The Rebuttal: Solo by Public Enemy’s Griff

S o who’s next to expect me to apologize ?

. . . the tears in my eyes

Will never fall.

--Professor Griff, “Love Thy Enemy”

As those lines from Professor Griff’s upcoming solo album indicate, the former “minister of information” of the controversial rap group Public Enemy is not saying he’s sorry for declaring that Jews are responsible for “the majority of the wickedness” around the world in an interview last May.

But he is eager now to say that his widely quoted remarks were the result of ignorance and that he regrets having made them.

“When you say that the Jewish people are responsible for the majority of the wickedness, that statement itself is inaccurate,” he said, speaking by phone from the Miami offices of Luke Skyywalker Records, where he was putting the finishing touches on his album “Pawns in the Game.”

A single of the same title has just been issued and the album is due for release on Feb. 21, the 25th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination.

“You can never say ‘the majority’ of anything is the fault of a whole group of people,” he said. “In the way I erred, there needs to be some correction made. Given a chance, I can do that.”

The problem lately, said Griff (a Roosevelt, N.Y. native whose real name is Richard Griffin), is that people are not giving him that chance.

“To walk up to me on the street and threaten me and say, ‘Don’t you need to apologize?’ That’s not the way,” he said. “To call me a Jew-hater or anti-American or anti-Semitic, that’s not the way.”

The right way, he continued, is “to talk to people face to face. I’ll sit in a room full of Jewish people and they can ask what they want and I’ll give it straight and back it up. I don’t want them to see me as this brand new little Hitler.”

In fact, it was meetings with Jewish friends that convinced him of his errors.

“We sat down and watched films of the plight of Jewish people coming into the United States early in the century and I sympathize with that,” Griff said. “Those are things I never knew.”

Griff, however, continues to subscribe to a conspiracy-theory mentality, claiming that Jews were involved in slave trade, in setting up South Africa and in experiments that led to the creation of the AIDS virus. But he said that even in the notorious May interview with Washington Times reporter David Mills he also claimed that members of other ethnic groups, including blacks, were culpable in such matters. (A five-minute taped portion of the interview will be included on Griff’s album.)

And he also continues to identify himself as a member of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, though he rejects the statement that Judaism is a “gutter religion” that is often attributed to Farrakhan.

Griff is anticipating more controversy from at least one line in the new album’s “Love Thy Enemy.” Over a driving musical pulse, Griff raps, “It’s pathetic to think you’re Semitic.”

The line, he said, is actually a comment made to him by a Jewish journalist in response to Griff’s claim that modern blacks and Jews share the same ancestry.

“I realize that could be interpreted totally, totally wrong,” Griff said. “You could think I was saying that to Jewish people, not repeating something that was said to me by a Jewish person, which was the case.”

As for his role in Public Enemy, Griff said he now sticks to “research.” He described his relationship with the group’s producers and management as “strained” and his presence on the upcoming album as “limited.” But he said he remains friends with leader Chuck D. and will continue to appear with the group in concert.

“Legally, I own part of (Public Enemy), first of all,” he said. “Second, I was there from the beginning. We grew up together. It’s hard to say, ‘Griff, you’re out,’ and face black people where we live. Black people are not versed in black-Jewish relationships. What they’re interested in is if the group will stay together.”