FOUNDATION FOR ETHNIC UNDERSTANDING
Rabbi Marc Schneier’s Group
Fights For Everybody’s Rights
It was a night of healing
for a gathering of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding at the
stupendous Fifth Ave. home of Dr. Mona Ackerman. As founding
president Rabbi Marc Schneier pointed out, “All our three
honorees for the Joseph Papp Racial Harmony Awards are healers.”
The honorees were Martin
Payson, a former chairman and general counsel at Time Warner and
presently co-chairman of the NAACP legal defense and educational
fund; Antonio “L.A.” Reid, an African-American who
succeeded Clive Davis as president of Arista Records, and Anthony
Wilson, chairman of HIP Health Plan of New York.
In praise of Payson,
Schneier said that “he has embraced a principle of Martin Luther
King Jr.” by fighting for the rights of Jews and
Afro-Americans.
Schneier quoted King Jr.,
who said that a people who fight for their own rights are only as
honorable as they fight for the rights of others.
Payson said that when he
was at Time Warner until1992, he changed the culture of the company
with affirmative action.
“I used to go to Tower
Records to find our future managers,” he said. “It was a
conversion of myself which has enriched my life. That’s how I got
involved with Howard University” where he is the chair of the
medical affairs committee.
In introducing Arista
Records president Antonio “L.A.” Reid, rap artist Kenneth
Babyface Edmonds said that the struggle for racial harmony
never ends.
To underscore that “we
have to fight for respect,” Babyface mentioned his
four-year-old son Brandon who came home from pre-school quite
agitated. The teacher had told the class that man came from animals.
Little Brandon got up and
insisted, “We are not animals. We are human beings.”
In
accepting his award, Reid acknowledged, “Yes, there is racism in
the world. But things are changing in the music world. We’re
making progress in our business.”
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