not much matter if those who expressedrnit were, sa’, coal miners in West Virginiarnor wheat farmers in South Dakota. As itrnis, however, they are disproportionatelyrnrepresented in verbal and media professionsrnin the major cities. And while it isrnpossible to trace their attitudes to generalrnsocial or cultural causes—e.g., the dissimilaritiesrnbetween Eastern Europeanrnpeasant societies and Jewish urbandwellers,rnor to the phobias that existed inrnPolish Jewish ghetto cultures—it is hardrnto understand the special dislike thatrnAmerican Jews, particularly liberal ones,rnreserve for the Poles. 1 have heard it expressedrnmany times, and the shared sufferingrnundergone by Polish Catholicsrnand Polish Jews only seems to have intensifiedrnthese hostile feelings.rnFeeding this hate is, among otherrnproblems, a situation delicately mentionedrnby Professor Thompson and alludedrnto bv Dr. Wierzewski: the alliancernbetween American Jewish victimologistsrnand the political left. Soviet Jewish collaboratorsrnhave been recycled as Jewishrnvictims if they died at the hands of anticommunistrnPoles. This is illustrated byrnthe uncritical publicity showered on YaffarnEliach, whose father’s house was firedrnon bv the Polish Home Front in somewhatrnembarrassing eireumstances. It appearsrnthat Eliaeh’s father had close relationsrnwith the NBCVD and had welcomedrnthe Soviet secret police into his home,rnwhen they and other parts of the Sovietrnoccupying forces were rounding up andrnkilling the noncommunist Polish resistance.rnAs Professor Thompson suggests,rnit is Ms. Eliach and her supporters whornmust face the past honestly before makingrnrevisionist demands upon others.rnFinalh’, it behooves those who werernnot part of the bloody and tragic historyrnof Eastern and Central Europe to refrainrnfrom rash, uninformed judgments. Therntruth is that many of the inhabitants ofrnthat region, faced by brutal historicalrnturns, became both victims and victimizcrs.rnBaltic and Ukrainian victims ofrnStalin collaborated with Hitler’s forces,rnand Jewish survivors of the Nazi occupation,rnlike my cousins in Budapest, wentrnto work for the Soviets. Though this mayrnnot have happened in every ease, suchrncollaboration with totalitarian killers byrnvictims of other brutal regimes was a factrnof life for those in the area between Cermanyrnand Russia in the 1940’s. Such behaviorrnis not admirable, but it is understandable.rnWhat is neither admirable nor understandablernis the boundless stupidity of anrnAmerican culture which in the course ofrnmv own life has celebrated both Nazirnand Soviet collaborators: in one case, asrndemocratic anticommunists during thern1950’s; and in the other, more recently,rnas victims of Nazis—i.e., white, homophobicrnChristians. Add to this the indiscriminaternjournalistic assaults on thernPoles, who, whatever their shortcomings,rnsuffered grievously under two murderousrndespotisms and, until 1944, both despotismsrnsimultaneously, and one gets anrnidea of the moral cretinism into whichrnour Fourth Estate has plunged. Cicerornwas correct to note that there are thosernmen quos infamiae suae neque pudeatrnneque taedent, who feel neither shamernnor disgust when they have utterly disgracedrnthemselves.rnPaul Gottfried is a professor of humanitiesrnat Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.rnLITERATURErnThe BlackrnNationalism ofrnGeorge S. Schuylerrnbv Nicholas StixrnDecisions, decisions. Such is the lifernof a black man in America today.rnWhether to be a black nationalist, arnblack Muslim, an Afrocentrist, or simplvrna color-blind Christian—a.k.a. anrn”Oreo,” a traitor to the black race. Suchrnchoices are not new; they were made bvrnblack Americans in earlier generations,rndramatically in the ease of George S.rnSchuvlcr.rnNow largely forgotten, Schuyler hadrnmore influence on black readers than anyrnother black journalist in his time or since,rnand only W.E.B. DuBois (who was farrnless prolific as a journalist) could matchrnhim for talent. Soldier, journalist,rnsatirist, pulp-fiction writer, editor,rnintellectual—the “black Mencken” (asrnSchuyler was known) was one of America’srnmost gifted observers. A radical indi’rnidualist, Schuyler made a career ofrnlampooning “race men,” many of whomrnhe accused of secretly desiring to bernwhite. And yet, at times, he wrote as arnvirulent race man, speaking approvinglyrn”as a military man” of a coming racialrnconflagration. He spent most of his careerrn(1924-1966) writing for the PittsburghrnCourier, long America’s most popularrnnational weekly Negro newspaper,rnwritten for colored people who did notrnmix with whites, but in 1928 he marriedrna white woman, the former JosephinernCogdell.rnSchuyler, the son of a chef, was bornrnin Providence, Rhode Island, and raisedrnin Syracuse, New York. Schuyler’s Syracusernwas a brewery and factory town, inrnwhich blacks and whites worked together,rnplayed together as children, and surprisinglyrnoften . . . married.rnSchuyler took a snobbish pride in emphasizingrnthat his family had been freernfor at least 150 years before he was born.rnHowever, he was no snob when it camernto work and morals. He was not embarrassedrnby his mother’s and aunt’s decisionrnto take in folks’ laundry after hisrnfather died, when George was only ninernyears old.rnAs his biographer, Michael Peplow,rnnoted in George S. Schuyler (1980),rnSchuyler was something of a black HoratiornAlger, having been inculcated whilernin diapers “in traditional Yankee virtuesrnlike self-discipline, independence, thrift,rnand industry.” But that was the olderrnSchuyler. Earlier in his career, Schuylerrnhad a distinctly cosmopolitan understandingrnof culture and social relations.rnIt was only late in life that he returned tornhis small-town roots and a simpler approachrnto life.rnWhen second lieutenant GeorgernSchuyler returned to America followingrnArmy service, primarily in Hawaii (1912-rn1919), he found city ghettoes teemingrnwith transplanted Southern Negroes, displacedrnby changes in agricultural technology.rnFaced with urban squalor, culturernshock, and a racism without anyrngentility or paternalism to cushion itsrnblows, the uprooted Negroes were notrnflourishing in the cracks. The urbanrnblack middle class, so far from encouragingrnthe immigrants, treated them withrncontempt.rnA new class of colored urban demagoguesrnarose to minister to the new blackrnmasses, speaking in peculiar newrntongues. Though they used biblical imagery,rnthese new preachers painted imagesrnof salvation and retribution in thisrnNOVEMBER 1997/41rnrnrn