Yesterday I spent a lot of time looking for a decent quote from Malcolm X in support of direct action and dealing with people who are blatant enemies as opposed to closeted enemies. I did so in support of some flogging of my Internet Hunt over at P6, the best I could do was insult the denizens there as 'voodoo practitioners'. Interestingly enough, I did find this quote over at Blackprof, a site I've been neglecting of late. The context was how 'subtle racism' has found a home in the GOP because of 'code words'.
But values can be a code word for many things
The game is over at this point. From here on in you will hear only what you want to hear. If you decide that certain phrases are code words which have hidden meanings that you know how to correctly interpret, then conversation is a waste of time.
It's no longer Ernest talking to you, it's you talking to yourself.
If I had the presence of mind of that poster, KT Cat, I'd have said as much as the Internet Hunt got off to a rocky start.
Nevertheless, in searching to find the right Malcolm, I found little more than misappropriated Malcolm. One most notably here on Google Video edited and grafittied to remove the context of Malcolm's words and almost all of those of his interlocutors, by none other than Xyborg, the nutcase who wants the African Bomb following the example of Kim Jong Il (!!). Elsewhere there are excellent more scholarly disciplined sites like this one, however there is very little content to be found.
But there was one very interesting clip that I located which served to remind me of Malcolm's split with the NOI and prompted me to write the following over at Blackprof:
Liberals try to use the power of the State to insulate against the dysfunctions of family and community. Conservatives try to use the power of family and community to insulate against the dysfunctions of the State. Most everything follows from that.
From a black perspective, I think the salient choice is determined by a thoughtful consideration of what your family and community situation is. I think there can be no clearer illustration of this difference in black than the paths of Malcolm X and MLK, keeping specifically in mind that Malcolm X' split from the Nation of Islam was a direct result of his discovery that Elijah Muhammad was the baby daddy of EIGHT illegitimate children.
Malcolm X did not support Affirmative Action. He was a religious conservative. This is the big open secret few black Democrats ever debate or consider.
Malcolm opposed Affirmative Action. He called it a 'trick' of the white power structure used to dissuade the masses via the employment of upper middle class Negroes who would convince the masses to 'slow down'. He categorically dismissed integration as an avenue towards freedom. He saw irreconcilable differences and characterized the black masses as on the verge of explosion, something he said would 'break the furniture' in the house of the white power structure.
Freedom is bigger than middle class status. It is something towards which we should all strive, and we should be similarly committed to act as free men, to assume our freedom and fight any and all that would stand in the way of our rights to it. Malcolm understood this implicitly and articulated it persuasively and cogently. That is why his voice resonates clearly to this day. He dealt honestly and with integrity with the fundamental elements of human struggle towards liberty.
I am under no illusion that the masses of blackfolks today are continuing to struggle with Malcolm's terms and scope in mind. Most of the agitation of blackfolks is aimed squarely at middle-class status in America, nothing more, nothing less. And to a certain degree it is disappointing. But not so much when one considers how well America has accommodated those who have assimilated and integrated, and equally how well America has supported and sustained those African Americans who have gone above and beyond that call. It was perhaps unthinkable in Malcolm's time that a black man would run Sears, Time Warner or American Express. And yet today they are captains of all three at once. So somebody must have been aiming that high. And while someone in my generation finds such achievement daunting, I expect that my children will find it less impressive and perhaps reach even higher. Still, I'd be happy for a doctor, a lawyer and a teacher. That's goodness, alas not greatness.
What made Malcolm great was that he had great faith and tied himself unswervingly to his religious discipline in ways that seem extraordinarily rare to us these days. He displayed an uncommon unity of mind and spirit. He embodied a kind of integrity we don't often see in public life. But he was also very clear about the work that he saw blackfolks needed, and it was very much in the vein of personal responsibility. I recall my brother's metaphors of the the past week. He works as a beat cop on Skid Row and he said of the indigent homeless that they do not wash their faces. They remain dirty because they have cut themselves off from society seeing no hope of ever fitting in. But of folks with hope, we wash our face every day because we expect to fit in. The culture of despair begins when one decides not to wash your face, when you decide to be dirty, and it is catching. Similarly, the dysfunctions of the black community Malcolm sought to address started with us washing our faces, of acknowledging our value in the eyes of God, of negotiating our respectability in society starting by cleaning up our act. To wit:
The platform that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, our religious leader, stands on is the platfrom of complete freedom, justice and equality for the 20 million black people or so-called Negroes here in America. And he teaches us that because of the seriousness of the condition that our people now find themselves in that it is absolutely impossible to solve our problems with means other than religion. And he teaches us that the religion of Islam is the only religion that will instill within our people the incentive to stand on our own feet. And instead of trying to force ourselves upon whites or force ourselves into the white society or blame the white man for our predicament and constantly beg him for what he has, he says that the only way that we can solve our problem is to unite together among ourselves, among our own kind, clean ourselves up, rid ourselves of the evils that we've become addicted to here in this society and try and solve our problem ourselves.
The emphasis is mine, and this is a Conservative principle, and I strongly believe that it is an Old School principle that has always attended the success of African Americans. We tend to forget the days when blackfolks asked nothing from Congress and survived nonetheless. So there is only so much cred I can assign to people who are resigned to the contradictions and corruptions of the political parties. On their best days, with their best pols, they only approximately represent Conservatism and Liberalism, as well as a crypto-Leftism I still can't quite understand from the actions and positions of assorted Organics and Progressives (is it Socialism? is it Populism? is it Anarchism?). Whatever the failings of the GOP, I know they are trying to be Conservatives and that the actualization of Conservative principles stand a much better chance under their administrations than that of the Democrats.
Since I have confidence in the Old School and in the unity of mind and faith and much less in the machinations of government social programs, I fall on the side of Conservatives with very much the same skepticism of white liberals as Malcolm X. But that goes to my highest aspirations which lie far beyond middle class dreams. Still, I am much more respectful of American and global middle class aspirations than I have ever been. So I advocate, in the context of what Bush has explained in the terms of the Ownership Society, for adequate assimilation and integration into the broad American mainstream. I think every American should do so on their own terms and at their own pace with no assistance, guidance or interference from so-called 'social conservatives' who are mostly nosy and paranoid Evangelicals and fundamentalists still unable to quite get their heads around the ultimate implications of Liberty and Justice for All.
America must, among its highest priorities, be a nation that imposes no restrictions on the free exercise of religion, because that freedom will inevitably produce such minds in unity with spirit as was exemplified by Malcolm X. We can only hope sooner rather than later.
