Posted on 02/26/2005 9:19:28 AM PST by Chi-townChief
Forty years ago today, Malcolm X was shot down in front of his family and an audience of followers at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. When he died, Malcolm X had been estranged from the Nation of Islam for about a year and had begun to call Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the cult, a liar, a fraud and a womanizer. Those were mighty hot words to direct at the Nation of Islam, which was feared throughout the black community as a known gathering place for violent criminals of all sorts who had been converted in prison, the way Malcolm himself had. Before his ascent in the cult world of homemade Islam, Malcolm Little had been known as "Big Red," a street hustler with a big mouth, a cocaine habit and a willingness to get rowdy and wild if the occasion called for it.
Sent to prison for a series of burglaries, Malcolm turned to Islam, or a version of it, promoted as the "black man's true religion" which held the secrets to liberation from white domination and black self-hatred. A convert, he began the liberation by replacing his "slave name" with an Islamic name or an X.
Malcolm X appeared on the national scene in 1959, presented by the media as the face of what white racism had done to black people. He was a minister of hate who used fiery rhetoric to teach that the white man was a devil invented 6,000 years ago by a mad black scientist. White audiences were appalled or darkly amused by this cartoon version of Islam, but more than a few black Americans were influenced by the Nation of Islam and by its dominant mouthpiece - light-skinned, freckle-faced, red-haired Malcolm X, the voice of black rage incarnate.
Some Negroes left the Christian church, others changed their names. A number stopped eating pork and demanded beef barbecue, and a good many eventually stopped frying their hair and became more nationalistic and hostile to whites, in their own rhetoric and in the rhetoric they liked to hear.
Malcolm X proved how vulnerable Negroes were to hearing another Negro put some hard talk on the white man. The long heritage of silence, both in slavery and the redneck South, was so strong that speech became a much more important act than many realized. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized this, observing that many of those who went to hear Malcolm X were less impressed with his ideas than they were with the contemptuous way he spoke to white power.
Since his death, Malcolm X has been elevated from a heckler of the civil rights moment to a civil rights leader - which he never was - and many people now think that he was as important to his moment as King. He was not, and Malcolm X was well aware of this. But in our country, where liberal contempt for black people is boundless, we should not be surprised to see a minor figure lacquered with media "respect" and thrown in the lap of the black community, where he is passed off as a great hero.
You have to wonder if Malcolm, when he himself got capped about 15 months later, had the final thought of his own chickens coming home.
Stanley Crouch....better have his armor on.
Stanley has had a long running feud with the black muslims...
Muslims......intolerance.....murder.....the religion not of love and peace.
Of course, when Malcolm left the NOI, he started hanging out with Trotskyites, but that's another story.
Churchill's comments about the chickens roosting are what started me thinking about Malcolm. It's generally not too wise to engage in that kind of talk.
Most black heroes are unknown.
Most so-called black heroes are not heroes...certainly not X and not King either at least not to the diety level he's been elevated.
Why do we have to have "insert color-religion-ethnicity" heroes anyhow?
Doesn't it sound silly to talk about white heroes?
Washington and Churchill are my favorite white heroes...John Wayne too....yes I know he was fictional but what's the difference.
The cynical story at the time of Malcolm's so-called conversion and subsequent death was that he was starting to realize that things were about to take a nasty turn with Elijah and the brothers and that maybe The Man, this devil, was someone he could work with after all.
Didn't our friend Ward Churchill have something to say about chickens coming home to roost?
Well, Trotskyites have better table manners than Stalinists so there's always the bright side
Reminder to self: read entire thread before making comments.
Handout after handout ? Like enforcing and protecting the right to vote ? Like an end to casual white violence ?
Each had a vital role to play. Malcolm X is an exact parallel to Michael Collins. Both knew that freedom isn't just about words on pieces of paper. It is about taking a people bowed down by centuries of oppression and teaching them to fight back. Michael Collins in creating the IRA in 1919 made the Irishman disciplined, efficient, and competent, not the comical, drunken leprechaun. Both saw that it was about turning feckless slaves into fearless men.
It was a good guy, bad guy routine. Before Malcolm, white people saw MLK as the 'troublemaker'. After Malcolm they realized that the days of cringing black deference were over forever and protest was turning into rage. For the first time in 300 years a black person could express anger to a white person and live. Whites now had to face the fact that a lot of anger had been boiling up over those 300 years.
He may have hated whites, who could blame him? And his 'either by the ballot or the bullet' is worthy of memorializing. I can see a Founding Father issuing the same proclamation.
Whatever his sins, many are mitigated by the absolute extreme left-of-the-bellcurve mentality of the white power structure that helped plot the course of events of his life.
In 1962 his black brothers had already fought and bled for this Country, willingly though they could have justifiably refused. Their moral ascendancy was unassailable.
P.S. And, to the best of my knowledge, he wrote his own stuff, too.
The Nation of Islam is indeed laying low.
For my money,Malcolm X was a work in progress. Given more time, he probably would have become a moderate and perhaps positive force.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X is a very interesting book. There are a number of aspects of Malcolm X's life and character that are extremely admirable and impressive.
Malcolm was self-educated. I respect that greatly about him.
He occurred at precisely the historical moment when a black person could express anger to a white person without being shot or lynched or whipped on the spot. The federal government was moving strongly to end white racial terror in the South because it recognized that in the age of Third World nationalism, it was a terrible Cold War propaganda embarassment for the US. He was the first black leader since Marcus Garvey who was did not care about alliances with white liberals or even electoral politics at all for that matter.
A hate-monger is STILL a hate monger, and that is all that Malcolm ever was.
Ditto. One wonders what he might have become, had he not been assassinated.
I would be all for the self reliance message that Malcolm and the NOI preached. The problem is that the only way they seem to get their message out is by combining it with rabid Jew hatred and hatred of White people. It seems that there must be a way to preach self reliance without combining it with hate.
Hate is the inevitable outcome of 300 years of undiluted evil by whites towards blacks. For the first time in American history a black person could freely speak his mind to a white person without fearing for his life. What did you think would come out ? Love ? Why should it ?
The first step in building a better relationship between black and white people was what diplomats call a "frank exchange of views". That means direct, in-your-face venting. That means telling the other party how you really and truly feel instead of what they want to hear. And that is good because free people speak their minds. It is slaves who pretend.
True...and bears repeating. :)
Malcolm knew what was coming and why. Once he jumped off the hate whites plantation he had to go...by order of Calypso Louie. I believe that had he lived another decade X would have become great.
King never begged for government handouts or preferences, just asked for equality and justice. You obviously didn't do your homework.
X was clear about his change of heart. He went to Mecca and saw blond haired, blue eyed muslims who were born to it. That was the crack in the foundation of his racism. The dam burst when the allegations about Elijah started to bubble to the top. (how's that for mixingg metaphors?)
Yea, right! Making excuses for hate doesn't make it noble. Next you will refer to 9-11 terrorist as "freedom fighters"!
The "autobiography" of Malcolm X was written by Alex Hayley, and is probably as accurate as "Roots"
Good lord....where did you learn such nonesense? Do you really think every black person who expressed anger at whites suffered that fate? Incredible....btw....I was there as a lad. Were You? Malcolm X was a punk.
A conservative website where folks admire Malcolm X....incredible isn't it?
Was he Civil War and XIV amendment "undiluted evil"?
He saw that that racism is not implanted into white people at the cellular level. He had never in his life know a white person who had treated him with any decency so it astonished him to encounter white people who saw nothing odd about doing so. He saw directly that THEM are human beings too and there is nothing impossible about a colorblind society.
When you've been treated like dirt it's easy to hate THEM. But unless you recognize their humanity you will become just like them.
As a matter of fact, yes right.
Perhaps you should familiarize yourself to the slightest degree with African American history. It is not to the least degree a pretty story. Hate is a perfectly rational, human response to people who have treated you with deliberate evil. It does not need to be excused.
X told his story to Haley over a period of time, Haley wrote the finished book.
Good lord....where did you learn such nonesense? Do you really think every black person who expressed anger at whites suffered that fate?
Whistling at a white girl got Emmett Til lynched. Any deviation from shuffling deference was being "uppitty" and could at the discretion of the white person result in death. Habitual "uppityness" would result in a lynching. Terror requires a reputation for immediate punishment of "uppityness" and that was the basis of the black-white relationship before 1965.
So then how is it always "whities" fault? We didn't ask to be invented just like blacks didn't ask to come to America!
How long did Reconstruction last ? By 1890 all the political freedoms blacks had gained in 1865 were wiped out in a bloody wave of white terror. Perhaps you should bother to familiarize yourself with that historical record. It is not pretty reading.
Interestingly, the KKK used almost exactly the same "oppressed people" justification. The ironies abound.
You failed to answer the question. Instead you mentioned reconstruction, which is another example that your use of the term "undiluted evil" is inaccurate and hysterical.
No kidding. Those guys are an embarrassment to themselves, let alone other white people. It disgusts me that the KKK and groups like them are still attracting any adherents.
My thought exactly.
Your answer was silly.
You prattled about the Fourteenth Amendment, oblivious to the fact that it only applied to black people during Reconstruction. Once Reconstruction ended Jim Crow laws and pure KKK terror destroyed all political rights for blacks, even down to the most basic right of citizenship. The right to demand the protection of the law against physical violence. Between 1877 and 1965, for black people there was no police protection whatsoever against white violence, so there was a tremendous amount of it. Indeed, the police often joined in lynchings and white riots.
Re:NOI+Malcolm X, "Problem is the only way they seem to get their message out is combining it w/rabid Jew hatred and hatred of White people" That is their message.The NOI is a mirror image of white racist groups.Black or White,hatred is what makes these people tick.
He was enigmatic. Even during his 'I'll never be out nigguhed again' phase, if you look into his life history you begin to suspect the comment was due in some significant measure to political expedience. Not that that justifies it.
Wallace was a boxer in his later youth 18-20, something like that. One night, before a match he heard some commotion outside his dressing room or area where he was preparing to box, so he went out to investigate, and found these two guys beating up on a younger black kid. Wallace was able to save the black kid from the beating, and took a beating himself in the process. Can't remember if he went on with his own match or not.
But, it seems to me that any person, as reviled as Wallace was for his bigotry, who went to these lengths to save someone from a race he supposedly so despised, wasn't the congenital racist his enemies loved to pretend he was.
Do you have any idea what percentage of the Black vote he got, when he ran for governor? The reason I ask is that for some reason, I'm under the impression that he got a surprising percentage of it, because as a local politician he had been quite adept at getting his State's share of federal dollars to his constituents.
I was aware of that, but thanks.
I have no doubt that some of his racism was, in fact, political. Just like some of the race baiters we have these days. For the most part, people really DO know and act better than that, thank goodness.
As for your question, honestly, I don't know. I would have to google it and see if I can find out, but to be honest, he was before my time, heh heh, so I am not sure of stuff like that.
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