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Love Farrakhan or hate him, the inescapable fact is that he touches a nerve among blacks as almost no one else can. A TIME/CNN poll of 504 African Americans by Yankelovich Partners last week found 73% of those surveyed were familiar with him -- more than with any other black political figure except Jesse Jackson and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- and two-thirds of those familiar with Farrakhan viewed him favorably. Some 62% of those familiar with him said he was good for the black community; 63% said he speaks the truth; and 67% said he is an effective leader. More than half called him a good role model for black youth. Only a fifth thought him anti-Semitic. When asked to name "the most important black leader today," 9% of those polled volunteered his name -- more than for anyone except Jackson and three times as many as Nelson Mandela. To some extent, admittedly, these results reflect a lack of broad-based, high-profile black leaders. But that vacuum only makes Farrakhan more important, and his hateful words more potent.
Farrakhan's charismatic presence has a powerful allure. In Atlanta a lecture by Farrakhan outdrew a 1992 World Series game the same night. In Los Angeles last October he filled the 16,500-seat Sports Arena. In New York City a December speech by Farrakhan drew 25,000 to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. This month in Chicago, when black aldermen needed a celebrity speaker to raise funds for their legal defense in a censorship case, they did not turn to Jackson or Chavis or Mfume but to Farrakhan, the one black man they felt could fill any hall in town. Wherever he presents himself as "a voice for the voiceless," crowds throng to his orations, typically almost three hours long, for entertainment and moral uplift.
What's going on? How can so many blacks take seriously a messenger who spins bogus research into a vile theology of hatred for their fellow Americans, from Asians to Jews to whites of all variety? Plainly, black America sees a very different man from the one white America sees. This dichotomy says much about our country. And it makes trying to understand Farrakhan an urgent, if daunting, task.
Some of Farrakhan's impact is his bootstrap message of independence and self-reliance. Says Yvonne Haddad, professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst: "Some of the issues that Farrakhan is highlighting are important to the African-American community, and no one else is highlighting them." She cites his attack on welfare as "subsidizing single women to have babies," his complaint that the Federal Government spends more on prisons than on education and his charge that white-collar crime is not considered as heinous as other offenses. In meetings with the Congressional Black Caucus, Farrakhan proposed unconventional rehabilitation methods -- one member recalls a plan to transport prisoners and addicts to Africa as an alternative to the chaos of the ghetto -- and was hailed for offering creative alternatives to standard treatment. Eric Adams, president of New York City's black police organization, the Guardians, says, "Many of our leaders don't have any solutions. We'd rather march and sing. The brother is saying, 'Let's do for ourselves.' "