Malcolm X’s message to young people today

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Malcolm X, born May 19, 1925, would have been 90 years old this year had he not been assassinated 50 years ago. Now, decades later, safely buried, Malcolm X has become respect­ able. This transformation has been some years in the making, but there can be little doubt of the result.

The U.S. government, which spied and kept files on Malcolm, and which encouraged his death, if not worse, has already placed his im­ age on a postal stamp. Schools, streets, and bou­ levards have been named after him.

The trend to assimilate has been noted by contemporary historians. Taylor Branch, in the second volume of his Martin Luther King biog­ raphy (At Canaan’s Edge), refers to the “legions of young whites who made him [Malcolm] a crossover icon.” Despite its flaws, the most re­ cent and thorough biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable, rightly re­ fers to a “metamorphosis” which presents Mal­ colm as “a multicultural American icon.” The New York Times review of the biography adds to the new myth-making, claiming that towards the end of his life, Malcolm would “embrace of a kind of internationalist humanism” – a phrase that could reasonably be applied as well to the Dalai Lama.

With his sharp edges smoothed over, his po­ litical views drained of their militancy, his reli­ gion ignored, Malcolm X has been offered up as a dreamer, a worthy companion to the Martin Luther King of the 1963 March on Washington.

Such was the tone and spirit of a Boston Globe editorial, “Malcolm’s Message” (Feb. 26, 2005). The Globe quoted from Malcolm’s Feb. 14, 1965, speech in Detroit, “Don’t let the power struc­ ture maneuver you into a time-wasting battle with others when you could be involved in something that’s constructive and getting a real job done.”

The editorial concluded, “These challenges live on: to get a real job—working not merely for pay but for a greater common good—so that as Malcolm gazes out of photographs, it is easier to gaze back.”

Is that really Malcolm’s message—bring home a paycheck and maybe volunteer some time in a com­ munity service project? From the Boston Globe edito­ rial, it was impossible to know what the controversy over Malcolm X had been all about or why anyone thought it necessary to silence him with gun blasts to the chest.

Malcolm X claimed that the media most often por­ trayed him falsely, and judging from this recent edi­ torial, the passing years have not improved things much. In ways large and small, the distortions contin­ ue. For instance, the lines from Malcolm quoted above are not, as the Boston Globe would have it, the kind of advice a high school guidance counselor would offer but were instead part of his explanation for avoiding dead-end arguments with the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm wanted to build religious and political or­ ganizations that would advance the Black struggle for unity and liberation. Freed, by then, from the limita­ tions of the organization he had once represented so well, the NOI, he was able to speak his own mind, and he did, despite ever-increasing danger. Distorting Malcolm’s ideas also includes deletions.

Consider what the editorial entitled “Malcolm’s Message” omitted from Malcolm’s message. In his talk that day, Malcolm praised the African revolution and its ability to inspire an African-American revolution in the United States, “an even greater threat” to “the international power structure,” which he condemned as “imperialism.”

In words that you will not likely find reprinted in your daily newspaper, Malcolm said, “This is a society whose government doesn’t hesitate to inflict the most brutal form of punishment and oppression upon dark-skinned people all over the world.”

Was he, in making this judgment, also making a pre­ diction of his own murder one short week later? It may never be possible to answer for certain. Ques­ tions about Malcolm X’s life and death and the mean­ ing of his work continue to generate questioning and controversy. Yet, all commentators, including his worst detractors, agree on his importance as a think­ er and leader.

To understand his importance, all one need do is actually read Malcolm, and read with an open mind. The Autobiography is the essential starting point, and The Final Speeches: February 1965 is a good follow-up. The most perceptive interpretation is still one of the first ever published: The Last Year of Malcolm X, written by George Breitman.

But why read Malcolm X at all? A great deal has changed for the better in the 50 years since he was gunned down. Blacks not only vote but are elected to office in large numbers. The Democratic Party’s Barack Obama is president. Isn’t it time to say, then, that the progress of decades has diminished the ur­ gency of Malcolm’s message?

Malcolm himself answered that question in a speech reprinted in the pamphlet, “Malcolm X Talks to Young People.” Here is what Malcolm said: “One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to Victor Boyton / AP an intelligent decision for yourself. “If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you’re going east, and you will be walking east when you think you’re going west. This generation, especially of our people, has a burden, more so than any other time in history. The most important thing we can learn to do today is think for ourselves.”

His point may seem too obvious at first, a platitude, even, but he reached this conclusion as the result of painful personal experience. It was an insight he stressed in the last months of his life because the les­ son that he learned was the starting point not only for himself but for any person who wanted to under­ stand the world and act to change it. These words, spoken in December 1964, may no longer be shock­ ing, but they are still relevant, meaningful, and neces­ sary for today.

But in 1964 this message must have been electrify­ ing for the young people in the audience. Who would ever have heard anyone speak this way? No social institution, no adult with whom most youth came in contact, ever said to think for yourself. Quite the con­ trary!

With rare exception, the people and social institu­ tions teenagers encountered insisted on deference and conformity. Asking too many questions would just get you in trouble. Adults could forgive, even ac­ cept, youthful hijinks, but not the implicit defiance of a sober question. For teenagers, it was safer to drink than to think.

Parents were to be obeyed simply “because I said so.” School told you to line up in the corridor, raise your hand to go to a bathroom, and fill in the blank on quizzes and tests. A job consisted of mindless tasks (continued on page 11, in “Polish miners on strike”)

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12 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 2015 Malcolm has not faded into the past for a simple reason: He is needed today. To young people he says, think for yourselves.