"They Suck the Life From You"

By Sylvester Monroe and Louis Farrakhan

Time correspondent Sylvester Monroe talked with Farrakhan for 2 1/2 hours last week at his mansion in Chicago. Excerpts:

Q. TIME: What is the message that the Nation of Islam is imparting to African Americans?

A. Farrakhan: That God is interested in us, that God has heard our moaning and our groaning under the whip and the lash of our oppressors and has now come to see about us. That's the appeal.

Q. TIME: How does the Nation of Islam take a person who has hit bottom with drugs or alcohol or crime and remake that person?

A. Farrakhan: Well, we can't do it without the help of God, and we can't do it until we can reconnect that person to the source of truth and goodness that is Allah.

So once we can reconnect him to God and show him his relationship to God, then you give him the knowledge of himself, his history. So by teaching us our history beyond the cotton fields, beyond our slave history in America, and teaching us our connection to the great rulers of ancient civilizations, the great builders of the pyramids and the great architects of civilization and teaching us our relationship to the father of medicine, the father of law, the father of mathematics and science and religion, this makes us desire now to come up out of our ignorance and achieve the best that we possibly can achieve. And this is what begins to transform the person's life.

Q. TIME: It has sometimes appeared that you were building this sense of self- esteem by putting down another people.

A. Farrakhan: Now the truth of the matter is that white supremacists built a world on that ideology. If that system of white supremacy is based on falsehood, then the truth will attack that system at its foundation and it will begin to tumble down.

Now the truth of the matter is, whites are superior. They are not superior because they are born superior. They are superior because they have been the ruling power, that God has permitted them to rule. They have had the wisdom and the guidance to rule while most of the dark world or the darker people of the world have been, as they have called it, asleep.

Now it's the awakening of all the darker people of the world, and we are awakening at the level that the white world is now beginning to decline. And this is what Brother Khallid was talking about in his speech; I could not say he's a liar, ((that)) he's wrong. But this should never be taught out of the spirit of mockery.

And so to tear down another people to lift yourself up is not proper. But to tell the truth, to tear down the mind built on a false premise of white supremacy, that is nothing but proper because that will allow whites to relate to themselves as well as to other human beings as human beings.

Q. TIME: So what Khallid did, was that wrong?

A. Farrakhan: To me, it is highly improper in that you make a mockery over people. So why should we mock them? Why should we goad them into a behavior that is so easy for them to do harm to black people? And that's why I rebuked him.

Q. TIME: Have Khallid's remarks damaged your relationship with the mainstream black civil rights leadership?

A. Farrakhan: I don't feel that we can go down the road to liberation without a John Jacob, without a Jesse Jackson, without a Dorothy Height, without a Coretta Scott King or a Congressional Black Caucus or an N.A.A.C.P.

I mean, I have grown to the point, by God's grace, that I see the value of each and every one of these persons to the overall struggle of our people.

I feel that not only do they have something to offer me, but I have something to offer them. I'm not trying to be mainstream. I don't even know what that is. I don't know whether any black has ever achieved mainstream. But I do know this. I want the unity of black organizations and black leaders that we might form a united front and seriously discuss what we can do to better the condition of our people.

Q. TIME: Has there been any discussion about just that?

A. Farrakhan: We have never got to the point where we would sit down to open up these kinds of discussions. Unfortunately, there are those who saw in me a poison that would infect that group. And so they used their influence to push that group away from me. Even if they liked me, they could not associate with me for fear of what it would do to them professionally and economically.

So now we have to get to this talk of anti-Semitism. Am I really anti- Semitic? Do I really want extermination of Jewish people? Of course, the answer is no. Now here's where the problem is. When I am accused of being a Hitler, a black Hitler, because of my oratorical ability and my ability to move people, there is fear that I'm not under control. By the grace of God, I shall never be under the control of those who do not want the liberation of our people. I cannot do that.

The idea is to isolate me, and hopefully, through the media and everybody calling me a hater, a racist, an anti-Semite, that I would just dry up and go away.

Now they have done this for 10 years, and I have not gone away. Now fortunately or unfortunately, they have forced other black leaders into silence on the basic issues of race and color and economics, and Farrakhan now has emerged as the voice that speaks to the hurt of our people.

Now I'm going to come to something that may get me in a lot of trouble. But I've got to speak the truth. What is a bloodsucker? When they land on your skin, they suck the life from you to sustain their life.

In the '20s and '30s and '40s, up into the '50s, the Jews were the primary merchants in the black community. Wherever we were, they were. What was their role? We bought food from them; we bought clothing from them; we bought furniture from them; we rented from them. So if they made profit from us, then from our life they drew life and came to strength. They turned it over to the Arabs, the Koreans and others, who are there now doing what? Sucking the lifeblood of our own community.

Every black artist, or most of them who came to prominence, who are their managers, who are their agents? Does the agent have the talent or the artist? But who reaps the benefits? Come on. We die penniless and broke, but somebody else is sucking from us. Who surrounds Michael Jackson? Is it us?

+ See, Brother, we've got to look at what truth is. You throw it out there as if to say this is some of the same old garbage that was said in Europe. I don't know about no garbage said in Europe.

But I know what I'm seeing in America. And because I see that black people, Sylvester, in the intellectual fields and professional fields are not going to be free until there is a new relationship with the Jewish community, then I feel that what I'm saying has to ultimately break that relationship.

Just like they felt it necessary to break my relationship with the Black Caucus, I feel it absolutely necessary to break the old relationship of the black intellectual and professional with the Jewish community and restructure it along lines of reciprocity, along lines of fairness and equity.

Q. TIME: How much does this black/Jewish controversy actually wind up hurting black people?

A. Farrakhan: I did not recognize the degree to which Jews held control over black professionals, black intellectuals, black entertainers, black sports figures; Khallid did not lie when he said that.

My ultimate aim is the liberation of our people. So if we are to be liberated, it's good to see the hands that are holding us. And we need to sever those hands from holding us that we may be a free people, that we may enter into a better relationship with them than we presently have.

So yes, in one sense it's a loss, but in the ultimate sense it's a gain. Because when I saw that, I recognized that the black man will never be free until we address the problem of the relationship between blacks and Jews.

Q. TIME: If you could tell the readers of Time magazine anything you want to tell them about Farrakhan or the Nation of Islam, what would you say to them, or do you even care?

A. Farrakhan: Of course I care.

I would hope that the American people and black people would give us a chance to speak to them not on a 30-second sound bite or not even through Time magazine or any other white-managed magazine or newspaper but allow us to come to the American people to state our case.

I would hope that before the House of Representatives or the Senate will follow the advice of others to do things to hurt the Nation of Islam and our efforts in America at reforming our people, that you would invite us before the Senate or before members of the House of Representatives to question me and us on anything that I have ever said in the past.

And if they can show me that I'm a racist or an anti-Semite, with all of the legal brilliance that's in the government, and I, from that lofty place, will apologize to the world for misrepresenting what I believed to be the truth.