Messages and Signals From the World of Rap

One can only hope that the black community shares the opinion of the “several people who have worked closely with Public Enemy” and who evaluate Chuck D. as being in “over his head” as a social spokesman (“Rap--The Power and the Controversy,” by Robert Hilburn).

As Jewish children, my generation was constantly taught to work hard for racial equality, to fight racism and to support the black struggle. This is why, in 1966, we risked our necks weekly to travel by bus from Columbia University to 137th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem to tutor ghetto kids who needed help in school, and why we marched in the streets of Washington, D.C., and this is why Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, two Jewish boys from the North, sacrificed their young lives together with their black friend, James Chaney, as part of the never-ending struggle against a white redneck racist mentality in the Deep South at that time.

Our parents told us that Malcolm X was an extremist, but we went to listen to him anyway. We heard him, and we heard his message of positive self-reliance. This is why we still work hard to support the Southern Poverty Law Center and brave people such as Morris Dees.

But what do I tell my own children now when they ask me why they are reading that a local rabbi feels that Public Enemy is anti-Semitic? That one of the group admires Louis Farrakhan? What do I tell them about who is really speaking for the black community? How do I compare the babble of Richard Griffin (Professor Griff, the Public Enemy associate) and the hate-preaching of Farrakhan to the inspired oratory of Dr. King and Malcolm X?

And why does The Times even suggest that rap musicians can approach the task of assuming the responsibility which these great men shouldered? Where are my children’s black heroes? I’m not about to tell them to start looking in the record store.

TOM WERMAN

Studio City