Martin, Clarke Misunderstood

It seems that the staff of The Crimson has once again mixed together two different documents to give a very skewed and false picture of a speaker invited by the Black Students Association (BSA). They state "in his writings and in his Harvard speech, Martin alleges the existence of a Jewish conspiracy that seeks to thwart Black progress" ("Clarke Was Wrong to Endorse Martin," staff editorial, Dec. 7, 1994) I have not read Martin's book, The Jewish Onslaught, in its entirety, so I will limit my remarks to the speech.

During the course of his speech, Professor Anthony Martin stated that the first reference to Africans being created innately inferior and for the service of other people is in the Babylonian Talmud. He quoted several doctoral dissertations, one by a Jewish scholar, that supported his claim that the Babylonian Talmud exists as the first text to place a racial component on the cursing of Ham and is the first instance of a work bigoted against Africans in the European tradition. At no time during his address to the participants of the teach-in did Professor Martin make reference to a present day conspiracy by Jews. The statements made by The Crimson's staff, many of whom did not attend the address, are false.

Secondly, The Crimson states that BSA president Kristen M. Clarke '97's "reference to 'indisputable fact' underlying Martin's bigotry is evidence either of her own anti-Semitism or of sheer ignorance." When Clarke made the statement, "Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed intellectual who bases his information on indisputable fact," she was answering the question, "Does the BSA have any regrets about bringing Martin to Harvard?" Her answer does not endorse his arguments. It asserts that the BSA does not regret bringing him here because he is a very educated individual who teaches at one of the nation's best colleges and that he, in his speech, used a wide variety of sources, ranging from Jefferson to the Babylonian Talmud to Home, to show that The Bell Curve is not the first book to claim the innate inferiority of the descendants of Africans.

In its staff editorial, the editors of The Crimson quote both Professor Martin and Clarke out of context. They then use these misrepresentations to imply that Clarke is an anti-Semite and might not be "the right spokesperson" for the BSA. In doing so, they showed themselves to be once again operating from a hidden agenda. --Joshun D. Bloodworth '97

The writer is the treasurer of the Black Students Association.