I just listened to a piece on Malcolm X on Democracy Now! (Transcript here.) Manning Marable says:
What exactly did “self-determination” mean, back then? A separate black homeland within the territory of the U.S., or what?
Did it mean anything that might actually have worked, if given a fair hearing? I don’t think a black homeland would have worked – unless you’re willing to commit to massive population relocations, the only solution would be political independence for black-majority neighborhoods – IOW, a patchwork of bantustan enclaves.
Hard to say. Does political self-determination just mean that majority black cities are free to elect black officials? A black mayor of New York or Atlanta might have seemed a naive fantasy back in the early 1960s. Nowadays, majority black cities don’t invariably have black mayors, but neither do majority white cities invariably have white mayors.
I have the impression that Malcom X would have scoffed at the notion that Atlanta, New York or Seattle might elect a black mayor.
See, I don’t think so, because the whole point of Malcolm X is that he didn’t forsee that the civil rights movement would go anywhere.
If he were alive today, I suspect that he would be somewhat satisfied. But the point behind his anti-integrationist ideas was that he was convinced integration and civil rights for blacks was impossible, that white people wouldn’t stand for it. He would have been an entirely different person with an entirely different politics if he’d thought differently.
Malcolm X probably borrowed the term (or at least the concept) from Palestinian movements for self determination in the 1950s and 1960s. As said though, during the last couple of years he did complete turnabouts on some very major concepts he had espoused under Elijah Muhammad, some of which I think he said to be provocative anyway (he was way too intelligent a man to believe in some of the things he had preached).
You never know. Intelligent people can be capable of believing preposterous things.
AYN RAND TO WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY: “You are too intelligent to believe in God.”
Please forgive the
[TOTAL HIJACK]but, speaking of William F. Buckley and controversial people of the 1960s associated with anti-Semitic fringe movements who were interviewed for Playboy by Alex Haley and remained friends with him for years thereafter*, I was surprised to learn that American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell considered himself a protege of Buckley (for whom he worked for years). Buckley later denounced him, but mostly for his anti-Catholicism and out-of-control substance abuse problems (and oh yeah, nazis are bad too). I wonder if this had anything to do with Vidal’s use of the phrase (which he alleges was a slip of the tongue) “pro crypto Nazi” in referring to Buckley, or for that matter at Buckley’s instant losing-his-calm rage (i.e. association with Rockwell was a sore point). Whatever the case, I kept expecting those two to come to blows and then… um… come to blows. If you know what I mean. I’m talking about sex. With two men. Cause Buckley seems queerer than a Greek speaking duck in a motorcycle helmet. And by queer I mean gay. As in homosexual. Which I know he’s not because he says he’s not and he’s married (very recently widowed in fact- all due sympathies).
*Haley described his friendship with Rockwell in the foreward to a collection of Playboy Interviews that I wish was still in print. It was almost touching how forgiving Haley was of the man’s views. I think Haley essentially saw him as a very bright but neurotic man who would rather be adored by imbeciles and hated by the masses than be ignored and marching with a swastika was a way to do both. At the same time Rockwell admitted to Haley that he detested to stupidity and ignorance of his core followers and that he was starved for intelligent discourse of the kind he had with Haley, and Haley said that when it was just the two of them and Rockwell would cut the shit and quit posturing he was actually an extremely engaging conversationalist. At the same time he couldn’t stop being an asshole altogether and addressed his letters to the writer to ‘Mr. Alex Haley, VIN’- "very important n____ . It would be interesting to know if Haley’s responses survive anywhere- he said Rockwell was actually unable to mask his fascination when he told him about the ROOTS idea/research, but would then resort to namecalling again so it got tired.= In any case, James Earl Jones as Haley interviewing Malcolm X [Al Freeman Jr.] and Rockwell [a rare TV appearance by post-Godfather Brando] in the final episode of ROOTS:THE NEXT GENERATIONS made for two of the most mesmerizing hours of television ever.
I think what you took to be gay tendencies on the part of Buckley might have been a combination of a few things:
a British boarding school education - not a common experience over here.
a polyglot interest in everything from sailing to the harpsichord, and
his diction, which is a product of an upbringing by a Swiss-German mother and early education in Paris. He actually didn’t become fluent in English until he was about 7.
I’m not discounting it, mind, just that I don’t exactly see it myself. Of course, I met the man only once.
[Furthering hijack]I certainly don’t agree with everything Buckley says- though I don’t disagree with him as much as I once did and on some issues we’re quite copacetic- and I think he’s pompous and a socioeconomic elitist and all that, but one thing I’ll have to give him: He damned sure knows his facts and he is a true conservative and hasn’t strayed. (By “true conservative” I’m discounting the Christian Rightists [even though Buckley’s a devout Christian] and the opportunists who play to them.)
And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time “British boarding school” and ‘gay sex’ were used in the same biography.
Malcom was referring to black empowerment. He advocated the creation of tight-knit communities where blacks would own the businesses and property. He also advocated voting as an instrument to put blacks in positions power and authority. He felt the whites could not be trusted and that blacks must secure their rights by any means necessary.
King, unlike Malcom, was non-violent and stressed the importance of racial harmony. He insisted that separation of the races wasn’t necessary and that blacks and whites can live in harmony with one another. Whites (and most Blacks as well) supported King. King’s I Have a Dream Speech drove the passage of the Civil Right’s Act and the first Affirmative Action programs. In any case, it was all farce. Ever since Dr. King’s death, whites have been chipping away at the federal programs that he inspired.
Maybe not impossible but that he didn’t think the result even if successful would be good for African-Americans.
In his autobiography, Malcolm relates the story of how after his father was murdered and his mother had a nervous breakdown, his experiences with the white-run foster system soured him on trusting white so-called liberalism. So did his experiences with American Jews, who despite their own struggle with discrimination and their overall commitment to liberal causes could be just as prejudiced and exploitive of blacks as any other group of whites.
At the time the liberal movement believed that integration would produce a completely uniform colorblind society (this was before the embrace of “multiculturalsim”). Malcolm felt it was paternalistic at best and hypocritical at worst. He almost had more scorn for white liberalism than he did for out and out unapologetic racists. In short he was sick of whites claiming they wanted to help black people; he wanted black people to help themselves.
I think he was very heavily influenced by Harlem, seeing a black city with black businesses and black customers. Throw in a black mayor and black cops and black judges and black prosecutors and so forth, he’d probably be satisfied.
I mean, back in the 50s black cops were unheard of. Black participation in the political class was impossible. Not that having a black mayor of a black city is a panacea, but it’s an improvement.
I think the single biggest difference twixt Malcolm X and MLK was the fact the latter was born in the MidWest but lived the rest of his life (minus prison time) in northern metropli: Detroit, Chicago, Boston, NYC, etc., where the black communities were large and segregated but not an underclass. King was born in Atlanta and lived in Montgomery and other smaller cities but was only exposed (prior to becoming famous) to non-southern black communities while in college. Southern and northern black societies had some common issues but also had some very distinct advantages and disadvantages and very VERY different relationships with the white communities in their cities.
An old bromide down here is “northerners love the race and hate the individual/southerners love the individuals and hate the race”,and while that’s ridiculously overly simple I can see where it stems from- there was probably more friendship between the races in the south [whites and blacks had coexisted for 350 years] but at the same time it was taken for granted by most whites and even many blacks that the latter would always be an underclass, impoverished, uneducated, and that’s how it should be and always will be, while in the north they were more equal under the law (at least in theory) but there was more violence and animosity. I think that’s why MLK was (before changing significantly in the last few years) far more conciliatory in his message and Malcolm was (before changing significantly in the last couple of years) far more openly hostile: it was a north v. south difference. Southern culture- and I’m not romanticizing it or trying to show it as superior to northern culture re: race, just very different- was so intrinsically biracial- whites and blacks relied on each economically and always had- that the thought of separatism was just ludicrous even to civil rights leaders down here. MLK and MX were mirroring the complimentary opposition DuBois and Washington had exchanged decades earlier, where DuBois favored financial separatism and self governance while to BTW it was simply not a possibility and neither could really understand the other’s situation.
Does anybody still believe in “Pan-Africanism”? It seems to me a monumental self-deception for African-Americans to think they have anything in common with Africans, or Afro-Caribbeans, or Afro-Latinos. I mean, they are products of a unique American ethnic subculture. Culturally they owe a whole lot more to Europe than to Africa, and I doubt there are very many African-Americans who would not feel more at home in Copenhagen than in Kinshasa.
