From: HF.GTD@forsythe.stanford.edu (Gabrielle Daniels)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Ruling Class Tries to Co-Opt Malcol
Date: 14 Dec 1992 18:45:42 -0800
Organization: Stanford University
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: morrow.stanford.edu

In article <Bz117q.Fxs@ddsw1.mcs.com>,
barnhart@ddsw1.mcs.com (Mr. Aaron Barnhart) writes:
>
>Not that I think Shelby Steele is invincible because he can write
>such cold blooded prose BUT here's his spin on the matter.  It's
>the cover story to this week's edition (12/21) of THE NEW REPUBLIC.
>
>excerpt from
>"Malcolm Little"
>by Shelby Steele
>
>... I believe that the larger reason for his perdurability and
>popularity is one that is almost never mentioned: that Malcolm X
>was a deeply conservative man.
.
.
The man was a chameleon.  No one could completely pin him down.

In times when the collective identity
>is besieged and confused, groups usually turn to their conservatives,
>not to their liberals; to their extreme partisans, not to their
>open-minded representatives.  The last 25 years have seen huge
>class and cultural differences open up in black America.  The
>current bromide is that we are not a monolith, and this is profoundly
>true.
.
.
If black people are turning to their conservatives, as this rat is
insisting, I certainly see no groundswell for him.  If anything,
King was a conservative. Why aren't the brothers and sisters
sporting "K" caps?
.
Secondly, we've always known that black folks aren't all kneejerk
Demos. If anything, they are Democrats with reservations, and not at
Spago's.
.
No, people aren't giving Malcolm a second look because he's
conservative. They're looking at him because he beat all addictions:
white women, drugs, and even religion itself, in order to get to his
true self.

  We now have a black governor and a black woman senator and
>millions of black college graduates and so on, but also hundreds
>of thousands of young blacks in prison.  Black identity no longer
>has a centrifugal force in a racial sense.
.
.
Perhaps, this is why Alan Keyes, black GOP candidate for Barbara
Mikulski's seat, who paid himself $100,000 clams salary out of his
campaign funds, could be sniffed out as to how black he actually
is.

>
>Malcolm was conservative through and through.  As a black nationalist,
>he was a hard-line militarist who believed in the principle of self-
>mastery through force.
.
.
Doublespeak. Malcolm believed in blacks defending themselves against
racism and white supremacy.  Only that.  Not in taking over a
country like the Croats eating up Bosnia-Herzegovina.  But
self-defense.

His language and thinking in this regard were
>oddly in line with Henry Kissinger's description of the world as
>a brutal place in which safety and a balance of power is maintained
>through realpolitik.  He was Reaganesque in his insistence on
>negotiating with whites from a position of strength -- meaning the
>threat of violence.  And his commitment (until the last year of his
>life) to racial purity and separatism would have made him the natural
>ally of David Duke.
.
.
I am about to puke. Henry K and Reagan on the same line as Malcolm?
 Come on...
.
Now what could we do to white America?  If anything, burning cities
strikes fear.  And irrational fear could have folks hurling bombs in
their own neighborhood, as in Philadelphia with the MOVE people.
Give me a break. This guy is pathetic.

>
>In his personal life, moreover, Malcolm scrupulously followed all the
>Islamic strictures against alcohol, tobacco, drugs, fornication, and
>adultery, and his attitude toward women was decidedly patriarchal: as
>a Black Muslim minister he counseled that women could never be
>completely trusted because of their vanity, and he forbade dancing
>in his mosque.
.
.
So?  Black women know this. We say, "Oh, well."  He deserves to be
criticized for this.  But coming from his own upbringing, I can see
why he chose the NOI to point the finger at so-called lascivious
women.

  In his speeches he reserved a special contempt for
>white liberals, and he once praised Barry Goldwater as a racial
>realist.  Believing entirely in black self-help, he had no use for
>government programs to uplift blacks, and sneered at the 1964 Civil
>Rights Bill as nothing more than white expedience.
.
.
So?  I heard my own father downrate white liberals. Yet he ran with
the ball with civil rights and mixed it up with self-help.  Who
knows where Malcolm may have gone. However, not down the primrose
path with this intellectual nazi.

>Malcolm X was one of the most unabashed and unqualified conservatives
>of his time.
.
.
He was a conservative in his home.  He was a radical outside of it.

  And yet today he is forgiven his sexism by black
>feminists,
.
.
Just because I, and many other feminist sisters, know why he was
sexist and could understand the roots of it, doesn't mean we condone
it.  We don't. I haven't heard of him putting his hand on Betty
either, despite some of the extreme punishments that could be meted
out for women in the NOI. Malcolm also found out that the Honorable
Elijah broke his own rules as far as women are concerned.  That
must have mussed his hair considerably.
.
his political conservatism by black and white liberals,
.
Like he was a closet Republican or something?  Jeez.
.
 his
>Islamic faith by black Christians,
.
So? At least he came to believe in himself in the scheme of the
UNIverse. A lot of the brothers driving and mowing down innocents as
well as quarries don't believe in anything anymore.
.
his violent rhetoric by non-violent
>veterans of the civil rights struggle,
.
SNCC veterans, as I saw in "Eyes on the Prize II," liked what he had
to say in 1962-1965, during the height of the movement.  He
basically said what they had to eschew as part of the movement.
Didn't mean they didn't believe it; they silently agreed until he--
and their innards--got too loud not be heard.
.
 his separatism by blacks who live
>integrated lives,
.
So?  Malcolm said himself that blacks come home from "white parties"
and dog the hell out of their hosts.  This is not far wrong.
Sometimes even folks like Steele must do the same thing.  Steele is
being disingeneous, here.
.
 and even the apparent fabrication of events in his
>childhood by those who would bring his story to the screen.  Malcolm
>enjoys one of the best Teflon coatings of all time.
.
That's Spike's mistake.  That's his hero to the max.  He ain't into
revisionism.
.
Actually Shelby Steele wishes he could slide off like Malcolm.  And
he ain't getting off that easy. He'd have to be dead. And they don't
kill folks like Shelby, you know?
.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american