From: barnhart@ddsw1.mcs.com (Mr. Aaron Barnhart)
Subject: Re: The Sabotage of Malcolm X
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 00:06:57 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A.

HF.GTD@forsythe.stanford.edu (Gabrielle Daniels) wrote:
:.
:The man was a bodhisattva, a person who deeply cares for the lives
:of others.  This was particularly true when he went back to the old
:neighborhood and hunted up West Indian Archie and others to try to
:save their lives. When he couldn't, he went out and tried to help
:other black people.

Welcome back, Gabrielle!

You will be none too surprised at this interpretation of that same
episode in Malcolm's life through the refractor of your favorite
white impersonator:

"Moreover, once Malcolm learned from these people, faiths, and
ideologies -- or had taken what he could from them -- he betrayed
them all, one after another. [...] And with each betrayal-victory
there was something of a gloat -- his visit to West Indian Archie
when he was broken, his telling Mike Wallace on national television
about Elijah Muhummad's infidelities.  Betrayal was triumph for
Malcolm, a moving beyond some smallness, some corruption, some
realm that was beneath him."

Ah, fuck off, Shelby.

Ahem.  Sorry, but Malcolm did not exactly leave this world with a
host of betrayals, unlike some small men I do know.  Unfortunately,
very few of his close, longtime friends to whom he remained devoted
are dead (Alex Haley, Kenneth B. Clark).  I know of a coupla white
folx who were close to Malcolm -- Nat Hentoff and Arthur Kunstler --
who, like Haley, were friends of Malcolm's even long before he came
to trust them fully.  Shelby Steele sets up this abstract universe
where people are embraced, then disposed.  Obviously a man with
hundreds and thousands of contacts in this world, only a portion
of whom were lost during his two big fallings-out (in Harlem and
in the NOI), had loads of friends he kept through thick and thin.
Even Jesus kept 12 men and who knows how many women in his flock
after delivering his "hard sayings."

On that note, I was struck to the core by how *alone* Malcolm was at
the end.  That is clear from every account I have read -- Perry's,
Haley's -- and comes through movingly in the assassination scene of
the movie.  

I cried too during that scene, but the one that really wrecked me was
Malcolm's first encounter with Elijah Muhummad after his release from
jail.  In the epiphany of redemption realized, there is something very
tender and pure that no critic can touch.  Especially not an obvious
secular humanist like Shelby Steele.  "The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not comprehend it."

:.
:The man never took a dime for his own self-aggrandisement!  He and
:his family hardly had any clothes, they didn't own their own home,
:nothing, while NOI members took all the bread, dissed and finally
:killed him. Horrible.  Just sad and horrible. Can we say the same
:about Jesse? and some of these other brothers who are leaders?

No, my dear.  You can't.  The only folx I know whose greatness of
heart can compare are not "leaders" -- they toil in relative anonymity.
Of course, I wouldn't wish "leadership" on anybody.

By the way, one thing I've noticed in reviews of Malcolm X.  Some white
reviewers interpret the role of federal spooks in the movie -- following
him around, bugging his phone -- as Spike Lee inferring that somehow
the Feds had it in for him and were complicit in his killing.  Black
reviewers say no such thing: that Lee is just saying, Some folks knew
that some killing was going to go down and didn't lift a finger to
stop it.  But the white reviewers (Richard Christiansen, Michael Medved,
others?) trip over that line and fantasize that Lee thought U.S.
dirty tricksters would waste their time on this man.  

As for all the hoohah over Malcolm's FBI file and the bugging: hell,
everyone got bugged during the 60s.  It was the unwritten history of
the era!  Seems some of the reviewers of this movie aren't used to
being suspicious of the powers around them -- except when it's Spike
Lee or some other troublemaker.  (N.B.:  Malcolm's oral history, as
it turns out, is not exactly "unwritten," as Clayborne Carson has
edited and published his FBI file.)

Just my dollar-sign-dot-oh-two.

Aaron

P.S.  Have a nice holiday?
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american,soc.culture.asian.american