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<h1><b>Dragging Malcolm X to Obamaland </b></h1><font size=3>Created
<i>04/27/2011 - <br><br>
</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><b>by BAR executive
editor Glen Ford<br>
<a href="http://www.blackagendareport.com/print/content/dragging-malcolm-x-obamaland" eudora="autourl">
http://www.blackagendareport.com/print/content/dragging-malcolm-x-obamaland<br>
<br>
</a></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Manning Marable’s
rendition of Malcolm X’s life should be read very carefully, so as not to
confuse Malcolm’s evolving worldview with the late Columbia University
professor’s left-reformist politics. “Marable tries to convince us that
Malcolm must have contemplated a reformist political path <i>in his
mind</i>, if not in practice.” The author’s mission is to discredit
revolutionary Black nationalism as outdated and primitive. Black
Democratic Party activism and support for President Obama are hyped as
the new Black Power.<br><br>
</font><font size=3> <br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4 color="#280099"><b>Dragging
Malcolm X to Obamaland <br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>by BAR executive editor Glen
Ford<br><br>
</b></font><div align="center"><font size=3 color="#2323DC">“</font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3 color="#2323DC"><i>Marable grows so
bold in pushing his back-to-the-future reformist fantasies, by page 333
he describes a Malcolm X who has become ‘race-neutral.’”<br><br>
</i></font></div>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>In packaging the life of Malcolm X
for a wide audience, the late Dr. Manning Marable has presented us with
an opportunity to reignite the debate over the meaning of Black
self-determination, a discussion-through-struggle that effectively ended
when the Black Freedom Movement became no longer worthy of the name.
Unfortunately, it appears this was not Dr. Marable’s intention, since
<i>Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention</i> is largely an attempt to render
useless the vocabulary of Black struggle. Essential terms such as
“self-determination,” “Black nationalism,” “revolutionary” and
“empowerment” lose their meaning, abused and misused in order to portray
the great Black nationalist leader as inexorably evolving into a
“race-neutral” reformer on the road to Obamaland.<br><br>
This article does not address the complaints of those angered by
Marable’s insistence that Malcolm X had a youthful homosexual
relationship with an affluent white man, although it is shocking that
Marable would throw this in the mix based on wholly inferential evidence
and the author’s own psychological speculations. Our overarching concern
is that Malcolm’s <i>politics</i> have been distorted by often clumsy,
sometimes clever manipulation of the language of struggle, so that the
politics of today’s left-reformers and Obama supporters, like Marable,
appear vindicated. <br><br>
Marable’s interventions in Malcolm’s mental processes begin in earnest on
page 285, in the “Chickens Coming Home to Roost” chapter. It is early
1964, and Malcolm is contemplating a final break with the Nation of
Islam. Marable takes over as the Black icon’s muse, deconstructing Black
Muslim theological doctrine, as he speculates Malcolm must have struggled
to do, and concluding that “a new religious remapping of the world based
on orthodox Islam would not necessarily stigmatize or isolate the United
States because of its history of slavery and racial discrimination.
Instead of a bloody jihad, a holy Armageddon, perhaps America could
experience a nonviolent, bloodless revolution.”<br><br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=3 color="#2323DC">“</font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3 color="#2323DC"><i>Malcolm derided
those who conceived of revolution as anything other than bloody.”
<br><br>
</i></font></div>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>While Malcolm was certainly
questioning the catechism of inevitable, white man-scorching,
Allah-directed Armageddon, it is another thing entirely to have Malcolm
pondering a “bloodless revolution” in America. Malcolm derided those who
conceived of revolution as anything other than bloody, and he was
speaking in secular, not religious, terms. His best-known speech on the
subject is “Message to the Grassroots,”
</font>
<a href="http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1145">
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#0000FF"><u>October 10,
1963</a></font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
[7]</u></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>.<br><br>
</font><font size=3>“</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>There’s
no such <i>thing</i> as a nonviolent revolution. [The] only kind of
revolution that’s nonviolent is the Negro revolution. The only revolution
based on loving your enemy is the Negro revolution. The only revolution
in which the goal is a desegregated lunch counter, a desegregated
theater, a desegregated park, and a desegregated public toilet; you can
sit down next to white folks on the toilet. That’s no revolution.
Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land
is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.”<br><br>
Malcolm never did accept the notion of revolution as bloodless, nor did
he recognize the fight against segregated public accommodations as
revolutionary. But Marable tries to convince us that Malcolm must have
contemplated a reformist political path <i>in his mind</i>, if not in
practice. This is William Styron-style biography, as Morgan State
University’s Dr. Jared Ball has suggested, with Malcolm forced to play
Styron’s Nat Turner.<br><br>
By 1964 Malcolm had made a strategic decision to support Black
integrationist efforts, at least rhetorically, but there is nothing that
leads us to think that integration had become his end-goal, or that he
believed integration was revolutionary. He had decided to become part of
the broad “movement,” in order to both influence and benefit from it.
Marable would have us believe (page 298) that Malcolm’s public
endorsement of desegregation and voter drives signified that he had
scaled down his liberationist aspirations, or that he thought voting
equals or leads to African American self-determination –some very faulty
logic. Revolutionary Marxists have also seen the value in electoral
politics at certain junctures, but that didn’t mean they stopped
preparing for the forceful overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless,
Marable tells us that Malcolm’s movement activities “marked an early,
tentative concession to the idea that perhaps blacks could someday become
empowered within the existing system.”<br><br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=3 color="#2323DC">“</font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3 color="#2323DC"><i>Marable would
have us believe that Malcolm’s public endorsement of desegregation and
voter drives signified that he had scaled down his liberationist
aspirations.”<br><br>
</i></font></div>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>The clear inference is that Malcolm
was wilting in his desire to wipe “the existing system” off the map. What
existing system does Marable refer to, precisely? White supremacy?
Capitalism? Bourgeois electoral pay-for-play democracy? Marable keeps
Malcolm’s mind vague and cloudy, although in his actual historical voice
the “evolving” Malcolm hates capitalism and U.S. imperialism more
intensely than did the “old,” Nation Of Islam Malcolm. Marable also
introduces his trick word “empowered,” which he will use repeatedly in
the book to confuse, rather than clarify. Blacks “could someday become
<i>empowered</i> within the existing system” – to do what? To determine
their collective destinies? To defy white majorities? To push aside the
rule of capital? Marable tries to cage Malcolm, while assuring us that
the revolutionary Black nationalist was “tentatively” becoming a liberal
reformer.<br><br>
Gratuitous, non-defensive violence, in Malcolm’s NOI talks, always came
from the hand of Allah. Malcolm never rejected the right of self-defense;
otherwise, he would not have become Malcolm the icon. Marable knew this,
so he again invades Malcolm’s mind (page 302). “By embracing the ballot,
he was implicitly rejecting violence, even if this was at times difficult
to discern in the heat of his rhetoric.”<br><br>
What kind of violence was Malcolm rejecting? Certainly, not defensive
violence. And Malcolm had never publicly urged Blacks to commit
unprovoked aggressions against whites. The purpose of Marable’s sentence
can only be to show alleged <i>movement</i> by Malcolm toward some state
of non-volatility, which we are expected to associate with political
moderation: reform. <br><br>
Marable grows so bold in pushing his back-to-the-future reformist
fantasies, by page 333 he describes a Malcolm X who has become
“race-neutral.”<b> </b>On May 21, 1964, Malcolm spoke at Chicago’s Civic
Opera House, telling a crowd of 1,500 people, “Separation is not the goal
of the Afro-America, nor is integration his goal. They are merely methods
toward his real end – respect as a human being.” Malcolm went on the say:
“Unless the race issue is quickly settled, the 22 million American
Negroes could easily adopt the guerilla tactics of other deprived
revolutionaries.” Not that he necessarily advocated that. (wink)
<br><br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=3 color="#2323DC">“</font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3 color="#2323DC"><i>Obamites cannot
imagine that others are not as enamored of Power as they are.”<br><br>
</i></font></div>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Three days before he was
assassinated, Malcolm said, “I’m man enough to tell you that I can’t put
my finger on exactly what my philosophy is now.” But, not to worry, Dr.
Marable has the vision and the answer. He concluded that Malcolm had
“made his race-neutral views clear in Chicago….” There is no rational
basis for Marable’s amazing interpretation, other than he thought it
moved his political story line on Malcolm’s evolution (or
race-neutralization) forward.<br><br>
The opposite of race-neutral, Malcolm lived and died a Race-Man, meaning
simply that he put the Race first. As he wrote to an Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood luminary who was disappointed that Malcolm was so decidedly
non-race-neutral, “As a black American, I do feel that my first
responsibility is to my twenty-two million fellow black Americans.” (page
368)<br><br>
In the final “Reflections on a Revolutionary Vision” chapter, Marable
speaks for himself – in the process confirming that he has been sneaking
his own words, thoughts and politics into Malcolm’s head for four hundred
pages. The Columbia University professor of African American Studies
claims to know what Malcolm really, really wanted: “What Malcolm sought
was a fundamental restructuring of wealth and power in the United States
– not a violent social revolution, but radical and meaningful change
nevertheless.” <br><br>
Although the description is so vague, wishy-washy and – damnit!! – so
soft and noncommittal as to bear no resemblance to any incarnation or
developmental stage of Malcolm X, it fits the self-image of Manning
Marable and his circle perfectly. They are the left Black Obamites,
purported radicals who have a perpetual love affair with Power. Such
people cannot imagine that others are not as enamored of Power as they
are<b>,</b> and are eager to graft their own vacillations and corruptions
onto others, by rhetorical hook or literary crook.<br><br>
If this assessment seems harsh, it is certainly not as outrageous as
Marable’s gall in superimposing his politics on Malcolm X. Even when
Marable speaks in his own voice, he manages to intimate that Malcolm
would agree with him. “If legal racial segregation was permanently in
America’s past,” wrote Marable on page 486, “Malcolm’s vision today would
have to radically redefine self-determination and the meaning of black
power in a political environment that appeared to many to be
‘post-racial.’”<br><br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=3 color="#2323DC">“</font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3 color="#2323DC"><i>Marable insists
that Malcolm would be forced to redefine self-determination and its
sibling, Black Power.”<br><br>
</i></font></div>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Marable appears to think these are
heavy questions, but they’re actually products of an unfocused, but
deeply biased, mind. First of all, legal segregation was defeated before
Malcolm’s death, and no sane person at the time thought it would be
brought back. Malcolm had time to find out what life was like for Black
southerners without state-sanctioned Jim Crow. Marable’s question is
badly put. If he means, What would Malcolm think about today’s levels of
segregation, then the answer would be that the northern cities would
remain very familiar to him in their racial composition, and are in fact
blacker than in Malcolm’s day – which might tend to indicate to Malcolm
that self-determination was an even more critical concern.<br><br>
Still, Marable insists that Malcolm would be forced to redefine
self-determination and its sibling, Black Power. But self-determination,
as a foundational principle of relations among peoples, requires no
redefinition. Marable understands it as “the right of oppressed nations
or minorities to decide for themselves their own political futures,” and
he agrees that Malcolm “never abandoned” the “ideal.” Why then, would
Malcolm in 2011 have to “redefine” self-determination and the “meaning of
black power?” Because the political environment “appeared to many to be
post-racial?” Who is it that thinks the environment appears post-racial?
If Marable is speaking of white people, or any non-African American
people, their opinions cannot be cause for “redefinition” of another
people’s right. If he meant that Black people in the mass believe we live
in a post-racial nation, he was a damn fool. But even if such Black folks
existed, that would not require a redefinition of self-determination.
African Americans would simply “determine” that they love post-racialism
and want to do nothing to change it, as is their self-determinationist
right.<br><br>
Marable risks making himself look stupid simply to make the intended
point that Malcolm and his Black Nationalism and self-determination talk
are passé and should be dismissed except as historical artifacts. For
Marable and his Black left Obamites, Malcolm’s only other use is to
somehow authenticate today’s reformers – and even President Obama! – as
heirs to yesterday’s revolutionary Black nationalists.<b> </b>This is the
purpose put to Malcolm by
</font>
<a href="http://blackagendareport.com/content/dr-peniel-joseph-peoples-historian-or-establishment-courtier-part-two-two-peniel-joseph-vs-h">
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#0000FF"><u>Peniel
Joseph</a></font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
[8]</u></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>, the Tufts University
professor of history and author of
</font>
<a href="http://blackagendareport.com/content/dr-peniel-joseph-peddles-slick-marketing-constructs-%E2%80%9Cblack-history%E2%80%9D">
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#0000FF"><u>Dark Days, Bright
Nights</a></font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
[9]</u></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2><i>: From Black Power
to Barack Obama, which attempts to draw a straight-line historical
connection between Malcolm X and the corporate politician in the White
House. <br><br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=3 color="#2323DC">“</font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3 color="#2323DC">For Marable and his
Black left Obamites, Malcolm’s only other use is to somehow authenticate
today’s reformers – and even President Obama! – as heirs to yesterday’s
revolutionary Black nationalists.”<br><br>
</font></div>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Manning Marable was up to the same
trick. “Given the election of Barack Obama,” Marable writes on page 486,
“it now raises the question of whether blacks have a separate political
destiny from their white fellow citizens.” He does not explain why Black
destinies have changed just because a Black Democrat who raised more
corporate money than the Republican won a presidential election. How did
that electoral fact entwine Black/white destinies in ways that did not
previously exist? How were the Black masses empowered by Obama’s victory,
and if they were somehow empowered, why would that draw them closer to
whites? <br><br>
It would have been better for Marable to have left out his last chapter
of Reflections – it reflected badly on his powers of reasoning.<br><br>
Finally, Marable attempts to create artificial space between Malcolm X
and his direct political progeny, the Black Panther Party for Self
Defense. On page 403 he wrote:<br><br>
</font><font size=3>“</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Had
Malcolm continued to mainstream his views, it is unclear how he would
have negotiated relations a few years later with the Black Panthers, a
group born of much of the intellectual framework Malcolm had assembled in
the early to mid-1960s.”<br><br>
It is nearly impossible to conceive of a Black Panther Party had there
not been a Malcolm X. Marable insults a generation of Blacks that came
into political consciousness in the Sixties – a cohort to which he
chronologically belonged. He substitutes his imagined, inferred,
reinterpreted Malcolm for the man whose words and bearing called forth
and virtually sculpted the youthful Party that debuted in the year
following his death. Marable projects Malcolm as if he would be a
stranger to the Panthers, with whom he would have to “negotiate,” when
Malcolm’s life tells us it is far more likely that the emergence of a
militant revolutionary nationalist youth movement that spoke his language
– because they learned it largely from him – would compel Malcolm to take
the struggle to an even “higher level.” <br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#280099">BAR executive
editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
</i></font><a href="mailto:Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com">
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#0000FF"><u>
Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com</a></font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
[10]</u></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#280099"><i>
.<br><br>
</i></font><font size=3><b>Source URL:</b>
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http://blackagendareport.com/content/dragging-malcolm-x-obamaland</a><br>
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<b>Links:<br>
</b>[1]
<a href="http://blackagendareport.com/category/media-media-justice-and-media-reform/rebranding-movement" eudora="autourl">
http://blackagendareport.com/category/media-media-justice-and-media-reform/rebranding-movement<br>
</a>[2]
<a href="http://blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/black-history" eudora="autourl">
http://blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/black-history<br>
</a>[3]
<a href="http://blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/malcolm-x" eudora="autourl">
http://blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/malcolm-x<br>
</a>[4]
<a href="http://blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/manning-marable" eudora="autourl">
http://blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/manning-marable<br>
</a>[5]
<a href="http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/us-history" eudora="autourl">
http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/us-history<br>
</a>[6]
<a href="http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/malcolm_obama.jpg" eudora="autourl">
http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/malcolm_obama.jpg<br>
</a>[7]
<a href="http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1145" eudora="autourl">
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1145<br>
</a>[8]
<a href="http://blackagendareport.com/content/dr-peniel-joseph-peoples-historian-or-establishment-courtier-part-two-two-peniel-joseph-vs-h" eudora="autourl">
http://blackagendareport.com/content/dr-peniel-joseph-peoples-historian-or-establishment-courtier-part-two-two-peniel-joseph-vs-h<br>
</a>[9]
<a href="http://blackagendareport.com/content/dr-peniel-joseph-peddles-slick-marketing-constructs-“black-history”%5B10" eudora="autourl">
http://blackagendareport.com/content/dr-peniel-joseph-peddles-slick-marketing-constructs-“black-history”<br>
[10</a>]
<a href="mailto:Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com" eudora="autourl">
mailto:Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com<br>
</a>[11]
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