THE MIRAGE OF FARRAKHAN

By SYLVESTER MONROE

PERHAPS LOUIS FARRAKHAN PUT IT BEST last week when he said he was "a nightmare"to some but "a dream come true" to others. That phrase perfectly captured the polarized emotions he engenders between--and within--the races. But the image was apt for another reason as well, for Farrakhan seems somehow to attach to our unconscious. He is a powerful, mysterious figure, elusive and changeable. As blacks and whites spoke of Farrakhan and his role in the Million Man March, they often seemed to be talking about someone they saw not in person or on CNN but in a vision at night.

"The thing that came from this march is fear," says Adele Klate, a middle-aged Jew who owns a travel agency in Hollywood. "We're afraid." She was minding the store last Wednesday when a regular customer, a black TV actor in his 30s, came in to pick up a plane ticket to Washington. "Aren't you late for the march?" Klate asked. "I was working," he answered. "Well, Mr. Farrakhan sure has caused enough trouble," said Klate. "Oh, I don't think so," the actor replied. "He said he wants to iron things out, didn't he?" Klate, however, did not see much use in a dialogue between Farrakhan and the Jews. "Would I change your mind about the insults you've heard Farrakhan say about the Jewish people?" she asked. "Well, no," the actor admitted, "but I like you personally, and you're Jewish, and I come here and buy my airline tickets." The conversation trailed off. Klate and the actor were like two people in the same desert seeing a different mirage.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who joined the march only after a deal was struck to broaden its organizational base and make it more ecumenical, had a very powerful vision of the day. "What you saw was a great display of pain, dignity and discipline," he says. "I addressed the march based upon need. In a society, we simply cannot be guilty or innocent by association. We must have the right of free association. To ignore Jewish sensibilities would be a mistake, but to have stayed away would also have been a mistake."

That sounds compelling, but so do the views of Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who is black. "If you have a movement to fight racism, there has to be moral authority and moral consistency," he says. "That's what the moral dilemma is. At some point, we're going to have to face it, and Minister Farrakhan is going to have to face it. He can't be talking out of both sides of his mouth on the racism issue and not recognize and have no concern about how his own remarks are interpreted."

When dreams and nightmares collide, strange things happen. Paradoxically, white America's denunciation of Farrakhan helped make the march so successful and broadened his support among blacks outside the Nation of Islam. Some blacks went to Washington for the very reason whites and black conservatives said they should stay away: Farrakhan. These black men resented being told what to think and whom to follow. At first Earl Vaughn Jr., 41, who works in New York City as a manager for the transportation system, wasn't sure he would attend. Then he read a newspaper report in which black conservative Congressman Gary Franks, a Republican from Connecticut, compared the Million Man March to a Ku Klux Klan rally. It made Vaughn so angry, he jumped into his Lexus Sunday night and drove to Washington. Terry Bankston, director of fund development for the National Black MBA Association in Chicago, shares Vaughn's attitude about the pressure to repudiate Farrakhan. "Denouncing people is not the best way to get past things that have happened," he says.

Of course, if blacks react to whites' reaction to Farrakhan, whites react to blacks' reaction to Farrakahn. It is not unusual to hear whites saying, in effect, "Now that it's clear they hate us, it's O.K. for us to hate them." Glenn Loury, a conservative black thinker and Boston University professor, says, "Farrakhan makes it more respectable for white racism to flourish." That is a cop-out both blacks and whites must work to resist. "The threat to American democracy is not black racism," Loury says. "It's white racism."

Then there are those who try to make Farrakhan real, to see him calmly with eyes open. They say that while Farrakhan has undoubtedly gained stature from his successful organization of the Washington march, he is not nearly as threatening as his rhetoric makes him seem. "I abhor his racist and bigoted statements," says Laura Washington, the black editor and publisher of the Chicago Reporter, a newsletter on race relations. "They are counterproductive and unfair. But it's important for whites not to put too much stock in what he says." Loury says Farrakhan is "the leader of a black fascist sect. His people are disciplined, orderly, militant, reminiscent of the Brownshirts. But they are not Hitler Youth taking over society. He may be a hysterical preacher of hate, but he is not about to take control of anything. He is not about to march into your neighborhood."

Unfortunately, it is difficult to hold steadily to such a circumspect view. Farrakhan can enter our dreams, good and bad. Of course, there was another leader of a march on Washington who once spoke of a dream he had. If it had come true, Farrakhan would not be a concern to anyone.

--With reporting by Sam Allis/Boston and Jordan Bonfante/Los Angeles with other bureaus

With reporting by SAM ALLIS/BOSTON AND JORDAN BONFANTE/LOS ANGELES WITH OTHER BUREAUS