[News] Malcolm X and Human Rights in the Time of Trumpism: Transcending the Masters tools
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Fri Feb 24 11:24:16 EST 2017
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/24/malcolm-x-and-human-rights-in-the-time-of-trumpism-transcending-the-masters-tools/
Malcolm X and Human Rights in the Time of Trumpism: Transcending the
Masters tools
by Ajamu Baraka <http://www.counterpunch.org/author/ajamu-baraka/> -
February 24, 2017
52 years-ago on February 21^st , the world lost the great anti-colonial
fighter, Malcolm X. Around the world, millions pause on this anniversary
and take note of the life and contribution of Brother Malcolm. Two years
ago, I keynoted a lecture on the legacy of Malcolm X at the American
University in Beirut, Lebanon. While I had long been aware of the
veneration that Malcolm inspired in various parts of the world, I was
still struck by the love and appreciation that so many have for Malcolm
beyond activists in the black world.
There are a number of reasons that might explain why 52 years later so
many still pay homage to Malcolm. For those of us who operate within
context of the Black Radical Tradition, Malcolm’s political life and
philosophy connected three streams of the Black Radical Tradition:
nationalism, anti-colonialism and internationalism. For many, the way in
which Malcolm approached those elements account for his appeal. Yet, I
think there is something else. Something not reducible to the language
of political struggle and opposition that I hear when I encounter people
in the U.S. and in other parts of the world when they talk about
Malcolm. I suspect it is his defiance, his dignity, his courage and his
selflessness. For me, it is all of that, but it is also how those
elements were reflected in his politics, in particular his approach to
the concept of human rights.
The aspects of his thought and practice that distinguished the period of
his work in that short year between his break with the Nation of Islam
(NOI) in 1964 and his assassination in 1965 included not only his
anti-racism and anti-colonialist stance but also his advocacy of a
radical approach to the issue of human rights.
*Human Rights as a De-Colonial Fighting Instrument*
Malcolm – in the tradition of earlier black radical activists and
intellectuals in the late 1940s – understood the subversive potential of
the concept of human rights when philosophically and practically
disconnected from its liberal, legalistic, and state-centered genesis.
For Malcolm, internationalizing resistance to the system of racial
oppression in the U.S. meant redefining the struggle for constitutional
civil rights by transforming the struggle for full recognition of
African American citizenship rights to a struggle for human rights.
This strategy for international advocacy was not new. African Americans
led by W.E. B. Dubois were present at Versailles during the post-World
War I negotiations to pressure for self-rule for various African
nations, including independence from the racist apartheid regime in
South Africa. At the end of the World War II during the creation of the
United Nations, African American radicals forged the possibilities to
use this structure as a strategic space to pressure for international
support for ending colonization in Africa and fight against racial
oppression in the United States.
Malcolm studied the process by which various African American
organizations – the National Negro Congress (NNC), National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Civil Rights
Congress (CRC), petitioned the UN through the Human Rights Commission on
behalf of the human rights of African Americans. Therefore, in the very
first months after his split with the NOI, he already envisioned idea
that the struggle of Africans in the U.S. had to be internationalized as
a human rights struggle. He advised leaders of the civil rights
movement to “/expand their civil rights movement to a human rights
movement, it would internationalize it/.”
Taking a page from the examples of the NNC, NAACP and CRC, The
Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), one of the two organizations
Malcolm formed after leaving the NOI, sought to bring the plight of
African Americans to the United Nations to demand international
sanctions against the U.S. for refusing to recognize the human rights of
this oppressed nation.
However, there was something quite different with Malcolm’s approach to
human rights that distinguished him from mainstream civil rights
activists. By grounding himself in the radical human rights approach,
Malcolm articulated a position on human rights struggle that did not
contain itself to just advocacy. He understood that appealing to the
same powers that were responsible for the structures of oppression was a
dead end. Those kinds of unwise and potentially reactionary appeals
would never result in substantial structural changes. Malcolm understood
oppressed peoples must commit themselves to radical political struggle
in order to advance a dignified approach to human rights.
“We have to make the world see that the problem that we’re
confronted with is a problem for humanity. It’s not a Negro problem;
it’s not an American problem. You and I have to make it a world
problem, make the world aware that there’ll be no peace on this
earth as long as our human rights are being violated in America.”
And if the U.S. and the international community does not address the
human rights plight of the African American, Malcolm is clear on the
course of action: “If we can’t be recognized and respected as a human
being, we have to create a situation where no human being will enjoy
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Malcolm’s approach to the realization of human rights was one in which
human agency is at the center. If oppressed individuals are not willing
to fight for their human rights, Malcolm suggested that “/you should be
kept in the cotton patch where you’re not a human being/.”
If you are not ready to pay the price required to experience full
dignity as a person and as members of a self-determinant people, then
you will be consigned to the “zone of non-being,” as Fanon refers to
that place where the non-European is assigned. Malcolm referred to that
zone as a place where one is a sub-human:
“You’re an animal that belongs in the cotton patch like a horse and
a cow, or a chicken or a possum, if you’re not ready to pay the
price that is necessary to be paid for recognition and respect as a
human being.
And what is that price?
The price to make others respect your human rights is death. You
have to be ready to die… it’s time for you and me now to let the
world know how peaceful we are, how well-meaning we are, how
law-abiding we wish to be. But at the same time, we have to let the
same world know we’ll blow their world sky-high if we’re not
respected and recognized and treated the same as other human beings
are treated.”
*People(s)-Centered Human Rights: *
This approach to human rights struggle is the basis of what I call the
People(s)-Centered approach to human rights struggle.
*People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHR) are those non-oppressive rights
that reflect the highest commitment to universal human dignity and
social justice that individuals and collectives define and secure for
themselves through social struggle*.
This is the Black Radical Tradition’s approach to human rights. It is
an approach that views human rights as an arena of struggle that, when
grounded and informed by the needs and aspirations of the oppressed,
becomes part of a unified comprehensive strategy for de-colonization and
radical social change.
The PCHR framework provides an alternative and a theoretical and
practical break with the race and class-bound liberalism and mechanistic
state-centered legalism that informs mainstream human rights.
The people-centered framework proceeds from the assumption that the
genesis of the assaults on human dignity that are at the core of human
rights violations is located in the relationships of oppression. The
PCHR framework does not pretend to be non-political. It is a political
project in the service of the oppressed. It names the enemies of
freedom: the Western white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy.
Therefore, the realization of authentic freedom and human dignity can
only come about as a result of the radical alteration of the structures
and relationships that determine and often deny human dignity. In other
words, it is only through social revolution that human rights can be
realized.
The demands for clean water; safe and accessible food; free quality
education; healthcare and healthiness for all; housing; public
transportation; wages and a socially productive job that allow for a
dignified life; ending of mass incarceration; universal free child care;
opposition to war and the control and eventual elimination of the
police; self-determination; and respect for democracy in all aspects of
life are some of the people-centered human rights that can only be
realized through a bottom-up mass movement for building popular power.
By shifting the center of human rights struggle away from advocacy to
struggle, Malcolm laid the foundation for a more relevant form of human
rights struggle for people still caught in the tentacles of
Euro-American colonial dominance. The PCHR approach that creates human
rights from the bottom-up views human rights as an arena of struggle.
Human rights does not emanate from legalistic texts negotiated by
states—it comes from the aspirations of the people. Unlike the liberal
conception of human rights that elevates some mystical notions of
natural law (which is really bourgeois law) as the foundation of rights,
the “people” in formation are the ethical foundation and source of PCHRs.
Trumpism is the logical outcome of the decades long assault of
racialized neoliberal capitalism. Malcolm showed us how to deal with
Trumpism, and the PCHR movement that we must build will move us to that
place where collective humanity must arrive if we are to survive and
build a new world. And we will – “by any means necessary.”
/*Ajamu Baraka* is a human rights activist, organizer and geo-political
analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy
Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and editor and contributing columnist
for the Black Agenda Report. He is a contributor to “Killing Trayvons:
An Anthology of American Violence
<http://store.counterpunch.org/product/killing-trayvons/>” (CounterPunch
Books, 2014). He can be reached at www.AjamuBaraka.com
<http://www.ajamubaraka.com/>/
--
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863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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