Not surpsingly, you've misrepresented my views about West and NOI. I wont argue this again, not least b/c you seem truly, funnily baffled by abstractions, but nevertheless two quick points: rather than saying West was "doing it for the sisters," I was saying his decision to "struggle" or "dialogue" with members of the NOI is politically justifiable, and clearly dovetails with what he, and Stuart Hall, and Laclau, and perhaps a dozen other people have theorized and, in Hall's and West's case anyway, have practiced as a "cultural politics of articulation." (If this sounds Greek to you, either read these people on this, or don't. Apparently, the only way you and Pollitt and other blockheads can argue things is in terms of factoids and consciousness, so perhaps you shouldnt bother.) He might be making a mistake, but unless you factor into your analysis some acount of where he, or where Malcolm X or where NOI members are coming from, then your analyses wil suck.
I said that since one of, if not "the" reason for NOI's "being" amounts to an anti-racism, then this provides legitimate grounds for such an involvement. I am also assuming West has quite specific reasons why he talks with NOI, has insider info, etc; Pollit, not someone known for intellectual sophistication, either didnt ask such questions or simply didnt feel like sharing.
All this amounts to a "theoretical" argument. I think that, in general, such arguments have as much purchase on "reality" as empirical ones. Call it the Adorno-principle: just b/c something is a "fact" does not mean it is "true." You may disagree with this, and also with this: no, the historical record -- which, by the way, we will never adequately establish -- does not determine what any group/institution is now, or what it might become in the future. At least not "history" in the rather banal, factoid way you seem to conceptualize it. Reality, let alone what counts as truth about reality, is much more complicated than that.
I also said that Kelly's point is a brute fact which needs wrestled with: the NOI, the family, many other things, mean and are experienced as different things to "insiders," than these same institutions do to "outsiders." This is something which needs negotiated, at least if you want to do more than merely compile data about the NOI, or about Malcolm X, etc. West's "dialoguing" or "struggling" is, in this sense, "a black thing." If you dont get this, then your claims to analyze "race" are pathetic, at least vis a vis the US. But then, you probably believe in such things as Objectivity.
If you do not wrestle with the question of what the NOI, Malcolm X, Farakhan, the family, etc *means* and *does* to these members, then you will ultimately have understood very little about the NOI and its egregious policies, or about why it persists and how it -- or anti-racism -- might persist differently. All you will have will be a bunch of facts -- which no matter how perfectly "accurate," how damning or how hagiographic they are -- do not and cannot speak for themselves. You are trying to reduce an institution (Malcolm X, NOI) and an event (West's efforts, Malcolm's "shift") to a compendium of factoids.
Your conclusion to all this painstaking fact-establishment can only be some variation of: NOI members are a bunch of sexist, etc idiots, who are thinking the wrong, false thoughts; they either make the NOI the evil thing it is, or the NOI makes them the evil things they are. The soluton would then be to pour the right (the "left") thoughts into their heads (or into less spolied heads), and have them sign up at our table.
So, then, we are right back to the intellectually insipid mode of "false consciousness," where we analyze people and events by noting that their thoughts are all wrong. We have got to get all them woogies thinking the right thoughts. About X, about NOI, about the yoke of capital,....
Some final intellectual mumbo-jumbo for you:
You are trapped in a philosophy of consciousness and in a strict subject/object split, imho. I cannot translate that for you. But your assumption seems to be that there exists this thing -- the real Malcom X, the real NOI, the proletariat-of-color, the IdealGroup, whatever -- around which we simply need to become conscious. This real History around which first we, and then "They" need to become conscious. And then, things will fall into place. Good luck.
---------------------------------------------------- Daniel Vukovich English; Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801 vukovich at uiuc.edu ph. 217-344-7843 ----------------------------------------------------