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<h1 id="reader-title">Malcolm X and Human Rights in the Time of
Trumpism: Transcending the Masters tools</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/ajamu-baraka/"
rel="nofollow">Ajamu Baraka</a> - February 24, 2017<br>
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<p>52 years-ago on February 21<sup>st</sup>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Human Rights as a De-Colonial Fighting
Instrument</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 “<em>expand
their civil rights movement to a human rights
movement, it would internationalize it</em>.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“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.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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 “<em>you should be
kept in the cotton patch where you’re not a human
being</em>.”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>And what is that price?</p>
<p>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.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>People(s)-Centered Human Rights: </strong></p>
<p>This approach to human rights struggle is the basis of
what I call the People(s)-Centered approach to human
rights struggle.</p>
<p><strong>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</strong>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
</div>
<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Ajamu Baraka</strong>
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 “<a
href="http://store.counterpunch.org/product/killing-trayvons/">Killing
Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence</a>”
(CounterPunch Books, 2014). He can be reached at <a
href="http://www.ajamubaraka.com/">www.AjamuBaraka.com</a></em>
</p>
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