Posted on 02/26/2005 9:19:28 AM PST by Chi-townChief
Forty years ago today, Malcolm X was shot down in front of his family and an audience of followers at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. When he died, Malcolm X had been estranged from the Nation of Islam for about a year and had begun to call Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the cult, a liar, a fraud and a womanizer. Those were mighty hot words to direct at the Nation of Islam, which was feared throughout the black community as a known gathering place for violent criminals of all sorts who had been converted in prison, the way Malcolm himself had. Before his ascent in the cult world of homemade Islam, Malcolm Little had been known as "Big Red," a street hustler with a big mouth, a cocaine habit and a willingness to get rowdy and wild if the occasion called for it.
Sent to prison for a series of burglaries, Malcolm turned to Islam, or a version of it, promoted as the "black man's true religion" which held the secrets to liberation from white domination and black self-hatred. A convert, he began the liberation by replacing his "slave name" with an Islamic name or an X.
Malcolm X appeared on the national scene in 1959, presented by the media as the face of what white racism had done to black people. He was a minister of hate who used fiery rhetoric to teach that the white man was a devil invented 6,000 years ago by a mad black scientist. White audiences were appalled or darkly amused by this cartoon version of Islam, but more than a few black Americans were influenced by the Nation of Islam and by its dominant mouthpiece - light-skinned, freckle-faced, red-haired Malcolm X, the voice of black rage incarnate.
Some Negroes left the Christian church, others changed their names. A number stopped eating pork and demanded beef barbecue, and a good many eventually stopped frying their hair and became more nationalistic and hostile to whites, in their own rhetoric and in the rhetoric they liked to hear.
Malcolm X proved how vulnerable Negroes were to hearing another Negro put some hard talk on the white man. The long heritage of silence, both in slavery and the redneck South, was so strong that speech became a much more important act than many realized. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized this, observing that many of those who went to hear Malcolm X were less impressed with his ideas than they were with the contemptuous way he spoke to white power.
Since his death, Malcolm X has been elevated from a heckler of the civil rights moment to a civil rights leader - which he never was - and many people now think that he was as important to his moment as King. He was not, and Malcolm X was well aware of this. But in our country, where liberal contempt for black people is boundless, we should not be surprised to see a minor figure lacquered with media "respect" and thrown in the lap of the black community, where he is passed off as a great hero.
It's a crime that Black History month even exists and AMERICAN history is no longer taught at all.So many different peoples,from so many different places,combined their talents and abilities,to make our wonderful country what it is;warts and all.
agreed
Your ignorance is still breathtaking.
The fundamental truth is what you can never grasp, for whatever personal reason I don't know.
Once in the 1890's Booker T Washington was walking down the street. A white man, walking with his wife, accused him of looking at her. He then commenced to beat Booker to a pulp for this "insult". Of course he had every legal right to do so because it was Booker who was tried for assault.
The lesson was clear. The most powerful black man in America could be "disciplined" by any white man who chose to do so for being "uppity" with total legal impunity.
Was it safe for a black man to be involved interracially before 1965 ? No. Did his white wife's career prosper ? Never, ever. Or was Inger Stevens delusional when she hid her marriage to a black millionaire ? Or the studio bosses when they decided to protect their investment in Kim Novak by getting the mob to lean on Sammy Davis Jr ?
Why is the obvious truth such a struggle for you ?
Were Arabs lynching blacks ? Did a Muslim kill his father ?
And in the end it wasn't a white man who killed Malcom X. Think about that.
Screwy Louie, Elijah Muhammad's towel boy.
That is pretty much it.
All I'm telling you is where Malcolm X was coming from. And if black people had treated white people the way whites treated blacks would there have been a white MLK preaching that whites had a moral duty to nonviolently love blacks ? I doubt it. White people would take it for granted that they had every moral right to take up armed struggle. Sin ? No. Just being human instead of being expected to be some pink plaster saint.
MLK wasn't any "weenie". He was the product of an era in which the federal government recognized that Jim Crow was a liability. He lived in an era in which at least ideologically white racism was no longer respectable. He could clearly see that history was moving in a favorable direction. So his choice of strategy was correct.
And it was the intervention of the federal government that made his strategy correct. Without it a NOI/Malcolm X strategy would have been the correct one. Historically, nonviolence only worked in India because India did not have a large white settler population willing to kill or die to preserve white supremacy. It failed miserably in Ireland, Algeria, and South Africa when it encountered Orangemen, pied noirs, and Boers who were willing to kill or die without guilt or hesitation to preserve their privileged status quo. Absent the armed intervention of the federal government MLK and the SCLC would have been drowned in blood by the KKK.
So violence is OK as long as you have a reason?
John Wayne wasn't fictional. He was an actor. His characters were fictional. Now, I'll go put on my firesuit to prepare for the blast I'll receive for being a smartass. It's OK, though. I deserve it.
Except it is only blacks that are allowed to tell the way they feel. If whites tell the way they feel it is hate speech.
Are you a pacifist ? A total "turn the other cheek" kind of guy ? If not, then you obviously believe that it is.
Everyone can find a reason to hate, to turn to violence. I am not a pacifist. I also am not a cold blooded killer who would kill because a black "looked" at a white woman.
And what you're doing on a Conservative forum,is also beyond my ken.
You'd rather dwell on the bad things.I bet you don't even know of the great things,that blacks in America did way back when. The first three black cadets,who graduated from West Point were Messrs Flipper,Alexander'and Young...who began their college careers in 1877,'83'and '84 respectively and were all commissioned officers in an all WHITE U.S. Army.
The fundamental truth is,which you refused to grasp,because you are a race monger and NO Conservative,is that both bad and good things have happened here,to ALL people.
Many blacks are more against intermarriage than whites ever were!
There are probably more racists blacks today,than whites.
There is no point,whatsoever,to your puerile,uneducated posts,except to try to paint whites as something they aren't and to continue the spurious, vile "victimology" of blacks.
I remember Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. You are a sham,a phony posting to a Conservative forum,but you're nothing but a LIBERAL racist and an uneducated one at that.
You grew up in a very strange part of the USA. When I grew up, it was BIG NEWS when a black man married a white woman in VA which was against the law. That was 1962 and the law in VA was changed. In Ohio, where I grew up, black men and white women could date and marry and many did although people would stare at them but no one got lynched, no one even said anything, no one vandalized their house. Yes it was "not normal" but most people let it go without incident. I'd say in the 1970's it was no big deal at all for a black man to be dating a white woman in Ohio or Northern California which are the two places I was familiar with at the time. I will admit to not having gone to the old South until 1979 so I don't know what went on there.
Now as far as the movies go, hollywood is a racist bigoted town. No question about that. But I do remember Showboat, the movie and musical doing well. And I remember Billy Dee Williams occasionally getting the white chick in a movie or two in the late 1970's. I think Denzel Washington got the white chick lately too. But, if you actually watch what Hollywood puts out, I feel very sorry for you. It is divorced from reality. Besides have you seen how white men are portrayed by hollywood. Check out "Best picture of the year" American Beauty. Every white guy in it was a piece of crap.
The Irish fought the English for centuries and last.The IRA were and are to this day,terrorists and in league with terrorist around the world,including al Qaeda and The Shining Path.
Your historical knowledge is appalling;to say the least.
So you think that the NOI should have gone after and killed all whites,do you? You're pathetic!
That extraordinarily heroic blacks managed to overcome every obstacle white America could put in their path is no endorsement of white America. And it does nothing to alter the fact that the systematic degradation of blacks wasn't an episode or a prejudice of a few individuals. It was the very foundation of the traditional way of life of most of America until 1965. Absent that understanding you are reduced to only your level of "feel good" snippets, ludicrously trying to argue that Jack Johnson not being lynched somehow proves how "colorblind" America was. And even being as ignorant as not understanding the difference between white man-black woman and black man-white woman.
Again, your knowledge is less than pathetic.
The Boers did not have black allies. They had black slaves and subjects, but never allies. Only human beings can be allies, not "Sons of Ham".
The IRA of 1970 was not the IRA of 1919 so try to get your facts straight. They took arms only after it was obvious that Ireland would never get Home Rule because the British government would always back down before the Ulster Protestants. John Redmond worked nonviolently for Home Rule but failed because the Ulster Protestants were always willing to use violence to prevent Home Rule and the British government would never be able to face them down. Perhaps you should do some reading on this.
NOI gone after and killed all whites ? What nonsense you always talk ! If the federal government had not supported MLK then black people would have had every bit as much moral right to fight for their freedom by any means necessary as white people would have. In similar circumstances, how nonviolent would white people have been ? And why should blacks be expected to be pink plaster saints and noble victims ?
Recently means 1970, in case you didn't know.
And Hollywood is not a "racist, bigoted town". It is just timid. Denzel has played opposite white leading ladies but his character has never been romantically involved with them. Never. In "The Pelican Brief" his character is romantically involved with Julia Robert's character in the book but this was deleted from the movie because the love scenes tested poorly. Audiences didn't like them. In fact in "Bone Crusher" his character was ludicrously paraplegic to account for why he isn't trying to get busy with Angelina Jolie. Wil Smith a few days ago frankly admitted that Eva Mendes was his costar in "Hitch" because the studio would have been afraid of casting a white actress and latinas aren't quite white. Why do you think it is that every black white budy movie has them competing over a latina, even as far back as Jim Brown, Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch in "100 Rifles" ?
No. It is an issue. Even now.
America has treated more people,than just blacks,badly. The Scots-Irish were indentured servants and treat equal to the earliest black slaves...that is to say terribly.The Shepardic Jews joined with their Christian brothers to treat the new immigrant German Ashkenazim Jews badly,who,in turn,turned up their collective noses at the Russian and Polish Jews who emigrated to America in the early 20th century. But ALL Jews were kept out of most colleges,when Paul Robeson went to Rutgers,without affirmative action of any kind.
Irish and Italian immigrants were treated as badly,or worse, than blacks were at that time.
And there was NOTHING "magical" at all about the year 1965,which has all of us wondering why you keep using that particular date to mean/mark anything. There were mixed marriages,which did NOT result in lynchings nor anything else untoward,decades prior to that year,in places like N.Y. and Jersey and Chicago.
In the 1950s and even earlier,upper middle class blacks were going to elite Northeastern boarding schools and colleges.
It is you and you alone,who are spreading this constant vision of America the dreadful,America the awful, where blacks were routinely degraded,if not worse,until that "blessed" year,1965;which is not true at all. And even if it were,that was 40 years ago and things have certainly changed mightily.Yet,you post as though Sam Legree was still whipping the backs of slaves and that it is some sort of horror that Hollywood isn't making movie after movie with a black leading man and a white leading lady. You have forgotten about "GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER",I guess;or are ignoring it,because it just doesn't fit your agenda.
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