From: HF.GTD@forsythe.stanford.edu (Gabrielle Daniels)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Riding the mule with Malcolm
Date: 12 Jan 1993 18:04:37 -0800
Organization: Stanford University
NNTP-Posting-Host: morrow.stanford.edu

Several white men on this board, most notably Michalowski (sic) and
Kolodney, are on their high horses about Malcolm and his true
legacy.  Previously, I have put out several missives regarding
Malcolm's importance to US, and by US I mean black people.  I
reiterate, you white guys just dont get it.  You persist in the
negatives to make yourselves look and feel good...and superior.  Who
the hell are you guys to constantly sit in judgment on US, and in
who should be our role models, our heroes and our leaders?  You are
part of the fucking problem!  This is the perception most black
people have retained of guys like you, and you've never failed to
dance that two-step!
.
I constantly shake my head over white folks' pathological--I say,
cra-zay--attachment to folks like Perot, Nixon, Helms, Wallace,
Goldwater, MacArthur, Reagan, Buchanan, McCarthy, Ollie the Rabbit
North, etc. et al.  They are aberrations, not real heroes in the
American pantheon.  But of course, any one saying anything
alternative about these cats is stepped on.  Late last summer I put
on the board something about the young brothers and sisters who cop
the wrong impression about Malcolm's pre-break NOI statements:
either agreeing with a poster or writing a piece.  This is just like
certain Buddhists who read Siddartha's previous sutras and think
theyve got it, when the World-Honored One actually said after
expounding his next to final piece, the Lotus Sutra, "to honestly
discard the provisional teachings"--in other words, to ignore
whatever he preached before.
.
Malcolm said in some of his post-Mecca letters and speeches that he
had changed his mind, that he was apologizing, that he was
looking forward to working with others.  Perry said Malcolm's
disavowal of the Black Muslim idea that all whites were devils began
almost with his first visit to Egypt in the late 50s and that the
Mecca turnaround was a premise to finally articulating his actual
feelings.  Furthermore, one must understand: Malcolm was one of
those guys--white, black or whatver--who needed revenge in order to
live again.  The NOI was his way up and out of the mess he was in.
In other words, the best revenge for him was living good and
straight and following the Honorable Elijah.  When he heard about
Elijah Muhammad's sexual shenanigans, when he saw how he was being
slowly showed the door because of jealousy and envy, when he checked
the NOI corruption, it shook him.  He was never the same again:  he
knew he had to rely on himself, but he had learned.  After Mecca, he
never said he would stop questioning and being critical of the
system and its proponents.  He said he was willing to like certain
white folks (and he had them in his corner already:  Nat Hentoff,
William Kunstler,etc.) but love white folks like Martin King?  Come
on...not every black person is gonna love and worship the ground you
walk on, no matter what positive things you do with individual black
folks or with black people as a whole.  Not every black person
wanted to turn the other cheek when someone was beating him/her with
a nightstick or blackjack.
.
Malcolm was not perfect.  We know this.  He was a complicated,
constantly changing and thinking brother.  We also know, through
sources like Clay Carson, head of the MLK Papers Project and others,
that Malcolm was making moves towards organizations like SNCC and to
King himself.  To say that Malcolm basically did nothing during his
life is patently ludicrous and false.  On whose value scale is his
nothingness based?  Brother man was no fool.  If he persisted in his
rhetoric in constantly questioning the motives of white people, of
Johnson, Kennedy and up to and including King and the rest of the
civil rights hierarchy, it was basically to give a wake-up call to
us all:  dont believe the hype and dont buy everything on the shelf.
On the other hand, he knew he must work with some black leaders in a
common goal which was the liberation of himself and other black
people.  This is not schizoid behavior, this is being supportive and
critically analytical at the same time.  Sometimes, telling truth is
cruel.  Isnt that the mark of the loyal opponent?
.
Nothing niggers do will ever please me.  Its not only a saying in
our community, its the depiction of a frame of mind.  I wouldnt be
surprised if we borrowed it from you sophomoric cats' tired
attitudes about us...about 400 years worth.