Reclaiming Malcolm X

This weekend marks the 50^th Anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination. Malcolm has always had a deep influence on my writing, beliefs, and intellectual life. His unflinching commitment to justice and dignity are the hallmarks of his legacy.

Oh, and scaring the hell out of white people.

But seriously, there’s nothing I’ve ever read or seen attributed to Malcolm that would put him anywhere near the Progressive Left, who tend to embrace him. The late author of his most recent major biography, professor Manning Marable, attempted to rationalize his placement in the Progressive pantheon. But there was no real link in his well-researched and well-written biography. At best, he mentioned some “anti-capitalist” rhetoric  in speeches to colleges (text by Damon Root):

In a 1992 speech at Colorado's Metro State College, Columbia University historian Manning Marable praised the black minister and activist Malcolm X for pushing an "uncompromising program which was both antiracist and anticapitalist." As Marable favorably quoted from the former Nation of Islam leader: "You can't have racism without capitalism. If you find antiracists, usually they're socialists or their political philosophy is that of socialism."

In historical context, Malcolm was living in the Cold War political dichotomy. The Soviet Union and other communist nations were pitted squarely against the United States and the capitalist countries. If United States capitalism permitted Jim Crow, backed assassinations in Africa, and supported South African Apartheid, I’d be against it too. But where politics and economics converged to the detriment of American minorities, the culprits were the American government and its tolerance and furtherance of American racism, not a system of free exchange and entrepreneurship.

Indeed, many of Malcolm’s most famous and impassioned speeches dealt with American hypocrisy and the national inability to respect the laws of the Constitution that supposedly guaranteed equal rights. He wasn’t judging America for its ideals or its promise of freedom, rather than its utter and undeniable failure to secure rights for black people.  

I write this not to claim Malcolm for libertarians or, least of all, the American Right. His legacy belongs to black people and America writ large, if they bother to embrace it.

People should remember Malcolm for what he was and what he stood for, not just as a symbol of scaring white people. He believed in the absolute right to self-defense and personal responsibility. He believed in small business and black empowerment.  He wanted jobs and dignity for black people, and he didn’t believe the government as instituted in the United States could provide it.

Similar to what I wrote in my lengthy response to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ remarkable article on reparations, the fundamental divide in civil rights today shouldn’t be about desert or what America should do. Rather, the argument should be about what America could reasonably be expected to do. Just because we elected a black president does not mean the government has gotten remarkably better at delivering on the failed promises of the past two and a half centuries.

We’re still trying to get past the very same phenomenon Malcolm was talking about in this short speech excerpt:

More than 50 years later, so much has not changed.

I don’t know what Malcolm’s macroeconomic prescriptions would be if he were alive today, and I don’t care. But Malcolm was right to be skeptical of government action. Active government aimed at bettering black lives gave us the ’94 Crime Bill,  the 100:1 crack to powder sentencing disparity, Broken Windows, and Stop-and-Frisk. It will take years to repair the damage they caused in black communities, on top of the preexisting problems of poverty, ghettoization, and crumbling infrastructure.

And we simply cannot undo the catastrophe they’ve inflicted on countless black lives. 

Before we ask the government to do anything else, it must recognize the fundamental civil rights of black Americans. Just as Malcolm recognized, whatever the laws say doesn't mean anything if the police can abuse black people and get away with it. And it is undeniable that the police violence against blacks and others continues today through hostile day-to-day interactions, militarization, and wanton brutality.

As Ossie Davis eulogized him, Malcolm was our champion, and we should continue to honor him. We do this by fighting police brutality. We do this by demanding equal rights and human dignity now. And we should do this by any means necessary.

Malcolm X, RIP

bellum medicamenti delenda est

**I don’t know the source for this video, and it has clearly been edited.  But the segments seem to all come from the same speech and thus retain their relevance as individual parts or taken together.

"Please Stop Helping Us" Review

Some weeks back, a book was brought to my attention by a colleague. It is called "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed" by Jason L. Riley.  I was hoping for a sober analysis of the unintended consequences of big government policies and full of small government solutions to problems that continue to disproportionately affect African Americans.

Unfortunately, what I got was the same ol' tired and worn out argument by conservatives that blacks just need to be better if they want to be treated better. More irritating, the author's disdain for American blacks--being one for the sake of the collective pronoun "us" in the title, but any shared identity is held at arm's length throughout the text of the book--is evident on what seems to be every page. I exaggerate, but not enough to be unfair.

Riley manages to fit in some policy, but most of it after he rationalizes police abuse of young black men  (even though he faced some of it himself) and dismisses those who object to criminalizing wearing sagging pants.His absolution of the criminal justice system by way of nonsensical "soft on crime" posturing and selective quotes of critics should undermine his credibility as a thoughtful writer on the subject, even if you remove the racial aspect entirely.

"Please Stop Helping Us" could have been a damning indictment of the governmental system that purports to help people. Instead, Riley took his opportunity to air his scorn for his fellow American blacks. And that is a shame on more levels than I can explain here.

You can read my review of the book at Rare  here.

"You're Not Really Black, Right?"

I guess it's time to finally write a version of this I can publish and share as needed. I wrote a post on a similar theme years ago in response to a reflexive, lighthearted but racially tinged facebook comment I wrote when my social media presence was essentially some friends, family, and former schoolmates. I write this disclaimer basically to avoid accusations of 'plagiarizing myself' and just basic principles of honesty, since much of what I write here is copied/adapted from what I've said so many times before, though I've only written about it once. -- JPB

Over the course of my life, I've been questioned about my race. These questions have taken various forms--from mildly curious to unintentionally offensive to bizarrely hilarious--but they've been coming since I was about 9 years old.

For those few readers who may not know what I look like:

I'm 'light-skinneded' and then some

My father was black. My mother was white. As I have said often, I could "pass" for white if I so chose. I am aware that some people don't consider me "black" by their standards, but that's them and not my problem.

That said, I take my race and ethnicity very seriously. I grew up with black family and black friends. No more than four familial generations ago--records indicate I'm 4th familial generation born free--my family was owned by white people in Meridian, Mississippi.

I mean, it was 1880 Mississippi. I don't know how "free" they really were.

My father grew up in the Great Depression in Indiana--a state literally run by the Klan at the time. I have heard stories about how my grandfather, James, would grab his gun and go outside to get all the children in the house because the Klan was about to march up the street they lived on--one of the three streets or so blacks were allowed to live on in Fort Wayne at that time. My father and my family had to endure racism most of us today can hardly fathom--and I grew up acutely aware of this. I knew I had opportunities that my father never had, and I have always been grateful for how much he went through and how much he sacrificed so I and my siblings could become successful people.

The 70s were an awful time for fashion--I mean those shoes! Ugh!--but Pooh is eternal

When I was very young, my father told me, (paraphrasing), "Because of who you are, or what you are [read: black]--you may have a harder time than other [read: white] people. Deal with it, and move on." It was the 1980s and my first school district was still trying to implement desegregation plans--and we were still interchangeably called "Negro,""black," or "Afro-American."

Ironically, my father's insistence on voting on that desegregation plan after our family moved a quarter mile from the school district boundary, unbeknownst to us, caused me to leave my accelerated magnet program for a less advanced, increasingly segregated school system.

The students' race used to be listed next to our names on our attendance sheets in this second school system. Race is most certainly a social construct, but it made enough of a difference to mark each of us as such on every printout every teacher, student, and administrator was given.

Jonathan P Blanks| 7(th grade)| M(ale)| B(lack)

America was much less tolerant just 20-25 years ago than it is today. It was weird, even in the closing years of the 20th century, for a white girl's parent to be okay with their daughter dating me, despite my not being visibly black or holding the stereotypical undesirable traits which may lead one to think reasonably justifies such explicit prejudice.

But that's the thing--racism doesn't make any damned sense.

We, as black people, have different experiences that make us who we are. These differences are related to skin tone, hair, what part of the country we grew up in or whether we lived in the country, the city, or the burbs. There is no singular "black" experience--but almost all of us know racism.

How we deal with that is a part of what makes us black. I've been called an 'exception.' I've been called 'not really black.' But I've been told nigger jokes, and I've heard people say "well, not you, but YOU know." I've had perfect strangers talk about 'niggers' in front of me--even since I've moved to DC (by a former police officer, no less!).

I know they're talking about my father. I know they're talking about my siblings. I know they're talking about my cousins. And make no mistake they are talking about me--whether they know it or not.

Somehow, I'm dorkier than the guys in the Purdue and Starbury jerseys. SMDH

I can't explain the range of emotions that hit when that look comes over their face when I tell them I'm black and they start stammering their way into excuses and lies about what they really meant. No one thinks of themselves as "racist," but it takes a special kind of coward to disown the words that just came out of his mouth for not the first or second time.

I digress.

While my parents were among the first generations in living memory to openly 'miscegenate' absent of government obstacles, I'm hardly the first person who could 'pass for white.' Indeed, James Weldon Johnson wrote a moving book entitled The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man back in the early part of last century. It's moving and heartbreaking...and you come away understanding why some people would deny their heritage and their families to escape the punishment and terror that was black life for so much of our nation's history.

But the pivotal moment when I realized my situation wasn't new--and what I was feeling wasn't either--was when I read Malcolm X's Autobiography for the first time:

"But I will tell you that, without any question, the most bitter anti-white diatribes that I have ever heard have come from "passing" Negroes, living as whites, among whites, exposed every day to what white people say among themselves regarding Negroes -- things that a recognized Negro never would hear."

Like a thunderclap I realized that this resentment I felt--while not "anti-white" per se--was something untold numbers of Americans have felt for years. That my experience was something genuine too--because my authenticity (black, white, or other) was questioned by seemingly everyone in my adolescence--was a seminal moment of my life. I didn't necessarily self-ID as "black" for a number of years afterwards--indeed, I went through a phase during which I was quite hostile to the concept of a distinct black identity--but that book changed my life.

I knew exactly what those people felt...and realized I wasn't alone. That shared experience is the bond of community that a lot of black people feel toward each other. It took me a bit longer to figure it out, but that is why I feel how I feel and why I identify as "black" and not "white," though I never disavow nor do I feel shame about my mother's family or heritage.

I think I've said enough on this subject for public consumption.

Suffice it to say, however, that if I'd be black enough for Malcolm X, I'm pretty sure I'm black enough for you.


bellum medicamenti delenda est