A Discussion: Louis Farrakhan and the "Million Man March"

October 17, 1995, 23:00 ET

A Discussion: Louis Farrakhan and the "Million Man March"

"Charlie Rose," broadcast at 11:00 pm ET, October 17, 1995

Host: Charlie Rose. Guests: Stanley Crouch, Author; Errol McDonald, VP, Exec. Editor, Pantheon Books; Anna Deveare Smith, Actress/Playwright. Guests give their views on the question of how the million man march has positioned Louis Farrakhan as a significant political figure and their take on what the march means.

Charlie Rose: The reverberations from yesterday's million man march on Washington may be felt for years to come. What will be the historical impact of the march? Will Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan become the prominent voice in the African-American community? And how should white America react to yesterday's march? Joining me now are actor/playwright Anna Deveare Smith, cultural critic Stanley Crouch, and Pantheon executive editor, Errol McDonald. I'm pleased to have each of them here to look at this and to consider what the future might be.

I begin with Anna Deveare Smith. Anna Deveare Smith, you were there yesterday.

Anna Deveare Smith, Actress/Playwright: Yes, I was.

Charlie Rose: I thought this was an all-male do.

Anna Deveare Smith:: Well, I had press credentials, and I'm working on a, a play and a book about Washington, about the campaign, about the relationship of the press to the President.

Charlie Rose: Yeah.

Anna Deveare Smith:: And I thought it would be very important to see this because it may obviously have something to do with how race is talked about in the campaign. So I went.

Charlie Rose: And tell me what you saw and what you felt, and, and what your impressions are of what happened.

Anna Deveare Smith:: I think it was history, obviously - the grandeur of the Capitol, the beauty of the day, the number of people, the transformation from the night before. I sort of got downtown the night before around one in the morning, and I thought it was just going to be a great big fraternity party because of the way, you know, people were on the street, men on the street. But it changed, and the next day it really was something very serious. And I think that the words I heard over and over again from people that I talked to and also from the formal speakers were 'unity,' 'oneness,' and 'wholeness.' And so I'm thinking about what those mean, what that's a cry for in terms of what the, the men who came seemed to be there for, seemed to be about.

Charlie Rose: Most of the conversation has been about Louis Farrakhan.

Anna Deveare Smith:: Yes.

Charlie Rose: But what you have just said had nothing to do with Louis Farrakhan and everything to do with who you saw and talked to-

Anna Deveare Smith:: Well, I think it's ver-

Charlie Rose: -on the Mall.

Anna Deveare Smith:: It's very important, that we can't- you know, for example, a lot of what I've seen on television and read, you know, since yesterday, between the- between now and then is that- a desire to separate the message from the messenger. And what I haven't seen discussed is that, as the afternoon moved on, there were many many men in that crowd who started to chant ' Farrakhan, Farrakhan, Farrakhan,' and so I think there's a degree to which the particular messenger is important.

Charlie Rose: Errol, Henry- Skip Gates, Henry Louis Gates had an interesting piece in The New Yorker magazine, and he talked to you both in terms of reaction to Simpson and also looking ahead, when he wrote that, to the million man march. Having witnessed it yesterday - I don't know. Were you there or not?

Errol McDonald, VP, Exec. Editor, Pantheon Books: No, I was not.

Charlie Rose: Yeah. Having witnessed what happened from television, tell me what you thou- what you thought, what you felt.

Errol McDonald: First of all, if you put the- what was the bizarre patriarchal bonding and the warm glow of sentimentality occasioned by that in the cold, harsh light of reality, this three M on the M, this million man march on the Mall was for me a profoundly poignant and maddeningly contradictory event, if only because on the one hand, self-reliance was being championed, yet there was something distinct about the march that suggested that it was a march for something - namely, perhaps, the liberal agenda as usual. People were there beseeching something.

Secondly, it seemed to me that even as certain white racist stereotypes were being decried, the celebrants were there confirming those stereotypes - namely, that black men are for the most part criminal, deviant, irresponsible - in short, pathological; in short, of being in need of some serious atonement for their guilt.

Sec- thirdly, I feel that there was something disturbing about the religious transcendental rhetoric that seemed to me to occlude the ugly practicalities of the American democratic process - in short, I had a few problems with the thing.

Charlie Rose: All right. We'll come back to that. Stanley, I read your column this morning. You don't think much of the Nation of Islam, nor do you think Louis Farrakhan should be a spokesperson for African-Americans-

Stanley Crouch, Author: Oh, well, he-

Charlie Rose: -at this time?

Stanley Crouch: Yeah, but he's not really that anyway. I mean, see the, the appeal that, that- if you will, that Farrakhan has it seems to me is connected to a number of things that have resulted in various forms of bad faith in different camps on the American scene, at least from- beginning, say, with the killing of Kennedy, with the riots of the middle '60s, with the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Watergate - all of those things that created certain, certain forms of bad faith in the American community at large.

The fundamental problem that I have with, with something of this sort is the constant reiteration of the idea that somehow black Americans constitute a colony within the United States, which it seems to me is the, is the West Indian black power phenomenon that was projected by the- most, most emphatic- well, most successfully by Stokely Carmichael, which ends up with kind of a, a, a color-coded workers of the world unite - that is, that all people who are black are somehow connected, black Americans, people in the West Indies, South America, Africa, et cetera. And what do we have in common? We have the problem with, with Western civilization and the white man in common.

And I think that's- see, see, for, for black Americans, I mean, a great deal of what you are is the result of black Americans. You know what I mean? I mean, black Americans, white- black Americans are part and parcel of what we mean when we say 'American,' and so the fact that people- and, and you know, and Carl Jung said when he came here in the '20s, he said that white men walk like Negroes, they talk like Negroes, and they laugh like Negroes. Now, Jung was around a lot of Europeans, so he would- if he'd have seen you, he would have seen the, the relationship that you have to black Americans.

Now, when, when all of this gets set aside, this interwoven American culture gets set aside to, to make it seem as though black people are some separate unit in the colony known as ghetto, I think that we're going, we're going down a path that, that is, is, is absolutely inaccurate in terms of who black Americans are.

Charlie Rose: Let me just turn to Louis Farrakhan then. Roll the tape. Here is one small excerpt from his two-hour address to that crowd yesterday.

[film clip of the million man march, October 16, 1995]

LOUIS FARRAKHAN: And whenever a nation is involved in sin to the point that God intends to judge and destroy that nation, he always sends someone to make that nation of people know their sins, to reflect on it, to acknowledge, to confess, to repent, and to atone that they might find forgiveness with God. America, O! America. This great city of Washington is like Jerusalem, and the Bible says 'Jerusalem, O! Jerusalem. You that stoneth and killeth the prophets of God.' Right from this beautiful Capitol and from the beautiful White House have come commands to kill the prophets. Garvey's trouble came from this house. Martin Luther King's trouble came from this house. Malcolm's trouble came from this house. W.E.B. Du Bois' trouble came from this house, and from this house you stoned and killed the prophets of God that would have liberated black people, liberated America. But I stand here today knowing, knowing that you are angry that my people have validated me. I don't need you to validate me.

Charlie Rose: Errol.

Errol McDonald: With all due respect, it seems to me that Minister Farrakhan's - the excerpt that we've just seen was informed by a fair amount of confusion. He seemed to be talking about two nations: on the one hand, he talked about a nation needing to atone for its guilt, presumably America, but I didn't see anybody out- anybody else out there atoning for anything yesterday, so presumably, he was talking about one nation, one nation under Farrakhan, namely a black nation, and a black nation stripped down to black males atoning for what he perceives as their sins and their guilt. And-

Stanley Crouch: Well, that's what- Excuse me.

Errol McDonald: Go ahead.

Stanley Crouch: Well, you know, Louis Farrakhan was then talking about his favorite subject, which is Louis Farrakhan. See, the thing is, when you go to hear Louis Farrakhan, whatever the subject is, a great deal of, of the speech is going to be about Louis Farrakhan - how important he is, how he's been chosen of God, et cetera, et cetera.

Charlie Rose: Yeah, but-

Stanley Crouch: See, the-

Charlie Rose: -before you say that, could anybody else have brought 400,000 to a million people to the Mall-

Stanley Crouch: Well, you-

Charlie Rose: -on-

Stanley Crouch: Well you see, this- see, see, see it's- see, this is the most interesting element of it. See, there was, there was an enormous network was brought together, which was primarily manned by- or should we say today personned by the, the-

Anna Deveare Smith:: It was manned.

Stanley Crouch: -the black middle class. The black middle class. I mean, but it was, it was by the black middle class. I mean, fraternities, sororities, radio stations, newspapers, it's churches, et cetera.

Charlie Rose: So a kind of ecumenical organization came together to produce 400,000 to a million-

Stanley Crouch: Because-

Charlie Rose: -people-

Stanley Crouch: -and see, I think, I-

Charlie Rose: Because the cause was that important to those organizations who supported Farrakhan.

Stanley Crouch: Well, you see, but you've also got this other thing that happens, that always happens to groups in this country, whether they're Jewish or Irish or whatever. When people become successful, when they move away from the old neighborhood, of- oftentimes, they can be manipulated by some kind of cause that's supposed to be in the interests of the group because they're always accused of either hating their background or abandoning it, running away from it. One of the things that was in The Times today that was interesting was these guys sitting together. And there were these successful black guys and less successful black guys, and the successful guys were saying, 'We're all the same. We all feel the same pain, we blah, blah, blah, blah.' Because you know, that's what often happens. And see, the most interesting thing is that that network of people who quite realistically would have rejected Malcolm X 30 years ago have now embraced the idea that there is this, this, this collective fate, as Anna was saying earlier, that transcends all of this. And that was why people were able to say, you know, 'It's not about Farrakhan, it's about us coming together.' And you see- in other words, the Nation of Islam does not have the machinery to do what was done. Had those people, had all those black people on radio stations and all of that not bought it.

Charlie Rose: Taking into context and consideration everything Stanley just said, how does this change the role of Louis Farrakhan in race and its discussion in America?

Anna Deveare Smith:: We don't know yet. I mean, I'm extremely interested to see what's going to come from women, right? You know, from black women-

Charlie Rose: Who were not there yesterday.

Anna Deveare Smith:: -because we were not allowed to be there. We were not invited, and it may be that what comes from black women will be something that's not just black, Stanley, to get to the point you were talking about before. So I don't know. But I wanted to say something that I observed about the speech, which is that I've been listening over time to great speeches, to understand how they tell us something about our, our country, other than the words that they are. And a frame of reference for me has always been FDR's fireside chats, which sound like waltzes. I mean, I used to take them into my classrooms, and people would, would dance to them, right. And once Studs Terkel and I were talking about them on his-

Charlie Rose: Get the rhythm.

Anna Deveare Smith:: -show and we started, you know, kind of waltzing, 'I'm dreaming of a nation-' You know, Studs could really just get into it. And what we had here was one consistent progression that was not interrupted, almost like sailing. And I'm wondering if that's related to anything that you were saying. It was like sailing until it took off and became passionate. But I didn't see anything that was about two things, or three things, you know.

Charlie Rose: Errol? What did you-

Errol McDonald: I, I mean, I found the speech rambling, I'm sorry to say. I mean, I think that-

Stanley Crouch: Don't have to be sorry. It was rambling. He always rambles.

Errol McDonald: -it was, for the most part, two and a half hours of platitudinal incoherence.

Charlie Rose: Well, but Bill Bennett on this program last night said that Farrakhan has risen to have a place at the table now for any consideration of race in America because of what happened yesterday and the speech that he made, and, and the credit that he seemed to be given-

Errol McDonald: Well, I would have to-

Charlie Rose: -but notwithstanding all the editorial comment today-

Errol McDonald: I would-

Charlie Rose: -in The New York Times and other places.

Errol McDonald: I would have to imagine him as being electable for office, and I simply don't see that happening any time soon because I think that for him to have practical effects on the fate of so-called black America, he has to be in a position to make changes. He simply is not.

Anna Deveare Smith:: At the same time, something that kept being reiterated for all those hours, you know, not - before four o'clock when, when Farrakhan got there - which I think is extremely important is the importance that people vote, and there were voting- places that people could register to vote sprinkled throughout the grounds. I think that's significant.

Stanley Crouch: Oh, yeah, but you see the other thing, too, is you see, one- one of the reasons why Louis Farrakhan is empowered is because of the paternal, contemptuous attitude toward Negroes had by white media, that is white media, that is-

Charlie Rose: Paternal what?

Stanley Crouch: Paternal condescending attitude. Because, look, most of the time, Charles, when I talk to people, they don't even know what the Nation of Islam is about. I'm talking about people in media, on newspapers and stuff. They haven't read Elijah Muhammad's message to the black man, they haven't read- they, they don't even remember in Malcolm X's autobiography, if they read it, the descriptions of, of the Nation of Islam's theology. All of this stuff, they just kind of- you know, somebody said, 'He said something about Jews, didn't he?' and they kind of go like that.

And so what I'm saying-

Anna Deveare Smith:: Well-

Stanley Crouch: -is this. Look, if there was any white guy-

Anna Deveare Smith:: That's-

Stanley Crouch: Look, if there was any powerhouse white supremist, right, and he had a theology that said, 'All people other than people of European descent were invented by a mad European 6,000 years ago on an island, right, and they were a race of devils that first walked on all fours and made it with dogs,' believe me, that would be part of the discussion. I'm amazed at how this guy can sail by and nobody ever- I, I see him get interviewed by all these white reporters. They never ask him anything basic to his, as they say, poor beliefs.

Anna Deveare Smith:: I think you're saying something-

Charlie Rose: Yeah.

Anna Deveare Smith:: -that is absolutely crucial about the conversation about race in general-

Stanley Crouch: Yeah.

Anna Deveare Smith:: -which is it is extremely important that the press, educators, artists, all of us do not diminish people to a sliver.

Stanley Crouch: Right.

Anna Deveare Smith:: Right? So that what you're telling us is that we, we haven't seen the full man. The press hasn't been interested in the full man, and it would probably serve us well to see the full man, and then we don't have so many surprises.

Errol McDonald: Skip Gates had a good line in that piece, which was that Minister Farrakhan's - Mi- Minister Farrakhan's charade suggests black entertainment at its best, and I do believe that a celebrity is in large measure determined by the amount of coverage he receives in the white press. I do believe that were it not for these constant reports of his misbehavior, few people would be reckoning with him as they are today.

Stanley Crouch: Well, that's-

Charlie Rose: All right. Wait a minute. We wouldn't be reckoning with him if there had not been so many reports in the media of his antisemitism or what? That kinds of thing and what he says-

Errol McDonald: He, he has become-

Charlie Rose: -about all of this, where he comes-

Errol McDonald: He has become-

Charlie Rose: -and reflects some of the theology or ideology that, that I have certainly read about and now is reinforced by your column this morning.

Errol McDonald: He has become a hugely colorful figure on the American political landscape and as a result has come out-

Charlie Rose: But he is filing up the stadia with black Americans from one end of this country to the other.

Errol McDonald: To the degree-

Charlie Rose: Am I right?

Errol McDonald: To the degree that he exploits the sheer despair and misery of exploited people.

Stanley Crouch: But also- but you know-

Anna Deveare Smith:: Also there-

Stanley Crouch: -resentment and alientation are two commodities that have become very successful-

Charlie Rose: Yeah.

Stanley Crouch: -in America.

Charlie Rose: Right.

Stanley Crouch: I mean, they sell it in hard rock, they sell in in gangsta rap, they it in these sitcoms where the kids are always leering at their parents. I mean, that's a, that's an American commodity.

Charlie Rose: This rebellion and, and-

Stanley Crouch: Yeah. Yeah, and see-

Charlie Rose: -alienation. What?

Anna Deveare Smith:: He's an outlaw.

Stanley Crouch: Yeah. And-

Anna Deveare Smith:: He's been cast as an outlaw-

Stanley Crouch: Right.

Anna Deveare Smith:: -so he's going to, of course, attract a lot of people who have been rejected by the mainstream because it's hot to be an outlaw.

Stanley Crouch: Plus Americans love to see somebody go to pow- people in power. And he always says that, 'They say about me what they want to say. Why, Farrakhan is not afraid to tell the truth. Truth may be harmful [?], but-' and he, you know, so he always is celebrating himself for being this guy whom the white people cannot intimidate. They can't shut him up. But in fact, the very nature of the speech he gave yesterday proves how effectively they have shut him up because the- because the Nation of Islam thought- in the raw [?] was served up on Sunday night by Carlege Mohammed [?], who went right into the regular devils-

Charlie Rose: Right, right. Right.

Stanley Crouch: -blah, blah, blah. Separate; don't integrate, et cetera.

Charlie Rose: In a speech he made in Washington or somewhere.

Stanley Crouch: But see, what he was trying to do here was to, was, was to give a speech that would not arm the opposition with the kind of sound bites [?] which could be used to say, 'Well, this is who this guy is.' So when you-all come around and attack him next time, he'll say, ' Farrakhan was seen all over the world by millions, maybe billions of people.'

Charlie Rose: On CNN-

Stanley Crouch: Find in that speech anything that's antisemitic, that's anti-woman, that's anti-Christian. Because what did he say? I'm against black supremacy, I'm against white supremacy. I'm pro-women, I'm pro Jew - go to joined a synagogue, join a church, join a mosque. I mean, but that's not- but see, that's a mask, and what I'm saying is the, the heat that has come down on him whenever he's been caught in the media saying what he really thinks. He spent two hours yesterday to prove that I'm not that guy. So that the innocent- so, so say the borderline person out there, who's not going to read the- their material, either, may say, 'Well, you know, I was looking. Those Muslim guys - you know, maybe I don't like bow ties that much, but those guys, they're really, they're really nice. They're bad, aren't they. I mean, they're just trying to say 'Pull yourself up.'

Charlie Rose: Self-esteem.

Stanley Crouch: 'Be clean-cut guy, believe in God and vote!'

Charlie Rose: Get your act together.

Stanley Crouch: Yeah.

Charlie Rose: Errol. We've got to go in-

Errol McDonald: I think I see, I think I see Minister Farrakhan and gangsta rap as basically obverses of each other. I believe that both of them thrive on this myth of the outlaw in America, and I think that they're celebrated by the media for that reason, and they have had a certain kind of deleterious effect on the culture as a result. I think they're poisonous.

Anna Deveare Smith:: I was just going to say outlaws and tricksters. And the trickster myth has been a part of an Amer- African-American culture since we've been here.

Charlie Rose: Okay.

Stanley Crouch: It'll be all right, Charles. Look here. Like it, like it always is, we'll get through it. And see, the one thing about a guy like Farrakhan, if you bring him to the table, right, what he's going to do is he's going to, he's going to snatch the tablecloth and try to do something that he saw, saw somebody do before, and when he snatches the tablecloth, everything's going to go on the floor and people will go, 'Oh.' They'll see who he really is. See, because he can't suppress being who he is, and that's the great thing that we'll all get out of this is some, some, somewhere along the road, you- somebody else is going to be interviewing him, and, and, and the mask is that- that wax masque. He's going to get so angry his face is going to get so hot that that wax mask of congeniality is going to melt right in front of people, and they're going to see who he is.

Errol McDonald: So let's not have a tablecloth.

Stanley Crouch: No, we'll be all right. Americans always going to bring it off.

Charlie Rose: Thank you-

Anna Deveare Smith:: Thank you.

Charlie Rose: -Anna. Thank you, Errol. Stay with me one second. Thank you, Stanley.

We'll be right back. Stay with us. Mort Zuckerman is here. He has just returned form the People's Republic of China, where he talked to the president, who is coming here to meet with President Clinton in New York next week, and we'll hear the people he saw and what the Chinese are saying about Sino-American relations after this break. Stay with us.

The preceding text has been professionally transcribed. However, although the text has been checked against an audio track, in order to meet rigid distribution and transmission deadlines, it has not yet been proofread against videotape.

October 17, 1995

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