Remembering an Evening with Malcolm X, and Some Thoughts on the new Manning Marable Biography
Today, the late Manning Marable’s new biography of Malcolm X was published. After working on it for over twenty years, Marable sadly passed away last Friday, a few days before publication. I do not share the late scholar’s political and social views, especially his socialist perspective and his neo-Marxist ideology. But a quick read of some of the chapters of the book indicate that he has produced a thorough, beautifully written and insightful account of Malcolm X’s life, one that forces readers to reevaluate much of what they thought about where Malcolm X stood on many issues, and how and why he came to take positions that he held.
Marable rightfully saw Malcolm X as a major figure in 20th century black American life. Yet he is able to be critical about him and many of the choices he made, a man who, he writes, “was being strangled by the iconic legend that had been constructed about him.” Readers will learn that at a critical moment in the civil rights struggle, Malcolm X made the foolish decision to negotiate and meet with leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, during which he told the Klan representatives that his people too wanted “complete segregation from the white race.” On this episode, Marable writes: “To sit down with white supremacists to negotiate common interests, at a moment in black history when the KKK was harassing, victimizing, and even killing civil rights workers and ordinary black citizens, was despicable.”
On the issue of Judaism and Israel, Marable does not hide the many times that Malcolm X made blatant anti-Semitic remarks; nor does he hide his early opposition to Israel. On why Malcolm X developed opposition to Israel, Marable reveals that his position was tied up with the money he was receiving from Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. As Marable writes: “Soliciting the support of the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser for his activities on behalf of orthodox Islam in the United States may have made it necessary to adopt Nasser’s political positions, such as fierce opposition to Israel.”
At the same time, however (1964), readers learn that in the upcoming presidential election, “Nearly alone among prominent black leaders, he continued to support Barry Goldwater as the better candidate to address blacks’ interests,” even though, Marable writes, Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act “made him the de facto candidate of Southern white supremacists.” Malcolm X, in other words, was a bundle of contradictions.
All of this is a preface to my recollections about the night I and other young leftist activists at the University of Wisconsin had one evening sometime in either 1961 or 1962, before Malcolm X went to the Middle East and before he was expelled by Elijah Muhammad from The Nation of Islam, then usually referred to as “the Black Muslims.” Malcolm X had come to speak at the University’s Great Hall, the smaller of the two venues for speakers at the University in Madison. The audience was largely composed of black students, with a smattering of white radicals. At that time, the crowd I was part of was highly critical of integrationist strategy, and was sympathetic to various forms of black nationalism.
Malcolm X’s speech, as much of it as I can recall, was made up of the kind of boilerplate comments we were already familiar with from the media. I remember him saying: “When you want a good and strong cup of coffee, you ask for black coffee. You don’t dilute it by putting in cream or milk.” He reaffirmed his opposition to the mainstream civil rights movement, criticized the integrationists and the mainstream, and gave the largely black audience the kind of red meat it had heard so much about and had come to hear in person. He was charismatic, charming, and to anyone who heard him speak, a powerful and fiery personage, a man who obviously was sincere and furious at the harsh treatment of black people in America. He ended by asking anyone who wanted to get in touch to write him. I recall his closing. “You don’t even have to know the address of Mosque Number 7 over which I preside,” he said, “just send the letter to Malcolm X, Harlem. It will get to me.”
And how do you think it compares with Malcolm’s autobiography? The Amazon review you link claims that it goes beyond the autobiography. How so?
Considering Malcolm X’s rhetoric and those of other black activist’s then and now, I’ve often wondered why a back to Africa movement similar to what Jews did with Israel never gained any traction among black Americans.
If the overarching sentiment is over racism and segregation, why not? Mass emigration has happened in history before for similar reasons or simply economic ones.
You do raise a good point. I think it hasn’t gained traction because of continuing racism and impoverishment. Statistically the black populations rank lower in all socioeconomic factors further hindering their ability to emigrate.
At least one reason is that Israel/Zionism is not a fantasy construct, as much of Africanism was and is for American blacks. For the great mass of black Africans, skin color is no more an indicator of kinship than it was for Nazis vis-a-vis Jews. Their identification is based on tribal ties and they are just as capable of committing mass murder against rival tribe members as whites are against other whites of despised nationalities.
Spinoza was a black man? Really?
Stokley Carmichael’s autobiography “Ready For Revolution”(p 558-559) mentions that his introduction to anti-Zionism–and the entire anti-Zionist orientation of SNCC after Malcolm X’s assassination–as “almost entirely due to the work of one courageous activist sister” who had “studied Latin American affairs and Middle Eastern history in college, after which she took a job in South America. There she met Palestinians who had been expelled from their homeland…”.
[paraphrasing] Upon returning to the states, influenced by Malcolm, she worked with NOI…after that she followed X into the OAAU. Then she joined SNCC, where she organized study groups on Zionism. H Rap Brown and Ralph Featherstone were members..
Carmichael (via co-author Professor Michael Thelwell): “I can truly say that my disciplined study of Zionism in a systematic way can be attributed to this sister’s influence”…”entirely due to the honest, persistent, humble, and unassuming work of our sister.”
Although Carmichael says that the group itself was “no secret cabal within SNCC”, Thelwell adds the comment that “Ture carefully avoided identifying this sister by name. I believe I understand his concern”.
WTF?
“Malcolm X”
Pimp, thief, con-man, demagogue. Never did a useful thing in his entire life.
He was a waste of skin.
You forgot draft dodger, sexual deviant and a few other things, but basically said it. I will never truly understand how we could lionize such a man.
If whites and blacks are truly equal, then why is his bigotry, anti-Semitism, and such overlooked? A white man with similar views would rightly be reviled and reproached. I am reminded of the old Bush line about the soft bigotry of low expectations. If Blacks are indeed our equals, we are morally obligated to hold them to the same standard and condemn such figures.
I believe in human equality, which is why I find Malcolm X to be reprehensible and/or disturbed. If I’ve missed something, please help me rectify my delusions(or I’ll help you with yours).
“A white man with similar views would rightly be reviled and reproached.”
or made into a famed character named Archie Bunker in a television show.
“If whites and blacks are truly equal, then why is his bigotry, anti-Semitism, and such overlooked?”
To be clear, several of us don’t. Why do I admire the man? I admire the man Malcolm X because he was a man, and by definition, flawed. He is evidence of how people are able to overcome circumstances that are unfavorable and he proves that people, if they choose can change. He was a man who was self made. He had no high school diploma, no college degree, nor any significant formal education. Yet the man rose to prominence in American society. He educated himself by reading a dictionary in the dim light of a jail cell. He pulled himself up by his boot straps and did what he felt necessary to survive, and later stood as a champion for his community. He acknowledged his own mistakes, and constantly worked to better himself.
Did he say hateful things, yes he did and I can see why he felt the way he did. Given what he endured at the hands of the racist establishments that existed at the time, while I can’t condone what he said for much of his political life, I certainly can understand where such rage comes from. People condemn him for dodging the draft. It constantly amazes me how people can’t see that Malcolm X did not feet he owed this country a thing. He was a second class citizen with limited rights yet when the government came a knocking, he was supposed to fight and die defending a country that forced to the back of the bus, treated like half a man, and possibly could lynch for looking at someone the wrong way.
My father served this nation for 26 years as an enlisted man in the US Air Force. I am proud of his service and I am proud to call myself a patriot. I can also look at a man like Malcolm X and acknowledge his flaws, admire his accomplishments, strive to emulate what is worth emulation, learn from the mistakes he made, and reject the wrong he did in this world, much the same way I you might do the when show admiration for our exalted forefathers who also had plenty of flaws.
I once heard Malcolm X on the radio. What I remember is his saying that anyone with one drop (or more) of white blood was damned. His non-”autobiography,” written by Alex Haley, reveals the origin of his hatred of white people – he was the lightest of his family of eight, with red hair and grey eyes. He used to be beaten by his father, who was very dark, because he was so light. His mother was also mentally ill.
The black power movement that Malcolm X promoted was co-opted by American liberal foundations and universities. This enabling of separatism is a major theme on my website, and now is de rigeur in black studies/African-American departments that follow old Cold War anti-American protocols. Here is the index: http://clarespark.com/2010/07/15/index-to-black-power-blogs/. I especially recommend the one on white enabling of black power, but they are all relevant.
Gee, Ron, sorry you didn’t get more of a response to your blog on Malcolm X (good movie, lively boulevard, enigmatic man). You’ve got to get more into the PJM mainstream to stir up the crowds. Consider this gem from your pal, Roger Kimball’s blog, “Ann Barnhardt, Culture Hero”:
…[S]he reads various passages from the Koran — those memorable bijoux that advocate the murder of Jews, infidels, and apostates, the rape of women prisoners, pedophilia, and beating of insufficiently submissive wives, etc. — and then rips out the offending pages and burns them a glass fire-bowl. Crowning detail: she has bookmarked the passages with rashers of uncooked bacon. (“Raw bacon,” she explains, “makes the best Koranic bookmark.”)
Wow! Pure religious hatred. Pure PJM. But I wonder what RK’s response would be to similar treatment of similar passages in Deuteronomy?
Methinks he wouldn’t call for the death of anyone doing so. Just as it isn’t easy to imagine mobs of Christian rioters tearing the Deuteronomy-arsonist to shreds. What’s more, if Deuteronomical passages were being literally, brainlessly carried out en masse in the 21st century by COUNTRIES full of Christians, RK would likely find the Bible-burner’s sentiments wholly understandable, if misconceived. I know I would.
That answer your question, J?
I was at that party with Malcolm that you described.
I still recall the atmosphere of that evening. Malcolm X was a handsome, charismatic man, and students were in awe of him, victims of “radical chic” before the phrase was invented. Even though I was only a lowly undergraduate, I clearly understood that Malcolm X was a foolish ignoramus, who knew nothing of Islam, Arabs, Africans, or white people. He knew that the road to fame and fortune was to fire up black anger, and he was willing to promote race hatred in order to serve his ego.
Ever since that time, thanks to self-serving black people like Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, and other black demagogues, black Americans have been encouraged to hate white Americans. It’s a sad development and not at all cathartic for blacks. They are trapped by this rage. In Chicago, for example, the Tribune and the Sun-Times both promote the feelings of victimization almost daily. That’s Malcolm X’s legacy.
What he believed about Jews is exactly what Zionism believes about Jews, that they must operate as a collective or “peoplehood” to exercise power for its own sake, and completely segregate themselves from the rest of society. His discussion of the German Jewish tragedy in his autobiography could have been very easily written by Jabotinsky or Joachim Prinz.
When I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, I was surprised to see him referring to Spinoza as a black man which he wasn’t. No mention of him being Jewish which he was.
What do you expect from the black pride/black power movement of the day? This is the same mentality and worldview that claimed Cleopatra and Hannibal were black.
It’s also interesting that Alex Haley was accused of plagiarizing Roots from Harold Courlander’s The African; a court agreed, and he apologized. The trial judge said “Alex Haley perpetrated a hoax on the public.”
Roots book and mini-series had a big impact on the American public…that’s another discussion.
Also, Ron (or anyone else), any idea who Stokley Carmichael was referring to, in my comment above? It’s hard not to see that as key.
I don’t know how many of those “Talks” I sat in on back in the ’60s, but I can sum them up with one word: Creepy. Nothing more than paranoid people with no grasp of civilization, history, law or commerce pontificating about that which they knew not. The race and gender baiters were the worst of the lot!
Thank God we’re over that now.
LOL,
Charlie
Marable’s book includes a fleeting reference to the 1956 Israeli military action in the Sinai, which Marable attributes to the natioanlization of the Suex Canal, making no mention of the fact that for Israel it was not the Canal nationalization that had significance, but the repeated terrorist attacks in Israel from Egyptian territory of the so-called fedayeen. Was Marable so ignorant as to be unaware of Israel’s motivation, or is there a more cogent explanation for his misstatement?
Marable’s book includes a fleeting reference to the 1956 Israeli military action in the Sinai, which Marable attributes to the natioanlization of the Suez Canal, making no mention of the fact that for Israel it was not the Canal nationalization that had significance, but the repeated terrorist attacks in Israel from Egyptian territory of the so-called fedayeen. Was Marable so ignorant as to be unaware of Israel’s motivation, or is there a more cogent explanation for his misstatement?