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.
Interestingly, the KKK used almost exactly the same "oppressed people" justification. The ironies abound.
You failed to answer the question. Instead you mentioned reconstruction, which is another example that your use of the term "undiluted evil" is inaccurate and hysterical.
No kidding. Those guys are an embarrassment to themselves, let alone other white people. It disgusts me that the KKK and groups like them are still attracting any adherents.
My thought exactly.
Your answer was silly.
You prattled about the Fourteenth Amendment, oblivious to the fact that it only applied to black people during Reconstruction. Once Reconstruction ended Jim Crow laws and pure KKK terror destroyed all political rights for blacks, even down to the most basic right of citizenship. The right to demand the protection of the law against physical violence. Between 1877 and 1965, for black people there was no police protection whatsoever against white violence, so there was a tremendous amount of it. Indeed, the police often joined in lynchings and white riots.
Re:NOI+Malcolm X, "Problem is the only way they seem to get their message out is combining it w/rabid Jew hatred and hatred of White people" That is their message.The NOI is a mirror image of white racist groups.Black or White,hatred is what makes these people tick.
He was enigmatic. Even during his 'I'll never be out nigguhed again' phase, if you look into his life history you begin to suspect the comment was due in some significant measure to political expedience. Not that that justifies it.
Wallace was a boxer in his later youth 18-20, something like that. One night, before a match he heard some commotion outside his dressing room or area where he was preparing to box, so he went out to investigate, and found these two guys beating up on a younger black kid. Wallace was able to save the black kid from the beating, and took a beating himself in the process. Can't remember if he went on with his own match or not.
But, it seems to me that any person, as reviled as Wallace was for his bigotry, who went to these lengths to save someone from a race he supposedly so despised, wasn't the congenital racist his enemies loved to pretend he was.
Do you have any idea what percentage of the Black vote he got, when he ran for governor? The reason I ask is that for some reason, I'm under the impression that he got a surprising percentage of it, because as a local politician he had been quite adept at getting his State's share of federal dollars to his constituents.
I was aware of that, but thanks.
I have no doubt that some of his racism was, in fact, political. Just like some of the race baiters we have these days. For the most part, people really DO know and act better than that, thank goodness.
As for your question, honestly, I don't know. I would have to google it and see if I can find out, but to be honest, he was before my time, heh heh, so I am not sure of stuff like that.
What happened to the first 9 Malcolms?
I emigrated to the US in '58, along with my parents. My Mother recalled on a couple of occasions a conversation she had had with my great uncle, the man responsible for sponsoring our entry into the States.
Anyway, the conversation I'm referring to centered on the issue of whether it was ok for a Black person to be able to walk on the same side of the street as a white person. Evidently, my great uncle was recalling the time, in his not too distant past, when black people were not allowed to do that, and it was his opinion that it was better when they were not allowed to do so. And this was in the north.
I have to say that it really pains me to admit it, because he was a good man in many way, and I loved him, and if not for him I would have never known the greatness and goodness of these here United States. But, I have to admit it to give testimony to the indiginities suffered by Black Americans.
The issue of slavery has a very small ability to move me because it has been a staple of human history. But, I'm very moved by the horrible and decades long indignities that the Black Americans suffered. And I'm very moved when I see an old Black soldier, dignified and true, proudly recount his Service to a Country that despised him at worst, or acknowledged him not at all, at best. That is an example of a superior man.
I have WAY more respect for Malcolm AND King because neither sought personal wealth or self aggrandizement from the movement,unlike two other current well known black"leaders"
(sigh) History is so much easier when you don't know the facts. A bit of suggested reading:
The first step in building a better relationship between black and white people was what diplomats call a "frank exchange of views". That means direct, in-your-face venting....
LOL! Reminds me of a truism:
If a diplomat says "No", he means "Maybe".
If a diplomat says "Maybe", he means "Yes".
If a diplomat says "Yes", he's no diplomat.
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'The Angry Scar', by Hodding Carter.
"Perhaps you should bother to familiarize yourself with that historical record."...as to why those whites in the post-belleum South did, and acted, the way they did. If one is leery of the unvarnished, non-PC truth this book "is not pretty reading".
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A valid argument can be made that the original neo-cons are Trotskyites. Where does that put Malcolm vis a vis Perle and Wolfowitz? Or better said, does it affect any attitude you might have about the architects of the WOT?
Again, your ignorance is deliberate.
The period of abolition and reconstruction was a very brief interlude between the undiluted evil of chattel slavery and the undiluted evil of Jim Crow when SOME whites were willing to entertain the notion that blacks might be human beings. And never avoid the fact that the abolitionists and the Friends who ran the underground railroad were the extremists of their time. This brief interlude that quickly ended was never more than a bubble. It began and ended in an America where the inferiority of blacks was the accepted wisdom of every voice of moral, political, and intellectual authority in white America.
There is no retreat at all. I simply gave you more credit than I should have.
What's in the book that you can't say on this website?
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Why be polite? He saw his father (who was a minister) beaten and lynched. That drove his mother crazt and resulted in the family being scattered to different foster homes in different states. His family was destroyed, literally, by white racists who had nothing to fear from the law. What would you do?
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