An Act of Conscience

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Enough is enough, I told myself, as I read the announcement on my school’s bulletin board: “Law Student Anti-Apartheid Demonstration at South African Embassy. Racism Must End. Point of contact: E. Cohen.” Anti-apartheid demonstrations had been occurring continuously at the South African embassy for nearly six months; it was now, it appeared, law students’ turn to perform their duty.

These demonstrations had angered me from the beginning, but this particular one was more than I could stomach. The more I reflected on the large role played by the Jews – many of them staunch Zionists – in the demonstrations and on the total prostration, the total lack of racial pride, among my fellow White law students, the less I was able to ignore what was going to happen. I finally decided that I would attend the demonstration – to demonstrate against it.

I spent the day before the demonstration at my house preparing two placards. One of them read: “Stop the Anti-White Double Standard.” The other read: “Why No Protests Against Israel’s Human Rights Violations?” I also went to the Library of Congress, where I prepared the text for a leaflet detailing human rights violations in Black African countries and in Israel. I did not presume I could reawaken any White racial pride in the benighted souls of the White demonstrators, but I thought I could at least point out the hypocrisy of their actions.

I showed up at the demonstration with my placards and my leaflets, expecting to see a dozen or so of the students from my law school. I was astonished to encounter a loud and swirling mass of some 200-300 demonstrators marching on both sides of Connecticut Avenue, carrying placards, and shouting slogans. The demonstration, it turned out, had been coordinated among all the law schools in the Washington area – there are six or seven – and among young working lawyers as well.

I surveyed the scene for a moment. I knew I would get lost in the crowd if I went too far into it. An idea occurred to me. The demonstrators on one side of the avenue were marching in a large, elongated circle, which extended out onto a nearby bridge. I took up a position on the bridge about 15 feet from the point where the circle broke to go back in the other direction. I held my placard about Israel in front of me. Every person in that circle was obliged to read it.

Somewhat surprisingly, there was very little reaction. Most of the protesters read my placard in silence. A couple of the Blacks raised their fists and said: “Right on, brother!” There were only two comments from the Whites/Jews that I heard. One said, “Who’s paying you?” Another said, “The old divide-and-conquer technique, eh?” After a few minutes a fellow with black, curly hair, who was apparently an Arab, broke away from the circle and came over to me. He said, “Man, I don’t think this is the right way to raise the people’s consciousness.” We proceeded to argue about whether it was appropriate for me to do what I was doing where I was doing it.

At this point a Black woman with a megaphone decided to extend the marcher’s circle further onto the bridge. This had nothing to with me, but it was clear that I was in the way. I decided to stay where I was. No problem: the circle just formed around me. I spent the next ten minutes or so holding my placard in the middle of the circle, as the demonstrators marched around me.

At length I decided, somewhat dejectedly, that I wasn’t really accomplishing anything. I thought I would do better to show my placards to the cars passing on Connecticut Avenue, so I extricated myself from the circle and took up a position toward the far end of the bridge, facing the traffic. I held up my other placard, about the anti-White double standard. But this was an even more discouraging experience: in very few of the passing cars did I see a White face. Black, Brown, Oriental – are there no Whites left in Washington?

I decided to go home. As I began walking to my car, still carrying my placard, I saw a small Japanese car and four people, two men and two women, who appeared to be White, gathered around it. When I came closer I realized their car had a flat tire, which the younger man was changing. I saw them reading my placard. At last, I thought, I’m getting a message to some Whites. I smiled toward them as I walked by. But after I had passed them I heard the young man’s voice: “I know where I can get you some free psychiatric help.”

I walked on for about ten feet, while what he had said sank in, I stopped. I turned around and walked back to their car, where I took up a position about six inches from the younger man. I looked into his pale blue eyes and chubby face: “What did you say?”

“I said you need psychiatric help.”

“Why did you say that?”

“Because I don’t agree with you.”

“You must be infallible, then.”

“Leave me alone.”

I slugged him. He stepped back against the car, and the older man stepped between us. The younger man then took a further step backwards and cried out: “Leave me alone!”

I spat out my revulsion: “You’re the sick one!” Then I walked away.

Back in my car I sat for a long while, thinking, wondering, doubting. Had I accomplished anything? In the distance I could hear the chants of the demonstrators: “Down with apartheid!”