Video: Derrick Bell praised man who called for white genocide

3/10/2012
Obama Hero Derrick Bell Praised Man Who Called for White Genocide
Patterico @ 2:18 pm

Derrick Bell, whom President Obama lionized and embraced in a speech in law school, praised a man who had called for white genocide in South Africa. Bell argued that society should be grateful that the violence had merely been threatened and not carried out.

John Podhoretz in Commentary noted that Bell had given an October 1994 interview in which Bell praised a man named Khalid Muhammad:

The very same interview began as follows: “We should really appreciate the Louis Farrakhans and the Khalid Muhammads while we’ve got them.”

Here is Khalid Muhammad, whom Derrick Bell wanted us to “appreciate” while he was alive. In the following speech, which is one of the most hateful speeches you will ever see, Muhammad advocates killing every white man, woman, and child in South Africa . . . to the cheers of the crowd:



The relevant part is at 1:33:52. It’s a short clip, just three minutes long, and it’s worth your time. Here is a partial transcript:

We kill the women. We kill the children. We kill the babies. We kill the blind. We kill the crippled. We kill the [imitates a crazy person]. We kill ‘em all. We kill the faggots. We kill the lesbians. We kill them all.

Muhammad goes on to explain, in detail, why women and children should be killed. The children, because they will oppress blacks when they grow up. The women, because they bear those children, and thus constitute the “military of the army manufacturing center.”

We need to appreciate men like that while we’ve got them, eh, Professor Bell? Eh, President Obama?

It’s worth noting that this speech was made on November 29, 1993 — and received nationwide attention — while Bell’s praise of Muhammad came in October 1994. Meaning that when Bell said we needed to “appreciate” Muhammad, Muhammad had already given a famous speech advocating killing women and children in South Africa.

I should note that I have not seen the interview Podhoretz references. Podhoretz explains that Bell’s praise for people like Muhammad was because they didn’t actually commit violence — they just talked about it. This would be like someone praising Hitler during his rise to power because he had not yet massacred any Jews. Bell should have criticized the rhetoric, but instead, he suggested that the rhetoric was mild and praiseworthy, because at least it had not yet translated into action.

There is no excuse for supporting a man like you see in the clip above. None.

And Bell’s praise for this hateful, ugly man was no accident or slip of the tongue. Breitbart.com is revealing that Derrick Bell opined that he is not sure blacks and whites will ever get along, and that Louis Farrakhan was a “great hero for the people” (although he didn’t agree with everything he said). And we have already examined how Bell was a proponent of a theory that maintained that whites in modern times have used principles of equal treatment under the law to oppress blacks, and that the system needed to be ripped up root and branch.

It is a legitimate question to ask Barack Obama, whose Justice Department refused to go after Black Panthers who intimidated people at the polls, and who told a crowd at Harvard Law School to open their minds to the words of Derrick Bell, whether these are the sorts of ideas he wanted people to embrace.

Now gimme a hug!

UPDATE: I re-worked one of the paragraphs of the post in response to a commenter. Details here. I have also rewritten the opening of the post to provide clarity and context.

UPDATE x2: Muhammad gave this noxious speech more than once. I have replaced the original video with a video of the original speech made at Kean College in 1993.