From: isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Who's Malcolm X ?
Date: 23 Nov 92 19:13:53
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
	<1992Nov22.201847.20506@starbase.trincoll.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panther.ai.mit.edu
In-reply-to: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu's message of Sun, 22 Nov 1992 20:18:47 GMT

nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu (norman miller) writes:
|In this discussion of whether MLK or Marshall or Malcolm X
|(and maybe we shouldn't ignore Randolph) "accomplished"
|more, I wonder if a lot of heat might get dissipated if
|judgements were made with respect to a particular time.

This seems fair, but I think it misses the point.  Comparing MLK to
Marshall is difficult at best.

Ask yourself this:  did MLK write any legislation?  did he argue cases
before the Supreme Court?  The answer is no.

So then wasn't Marshall more accomplished than MLK?  For that matter,
isn't Clarence Thomas?

The problem here is that we have no standards and no definitions.
Defining the more "accomplished" leader is often an exercise in
semantic acrobatics and ideological blindness.

MLK has come to be an important *symbol*.  But then, so has Malcolm X.

In my mind, these arguments are mostly useless and take away from the
real issues.  Malcolm X and Martin King were very complicated men and
their legacies are just as complicated.  We do them both a disservice
by pitting them against each other and accepting the implication that
one has to choose between them.  This was one of their mistakes an we
should not repeat it.

|Thus for the 1960's MLK was infinitely more important every
|which way than Malcolm.  Malcolm's message(s) was/were
|available to a very small audience.  That the message has
|grown and MLK's has declined doesn't tell us anything about
|the men and tells us everything about the times.

Well, even your first sentence tells us more about the times than the
men.  One might argue that we simply didn't realize how important
Malcolm was.  This might be fleshed out by noting that Martin moved
towards Malcolm at the end of his life and, in fact, was assasinated
when he, three years after Malcolm X, began to move towards a more
class-structured, globalistic view.

I offer no opinion or value judgement--I merely point out the
possibility. 



--
Peace.
"Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reforms.  The whole history of
 the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her
 august claims have been born of struggle...If there is no struggle, there
 is no progress.  Those who profess to  favor freedom and yet deprecate
 agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground.  They want
 rain without thunder and lightning.  They want the ocean without the
 awful roar of its many waters.  The struggle may be a moral one; or it may
 be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a
 struggle.  Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did and never
 will."
                           Frederick Douglass
                                   -\--/-
    Don't just adopt opinions     |  \/  |       Some of you are homeboys
          develop them.           |  /\  | but only I am The Homeboy From hell
                                   -/--\-