9 ms·

what a shame that his intellect ended up wasted on reactionary racism. understandable in a sense, given time and place, but still... a waste.

dwolfson20 12y ago
Actually, his views were rapidly evolving at the time of his death. Read the whole book.
- oldmanjay 12y ago
  I do know that, but most of his public output was spent on vitriol that damaged race relations further. hence the part where I felt it was a shame.
  - sp332 12y ago
    I think you should have been more specific then.
  - poolpool 12y ago
    Damaged race relations more than centuries of slavery and systematic discrimination by our country's leaders did?
    - tomjen3 12y ago
      Damage is cumulative. Arguing over who did the most damage is not likely to bring about anything but hatred, resentment and more damage. That is essentially what X did. King offered unity, healing and a better future.
      - poolpool 12y ago
        You don't politely ask your oppressors to give you the rights they have taken away from you.
        tomjen3 12y ago
        Why not? It worked for King, it worked for Ghandi. Do you really think there could have been something like the civil rights laws -- born primarily of white people -- if the primary black person had been X and not King?
        djtriptych 12y ago
        It is patently absurd to give MLK's non-violent movement 100% of the credit for civil rights reform. The political situation during that time was unbelievably complex, and the changing attitudes of a turbulent nation cannot be so simply explained.
        enraged_camel 12y ago
        >>it worked for Ghandi. Yet it was Ghandi himself who, when asked if his peaceful tactics would have worked against Hitler, said, "probably not." I'm not suggesting that white people are literally Hitler, but simply that there's a time and place for everything, including peace and violence. And I say that as someone who has never called for violence on anything ever.
        tomjen3 12y ago
        That is true. However the guy I responded to said "you don't" as in a general rule.
        taejo 12y ago
        Perhaps it worked for King because the alternative to King was X?
    - serf 12y ago
      You're comparing 1960s America to colonial (and later) America. It's certainly possible that the damage done later on was greater, as there was a greater disbursement of knowledge, media, and information during a time in which the country was known as the land of opportunity, the melting pot. A speech calling for violence in the time of newspapers and television is surely more damaging than that same speech given in an auditorium in the early 1800s to a select group.. I am not attempting to put a 'value' on the whole of slave trade, that's impossible. I'd merely like to point out the 'apples vs. oranges' nature of your comparison.
      - pekk 12y ago
        People give such speeches today in mainstream right-wing rallies and are not criticized for it at all, let alone as harshly as Malcolm X is criticized. That's apples to apples since it's still the time of newspapers and television.
        jmaygarden 12y ago
        Do you have examples of recent "mainstream" right-wing rallies that call for racial violence? That sounds absurd. I'd like to know more about it.
        novacole 12y ago
        Malcolm x never called for racial violence. Ever.
        jmaygarden 12y ago
        In the context of the previous two comments, it was stated that present-day mainstream right-wing speeches call for violence. If so, I must have missed it. I did not intend for my statement to reflect on the actions of Malcolm X.
  - tesq 12y ago
    Race relations would have gone nowhere and would have been co-opted and neutered were it not for people like him.
kingkawn 12y ago
The waste was the generations of people lost to a racist society. His work to directly address it was an attempt to cure a tragedy that had been unfolding uninterrupted for hundreds of years.
- oldmanjay 12y ago
  a misguided attempt that had the opposite effect. it's almost as if you are of the belief that racism can fix racism.
  - kingkawn 12y ago
    Rationalizing to the end of a problem does not make the conclusion feel true. The work of making something not only logical but believable is his contribution to American history. The argument that all persons are valuable is a simple one, and he allowed more people to see someone who felt it. His evolution from brutalized child, to street criminal, to inmate, to adherent, to individual enlightenment is something we would all be lucky to experience.
yiggydyang 12y ago
His father was murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. I would say he had justification in reacting. His intellect allowed him to get his message out to millions of people around the world from the streets of Harlem to the lecture halls at Oxford University. Hardly wasted. Hardly shameful. The real shame is referenced in the original article.
- oldmanjay 12y ago
  ah, eye for an eye. well, that philosophy has certainly never worked before but maybe this time!
  - yiggydyang 12y ago
    It did not work this time? Ever heard of the civil rights act of 1964? Think it was a coincidence that it happened at around the same time his intellect was being wasted to use your own words?
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - deleted 12y ago
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stuart78 12y ago
We are fairly quick to erase, forget or forgive the racism of white leaders, but seem to have a harder time doing so for those who oppose the majority's cultural status quo. I fear this has been used historically as a way to marginalize certain voices. Certainly X is a complicated, difficult and contradictory figure, but also one who, through the autobiography, is able to capture a particular time and experience amazingly well. I haven't read the book since high school, but the segment on conking stays vividly in my mind. It is a great example of one of those seemingly small details that X manages to use as mule to talk about larger issues of identity and assimilation.
- dwolfson20 12y ago
  Another way to put it: Malcolm X was authentic in everything he did, and that was something this country needed. He was able to articulate more clearly than anyone else the implications of being black in America: that the only way to succeed in any way was by trying to act white. Thanks in large part to his activism, that is far less true today.
  - aurelian 12y ago
    What does it mean to act white or to act black for that matter?
    - dwolfson20 12y ago
      Conking is one example.
      - aurelian 12y ago
        Was conking necessary to succeed, or was it done because many blacks preferred the appearance of straight hair? Sidney Poitier played a doctor in No Way Out in 1950, and his hair doesn't appear to have been straightened.
        wpietri 12y ago
danielrhodes 12y ago
What is telling was how his experiences actually led him to reconsider his racism. After he returned from the Hajj he changed his viewpoints, and that change ultimately got him killed. That ability to question your own assumptions is a powerful tool.
dannypgh 12y ago
Would love to see a citation for what you mean by "reactionary racism" - especially from the period in Malcolm's life after he split with the NOI in favor of Sunni Islam. It is true that there are many reactionary elements of NOI ideology and I'm sure you can find all sorts of snippets of quotes from when Malcolm was with them, but not only did he walk away from them, he ultimately gave his life in part because of his split to the NOI (and the FBI stoking tensions around that split via COINTELPRO) Generally more troubling here is the trend of white people to think that they are victims more than perpetrators of racism[1]; you're just backporting it to history here. Something is wrong with you if you can think about the 1960s or anyone from that period, and end up blaming Malcolm X for "racism" with no mention of the racist police, Klansmen, etc. that openly proclaimed and demonstrated their racist power in that era. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390205/Whites-suffer-racism-blacks-Study-shows-white-people-believe-discriminated-against.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390205/Whites-suffe...
- serf 12y ago
  Klansmen and corrupt police from the 60s were racist. So was Malcolm X. "Usually the black racist has been produced by the white racist. In most cases where you see it, it is the reaction to white racism, and if you analyze it closely, it's not really black racism... If we react to white racism with a violent reaction, to me that's not black racism. If you come to put a rope around my neck and I hang you for it, to me that's not racism. Yours is racism, but my reaction has nothing to do with racism..." - Malcolm X I disagree with him. I believe that hatred towards a race of people is racism, regardless of origins. When one condemns a group for the actions of a few -- i'll never believe that to be correct. You'll notice that he only mentions a reaction to imminent racism; he, however, did not conduct himself in that manner. He could be called a 'reactionary racist' because his racism was not entirely fueled by sociocultural norms, but rather as a reaction to the hatred that he experienced from living near racism which was fueled socioculturally. While I agree that the motives for that form of hatred are more pure and just, it's still hatred. The repeated perpetration of hatred only leads to more hatred, due to the non-linear growth of vendettas which require 'settling'. Just because he was the victim of much hatred doesn't make certain things he said 'non-racist', and as a (loud) public figure, atonement for advocacy of violence and racism in the past does not undo the damage that it caused. The 'nation's teachings' were despicable; how many were affected? I agree that nearly all of the atrocious stuff he said was during his part with the NOI, but there's no time machine. He still did it. He was never an angel, he just improved with age. The work he did towards uniting blacks as a singular entity to stand towards oppressions was fantastic, however the inches closer towards utopia that got us were lost to incessant preaching of racial weakening (coffee and creamer allegory..) and 'Truly Africans' movement, just further alienating the country as a whole. There are better civil leaders to look up to -- some don't even require you to skim past their evil past.
CameronNemo 12y ago
Not really his fault. If you read the book, you know that if he had his way he would have been a lawyer.
djtriptych 12y ago
You are using your intellect to convince the world that white men are oppressed. That's a waste. Malcolm X was addressing decades of white-on-black domestic terrorism across the country. Black people were being regularly lynched, firebombed, raped and imprisoned for little more than being black and asserting basic human rights. Segregationists controlled Congress when Malcolm was at his most influential - there was vanishingly little support from the federal government in stopping these attacks, and the state and local authorities were often complicit. Even in the face of this, Malcolm X never advocated violence except in self-defense, which is REASONABLE under the circumstances. His threat of returned violence lended credence to the more tolerant views of MLK, and even Malcolm preached universal love in the years before he was murdered.
- likeclockwork 12y ago
  Malcolm X was addressing decades of white-on-black domestic terrorism across the country. s/decades/centuries
novacole 12y ago
Black people can't be racist in any way that really counts. Racism only matters if the attitude had some sort of negative effect on the group you're racist towards. Since blacks have no real power as a whole, they can't be racist. If blacks were in the majority in terms of power, then and only then could they be racist. The ideas of Malcolm and the NOI, the panthers, etc were a perfectly sensible response to the racism of the white power structure.
- hueving 12y ago
  Ah, the standard bullshit apologetics of "the bad things they do don't count because they are an oppressed minority". Why do you think they can't be held up to the same ethical standards as the majority? Are you implying they are to incompetent to think?
  - moo 12y ago
    Novacole is not saying violence and hatred toward white people is okay. The poster is distinguishing between prejudice and the term racism. Racism has a power component. Powerless people cannot make another race face racism as a group because they do not have the societal power to effect laws, police, institutional behavior.
    - aurelian 12y ago
      Your definition of racism is at odds with common dictionary definitions of the word. Leftist academics have tried to redefine the word.
      - moo 12y ago
        As I posted above quoting from Wikipedia: "One view holds that racism is best understood as 'prejudice plus power' because without the support of political or economic power, prejudice would not be able to manifest as a pervasive cultural, institutional or social phenomenon." To scientifically address issues affecting people as a group and not as individuals, anti-racist people would see the benefit of acknowledging the relevance of power to the perpetuation of racism being institutionally enforced. To deny the power component of racism is to make racism an argument about individual behavior which will never progress beyond "he said she said" which is not how science is done. Science is not done at the individual level but at the group level.

dwolfson20 12y ago

Actually, his views were rapidly evolving at the time of his death. Read the whole book.

oldmanjay 12y ago
I do know that, but most of his public output was spent on vitriol that damaged race relations further. hence the part where I felt it was a shame.
- sp332 12y ago
  I think you should have been more specific then.
- poolpool 12y ago
  Damaged race relations more than centuries of slavery and systematic discrimination by our country's leaders did?
  - tomjen3 12y ago
    Damage is cumulative. Arguing over who did the most damage is not likely to bring about anything but hatred, resentment and more damage. That is essentially what X did. King offered unity, healing and a better future.
    - poolpool 12y ago
      You don't politely ask your oppressors to give you the rights they have taken away from you.
      - tomjen3 12y ago
        Why not? It worked for King, it worked for Ghandi. Do you really think there could have been something like the civil rights laws -- born primarily of white people -- if the primary black person had been X and not King?
        djtriptych 12y ago
        It is patently absurd to give MLK's non-violent movement 100% of the credit for civil rights reform. The political situation during that time was unbelievably complex, and the changing attitudes of a turbulent nation cannot be so simply explained.
        enraged_camel 12y ago
        >>it worked for Ghandi. Yet it was Ghandi himself who, when asked if his peaceful tactics would have worked against Hitler, said, "probably not." I'm not suggesting that white people are literally Hitler, but simply that there's a time and place for everything, including peace and violence. And I say that as someone who has never called for violence on anything ever.
        tomjen3 12y ago
        That is true. However the guy I responded to said "you don't" as in a general rule.
        taejo 12y ago
        Perhaps it worked for King because the alternative to King was X?
  - serf 12y ago
    You're comparing 1960s America to colonial (and later) America. It's certainly possible that the damage done later on was greater, as there was a greater disbursement of knowledge, media, and information during a time in which the country was known as the land of opportunity, the melting pot. A speech calling for violence in the time of newspapers and television is surely more damaging than that same speech given in an auditorium in the early 1800s to a select group.. I am not attempting to put a 'value' on the whole of slave trade, that's impossible. I'd merely like to point out the 'apples vs. oranges' nature of your comparison.
    - pekk 12y ago
      People give such speeches today in mainstream right-wing rallies and are not criticized for it at all, let alone as harshly as Malcolm X is criticized. That's apples to apples since it's still the time of newspapers and television.
      - jmaygarden 12y ago
        Do you have examples of recent "mainstream" right-wing rallies that call for racial violence? That sounds absurd. I'd like to know more about it.
        novacole 12y ago
        Malcolm x never called for racial violence. Ever.
        jmaygarden 12y ago
        In the context of the previous two comments, it was stated that present-day mainstream right-wing speeches call for violence. If so, I must have missed it. I did not intend for my statement to reflect on the actions of Malcolm X.
- tesq 12y ago
  Race relations would have gone nowhere and would have been co-opted and neutered were it not for people like him.

kingkawn 12y ago

The waste was the generations of people lost to a racist society. His work to directly address it was an attempt to cure a tragedy that had been unfolding uninterrupted for hundreds of years.

oldmanjay 12y ago
a misguided attempt that had the opposite effect. it's almost as if you are of the belief that racism can fix racism.
- kingkawn 12y ago
  Rationalizing to the end of a problem does not make the conclusion feel true. The work of making something not only logical but believable is his contribution to American history. The argument that all persons are valuable is a simple one, and he allowed more people to see someone who felt it. His evolution from brutalized child, to street criminal, to inmate, to adherent, to individual enlightenment is something we would all be lucky to experience.

yiggydyang 12y ago

His father was murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. I would say he had justification in reacting. His intellect allowed him to get his message out to millions of people around the world from the streets of Harlem to the lecture halls at Oxford University. Hardly wasted. Hardly shameful. The real shame is referenced in the original article.

oldmanjay 12y ago
ah, eye for an eye. well, that philosophy has certainly never worked before but maybe this time!
- yiggydyang 12y ago
  It did not work this time? Ever heard of the civil rights act of 1964? Think it was a coincidence that it happened at around the same time his intellect was being wasted to use your own words?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

stuart78 12y ago

We are fairly quick to erase, forget or forgive the racism of white leaders, but seem to have a harder time doing so for those who oppose the majority's cultural status quo. I fear this has been used historically as a way to marginalize certain voices. Certainly X is a complicated, difficult and contradictory figure, but also one who, through the autobiography, is able to capture a particular time and experience amazingly well. I haven't read the book since high school, but the segment on conking stays vividly in my mind. It is a great example of one of those seemingly small details that X manages to use as mule to talk about larger issues of identity and assimilation.

dwolfson20 12y ago
Another way to put it: Malcolm X was authentic in everything he did, and that was something this country needed. He was able to articulate more clearly than anyone else the implications of being black in America: that the only way to succeed in any way was by trying to act white. Thanks in large part to his activism, that is far less true today.
- aurelian 12y ago
  What does it mean to act white or to act black for that matter?
  - dwolfson20 12y ago
    Conking is one example.
    - aurelian 12y ago
      Was conking necessary to succeed, or was it done because many blacks preferred the appearance of straight hair? Sidney Poitier played a doctor in No Way Out in 1950, and his hair doesn't appear to have been straightened.
      - wpietri 12y ago

danielrhodes 12y ago

What is telling was how his experiences actually led him to reconsider his racism. After he returned from the Hajj he changed his viewpoints, and that change ultimately got him killed. That ability to question your own assumptions is a powerful tool.

dannypgh 12y ago

Would love to see a citation for what you mean by "reactionary racism" - especially from the period in Malcolm's life after he split with the NOI in favor of Sunni Islam. It is true that there are many reactionary elements of NOI ideology and I'm sure you can find all sorts of snippets of quotes from when Malcolm was with them, but not only did he walk away from them, he ultimately gave his life in part because of his split to the NOI (and the FBI stoking tensions around that split via COINTELPRO) Generally more troubling here is the trend of white people to think that they are victims more than perpetrators of racism[1]; you're just backporting it to history here. Something is wrong with you if you can think about the 1960s or anyone from that period, and end up blaming Malcolm X for "racism" with no mention of the racist police, Klansmen, etc. that openly proclaimed and demonstrated their racist power in that era. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390205/Whites-suffer-racism-blacks-Study-shows-white-people-believe-discriminated-against.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390205/Whites-suffe...

serf 12y ago
Klansmen and corrupt police from the 60s were racist. So was Malcolm X. "Usually the black racist has been produced by the white racist. In most cases where you see it, it is the reaction to white racism, and if you analyze it closely, it's not really black racism... If we react to white racism with a violent reaction, to me that's not black racism. If you come to put a rope around my neck and I hang you for it, to me that's not racism. Yours is racism, but my reaction has nothing to do with racism..." - Malcolm X I disagree with him. I believe that hatred towards a race of people is racism, regardless of origins. When one condemns a group for the actions of a few -- i'll never believe that to be correct. You'll notice that he only mentions a reaction to imminent racism; he, however, did not conduct himself in that manner. He could be called a 'reactionary racist' because his racism was not entirely fueled by sociocultural norms, but rather as a reaction to the hatred that he experienced from living near racism which was fueled socioculturally. While I agree that the motives for that form of hatred are more pure and just, it's still hatred. The repeated perpetration of hatred only leads to more hatred, due to the non-linear growth of vendettas which require 'settling'. Just because he was the victim of much hatred doesn't make certain things he said 'non-racist', and as a (loud) public figure, atonement for advocacy of violence and racism in the past does not undo the damage that it caused. The 'nation's teachings' were despicable; how many were affected? I agree that nearly all of the atrocious stuff he said was during his part with the NOI, but there's no time machine. He still did it. He was never an angel, he just improved with age. The work he did towards uniting blacks as a singular entity to stand towards oppressions was fantastic, however the inches closer towards utopia that got us were lost to incessant preaching of racial weakening (coffee and creamer allegory..) and 'Truly Africans' movement, just further alienating the country as a whole. There are better civil leaders to look up to -- some don't even require you to skim past their evil past.

CameronNemo 12y ago

Not really his fault. If you read the book, you know that if he had his way he would have been a lawyer.

djtriptych 12y ago

You are using your intellect to convince the world that white men are oppressed. That's a waste. Malcolm X was addressing decades of white-on-black domestic terrorism across the country. Black people were being regularly lynched, firebombed, raped and imprisoned for little more than being black and asserting basic human rights. Segregationists controlled Congress when Malcolm was at his most influential - there was vanishingly little support from the federal government in stopping these attacks, and the state and local authorities were often complicit. Even in the face of this, Malcolm X never advocated violence except in self-defense, which is REASONABLE under the circumstances. His threat of returned violence lended credence to the more tolerant views of MLK, and even Malcolm preached universal love in the years before he was murdered.

likeclockwork 12y ago
Malcolm X was addressing decades of white-on-black domestic terrorism across the country. s/decades/centuries

novacole 12y ago

Black people can't be racist in any way that really counts. Racism only matters if the attitude had some sort of negative effect on the group you're racist towards. Since blacks have no real power as a whole, they can't be racist. If blacks were in the majority in terms of power, then and only then could they be racist. The ideas of Malcolm and the NOI, the panthers, etc were a perfectly sensible response to the racism of the white power structure.

hueving 12y ago
Ah, the standard bullshit apologetics of "the bad things they do don't count because they are an oppressed minority". Why do you think they can't be held up to the same ethical standards as the majority? Are you implying they are to incompetent to think?
- moo 12y ago
  Novacole is not saying violence and hatred toward white people is okay. The poster is distinguishing between prejudice and the term racism. Racism has a power component. Powerless people cannot make another race face racism as a group because they do not have the societal power to effect laws, police, institutional behavior.
  - aurelian 12y ago
    Your definition of racism is at odds with common dictionary definitions of the word. Leftist academics have tried to redefine the word.
    - moo 12y ago
      As I posted above quoting from Wikipedia: "One view holds that racism is best understood as 'prejudice plus power' because without the support of political or economic power, prejudice would not be able to manifest as a pervasive cultural, institutional or social phenomenon." To scientifically address issues affecting people as a group and not as individuals, anti-racist people would see the benefit of acknowledging the relevance of power to the perpetuation of racism being institutionally enforced. To deny the power component of racism is to make racism an argument about individual behavior which will never progress beyond "he said she said" which is not how science is done. Science is not done at the individual level but at the group level.