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The Second Time as Farce

Not that the first time was serious.

Oct 31, 2005, Vol. 11, No. 07 • By MATT LABASH
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IF YOU'RE IN THE REPORTING game long enough, old stories start repeating on you like a bean pie past its freshness date. So it felt as we gathered in Washington, D.C., last week to celebrate the Millions More Movement, Louis Farrakhan's sequel to his 1995 Million Man March. It seems like only a decade ago that we stood on the National Mall, baying and bellowing and clapping each other's muscled shoulders. Or maybe, through the mists of time, I'm thinking of the NOW rally.

Farrakhan had proclaimed the original march a "Day of Atonement," pinching the Jewish holiday's name, perhaps in a bit of turnabout since he's never been keen on how the Jews "leech on us." Attendees made lots of promises to reform their lives that were forgotten by, oh, dinnertime. The Park Service, back then, estimated the crowd at 400,000 strong, while the Nation of Islam insisted it was 2 million.

If we go with the latter estimate, that would mean nearly one-seventh of all black American males turned out, enough to influence the direction of black America. Considering that 68 percent of black children are still born out of wedlock, that nearly 60 percent of black males don't graduate from high school, that blacks are seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide, and six times more likely than whites to be murdered (94 percent of them by other blacks), the Million Man March hardly appears to have been the transformative experience of its organizers' billing.

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