Apartheid. USA 1988

[p. 12]

January 13, 1987:

Michael Meyers teaches political science at Mercy College and is co-director of RACE Inc., (the Research and Advocacy Center for Equality), a civil rights organization. He contributed some of the following remarks to the Op-Ed page of the Times. ‘The one good thing to come out of the tragic beating at Howard Beach last month was the hope it raised of rejuvenating a multiracial civil rights movement in New York City. But that hope is already vanishing, ruined by black extremists determined to exploit racial polarization rather than join forces with decent whites committed to a racially integrated city.’ Meyers asked himself why those black leaders, who went to City Hall to discuss the problems with Mayor Koch had to be labelled ‘Uncle Toms’. ‘To what do we owe this bitter rhetoric which sets blacks against blacks and all blacks against whites?’ Meyers believed it came from men concerned above all with their own political agenda. They called for a one-day boycott of all ‘white-owned’ businesses. Others have called for the resignation of the black Police Commissioner, Benjamin Ward, whom they regard as ‘a puppet of the white power structure’. Others went as far as to urge a city-wide boycott of pizzerias for no other reason than that the three black victims encountered their white assailants in a pizzeria. ‘Apparently, some black radicals take it that all white-owned businesses are discriminatory, that they are all somehow responsible for the heinous crimes in Howard Beach or that the creation of a separate black economy could bring racism to its knees. Of course, a separate black economy, like a separate black nation within our nation, would not defeat racism; it could only replicate the idiocy of those whites who judge and exclude people on the basis of skin color.’ Professor Meyers concluded: ‘As usual in such situations, where racial tempers rise, the hothead extremists have found the centre of the stage. Eventually, we must believe, they will trip themselves, as they are already doing by exposing their self-serving goals.

[p. 13]

The people they seek to lead have not been fooled. Yet the hypocrisy of this racemongering should embarrass us all. It offends both reason and human decency while it diverts us from justice.’^22.

22. The New York Times, from the Op-Ed page