understood people in the world.

If Gates had not read the works of the White pioneer scholars about the role of African people in world history, it stands to reasons that he has no understanding of the senior Black scholars such as Yosef ben-Yochannan, John G. Jackson, Chiekh Anta Diop, Jacob Carruthers, Chancellor Williams, Leo Hansberry and myself.

Gates’s reference to Black anti-Semitism is an exaggeration. A new Black awareness is causing Blacks, young and old, to question everything that has any influence on their lives. We are realizing that Jewish people have an influence on our lives far out of proportion to their numbers in the population.

I totally disagree with Gates that anti-Semitism among Whites is on the wane in the country. Quite the contrary, I think it is increasing in this country and in the world, and Black people are not the cause of it.

What you have in this new charge of Black anti-Semitism against Blacks is the most pathetic of all tragedies, a scapegoat looking for a scapegoat. Because of Black Americans’ reading or misreading of the Bible, we have always had a sentimental attachment to Jewish people, and to a large extent most of us still do.

During slavery we wanted to attach ourselves to a people who had escaped from bondage. So the Exodus story in the Bible became more real to us than to the Jewish people.

Right now in a large number of Black Baptist churches, you can get a large number of the congregation to shed real tears of sympathy over the three Hebrew boys in the fiery furnace. Most of them dare not question whether this is folklore or fact.

There are more than well over 300 organized White hate groups in the United States. I know of no overt attacks by the Jews being made on any of them. They have attacked Louis Farrakhan more than they have attacked the leaders of the Aryan Nation or the American Nazi Party.

Are the Jews in America looking for an easy victory or the truth? Black Americans have never been their enemy. And they, the Jews, have never been our friends unless it was to their convenience.

Neo-Nazism has fully re-emerged in Germany and in other states in Europe. These are people with a nation structure and armies. Why is it that a group of weak Black Americans are getting more attention from the Jews than these powerful White forces rising against them?

I’m sorry that Professor Cornel West saw first to make a statement about this false charge of Black anti-Semitism. I could agree with his statement if the statement were true. What Black people are realizing in this country, in the Caribbean Islands and in Africa is that the Jewish people of European descent are a part of the world apparatus of European control.

And in the matter of White control over the world, their position is no different than that of other Europeans. I am not saying that the Jews of Europe are more bent on world dominance than any other Europeans; I am saying that they are not radically different from other Europeans in this regard. Internal disputes between the Jews and other Europeans is a form of European domestic racism.

European racism has spent itself outside of Europe. During the Nazi regime in Germany, that racism turned inward on itself and created what is referred to as The Holocaust. This was a problem started in Europe by Europeans that should have been resolved in Europe by Europeans.

I have repeatedly said that Europeans are geniuses at draining the diseased pus of their political sores on the lands of other people. What is now being called anti-Semisism among a newly awakened Black intellectual class is that they are beginning to look at the people referred to as Jews as part of the totality of European world dominance.

We are not saying that the European who is a Jew is any more of an imperialist than any other of the Europeans, but that he is basically the same. We are not saying that the role of the Jews in the slave trade was any different from any other Euroepans, but that it was basically the same.

I do not choose to deal with Jesse F. Jackson’s opportunistic appearance at the World Jewish Congress and the statements he made. Jesse Jackson has his own agenda that is unrelated to the liberation movement of his own people. He was catering to his Jewish audiences for reasons unrelated to Black people and their liberation movements.

Black people are being increasingly conscious of people who exploit their community and hold them in contempt. We make no exceptions when these exploiters are non-European.

In referring to present-day anti-Semitism and the attempt to trace it to roots in Christianity, Gates shows his lack of understanding of the manifestation of Christianity among American Blacks and how that interpretation of this religion is part of their humanity. Their interpretation in no way relates to anti-Semitism.

I wonder if Gates would explain the words in the Negro spiritual:

“Go down Moses…
Tell ol’ Pharoah
To let my people go.”

Or the words:

“Deep river,
My home is over Jordan.”

This is African identification with the biblical people of the Hebrew faith. It would help if Gates would read a towering masterpiece in three volumes by James Fraser, The Folklore in the Old Testament and another contemporary book, Hebrew Myths, edited by Robert Graves and Raphael Patai.

I do not think that Gates completely read Michael Bradley’s The Iceman Inheritance before referring to it. Michael Bradley has very little to say about the Jews. The book in essence is about the rise of a certain kind of temperament that changed the world – the European personality.

This personality has shown little or no respect for civilization, cultures and ways of life that it did not create. Culture and people that the European did not understand were declared primitive.

In the last 500 years especially, European historians have inferred or said outright that the world waited in darkness for the Europeans to bring the light. In fact, the Europeans destroyed more civilization than they ever created. They destroyed civilizations that were already old before Europe was born.

Michael Bradley’s characterizing the Europeans as “Icemen” is not totally incorrect, if it is incorrect at all. I wrote the introduction to the new edition of this book, because I considered the book to be of some significance in explaining the origin of racism.

I did not say the book was a masterpiece or the greatest achievement in writing. It was good basic research and told honesty about Europeans’ beginnings and the impact of racism on the broader world. I have also written the introduction to another Bradley book that will be even more controversial. It is called Chosen People. It is published by the Third World Press (Chicag0).

Prof. John Henrik Clarke, “Black Demagogues and Pseudo-scholars: A Dissenting View,” New York Amsterdam News, 22 August, 1992.

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