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CONVENIENT HOURS 81 Open `til 9 p.m. on Mondays & Thursdays; and Saturdays until 4 p.m. DWYER AND S O NS VOLVO/SUBARU Maple Rd. West of Haggerty 624-0400 35 years with VOLVO. Our 2nd year on Maple Road many anguished hours in recent weeks contemplating an effective response to next week's Million Man March — conceived by Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan. In a New York Times ad, the Anti-Defamation League ex- pressed support for the broad goals of the march, but argued that black leaders who endorse the event are helping legitimize the Rev. Farrakhan, and by im- plication, his racism and anti- Semitism. Other Jewish groups reacted angrily to the ADL action, argu- ing that such statements will con- vince black moderates that Jews are blind to continuing racism and rising poverty. Both sides may be right; the march represents a lose-lose sit- uation for a Jewish community that supports the message but fears and abhors the messenger. Although relations between the two communities will in- evitably be affected, it would be a mistake to portray Rev. Farrakhan's success in winning support from prominent African- American leaders as a black-Jew- ish issue. For this march is about a na- tional crisis caused by an in- creasingly perilous racial divide that is being further widened by today's headlong retreat from the economic and social justice poli- cies of the past fifty years. Jew- ish opposition to the march is justified by Farrakhan's anti- Semitism. But it ignores the deepening dilemma facing all Americans. Jewish leaders girding for the march cannot begin to fathom what motivates responsible black ministers, politicians and civil rights leaders — longtime allies in the civil rights struggle — to lend precious legitimacy to this man and his theology of hate. But for many African-Ameri- cans, the appeal of the march is not the Rev. Farrakhan's bizarre world view, but its address of what many see as an unprece- dented emergency in our cities and an accelerating effort to undo the civil rights progress of the past two decades. The urban underclass is grow- ing, with drastic government ser- vice cuts certain to make things worse. Welfare programs, com- passionate in their origin, have bred dependency, not mobility. Drugs are destroying neighbor- hoods; illegitimacy and a culture of defeat ensure that future gen- erations will face even more The Rev. Farrakhan is almost alone among black leaders in ad- dressing those issues in uncom- promising terms, without simply pleading for timeworn, ineffec- tive liberal social policies. He alone is telling the black corn- '\ munity what many feel it needs to hear — a message of cultural rejuvenation, of responsibility to self and community, the themes of next week's march. But he seeks to take the sting out of that message by resorting to the crudest kind bigotry — a dazzling panalopy of scapegoat- ( ing including Jew baiting, con- spiracy mongering, and slamming Catholics and whites. An impotent black leadership has generally endorsed the march because they recognize the extraordinary crisis that spawned it — and that the Rev. Farrakhan is filling a vacuum they helped create. There may be an element of guilt in their support, as well as a kind of in-your-face anger that a white national leadership allowed things to get this far. The Rev. Farrakhan address- es a great psychological wound caused by the terrible decay of the cities. He may not address it well; he certainly does not address it responsibly. But so far, he's the only doctor in the house. Publicly opposing the march is out of the question for most Jew- ish leaders, who recognize that the time for halfway solutions to the urban breakdown is long past. Supporting the event is equal- ly impossible. The fight against anti-Semitism has been based on the premise that every overt ex- pression of hatred must be pub- licly condemned; turning a blind eye to the Rev. Farrakhan's big- otry because of the importance of the message may, in fact, give him new and grander platforms for the dissemination of hatred. Maintaining a grim silence may be insufficient, as well. In to- day's atmosphere of fear and po- larization, silence represents collusion with the forces that are bringing our cities to ruin. The ADL ad sought a middle ground — supporting the goals of the march, while labeling the Rev. Farrakhan an unacceptable leader. But the racial chasm is so wide that this distinction may be lost on a black community that no longer sees fine lines in their community's battle for survival. The ADL is right that a suc- cessful march will undoubtedly increase the Rev. Farrakhan's MIWON page 64