Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison’s bid to lead the Democratic National Committee has set off a flurry of articles noting his affinity, in his younger years, for the Nation of Islam — a black separatist group that practices a nontraditional form of Islam, whose former leader, Louis Farrakhan, frequently engaged in anti-Semitism and anti-white speech.

Ellison has been reticent to talk about the topic, even canceling a New York Times interview after reporters asked him about it.

But those wishing to learn more about Ellison’s views as a young man — not long after he converted to Islam and 16 years before he became the first Muslim elected to Congress — can look to columns that he wrote as a law student at the University of Minnesota in 1989 and 1990 for the university’s student newspaper.

They provide insight into why he was drawn to black nationalism and the Nation of Islam. They show a younger and angrier Ellison, who denounced white supremacy and the policies of the state of Israel. And while they show either a willful or naive ignorance of the Nation of Islam’s bigotry, they also show him expressing sympathy for the plight of underprivileged whites and making clear that he was not antagonistic toward Jewish people.

Days of Fire

When Ellison ran for Congress in 2006, he told the Washington Post that he was initially drawn to Farrakhan because he saw him standing up for African-Americans — but that he didn’t approve of bigotry against Jews or others. “My perspective was a tunnel vision; I was mostly concerned about the welfare of the African-American community,” he explained to the Washington Post.

“I never said anything that was anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic in any way.” But he also admitted to being slow to pick up on the hatred espoused by Farrakhan.

The student newspaper columns he wrote as a law student seem to confirm his story. They also help illustrate a serious, lifelong commitment to social justice.

The conservative World Net Daily and Daily Caller websites recently ran articles decrying Ellison, who used the pen name “Keith Hakim” for one particular column they read as advocacy for a separate nation for black Americans — which is indeed an extreme policy proposal.

But that call was part of a longer, thoughtful discussion of the failures of affirmative action. In the February 2, 1990, column, titled “Affirmative action does not make up for past injustice,” he argued that America’s social programs were failing to truly address injustices committed against African-Americans, while also unfairly burdening working class white Americans.

“Conservatives have a point concerning affirmative action,” he wrote. “Why should marginally qualified white college students and blue-collar workers shoulder over 400 years of white supremacy alone? … Let’s face it — liberal social programs, including but not limited to affirmative action, foist the burden of brutal white savagery on the most marginally qualified whites, usually students or the white working class.”

This brought him to propose not a genuine alternative, but a thought experiment of sorts: “I have a challenge for all fair-minded middle- and working-class white people: I will urge black people to abandon white-dominated, integration-oriented, give-away programs if you urge white people to justly compensate black people for 250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow and 25 years of neo-Jim Crow.”

In that scenario, he suggested reparations in the form of cash compensation and giving blacks “the option of choosing their own land base or remaining in the United States.” Five states in the Deep South would become “the black state,” although neither whites nor blacks would be compelled to move, he explained.

It was more satire than a serious call to secede.