>As far as what the difference would be, my guess is that the difference
>would be that Owens and Dellums are loyal to the Democratic party and not
>to the black community.
Just what is this "black community" anyway? African Americans are divided by class, generation, and region; there are black Communists and free marketeers; black atheists, protestants, Catholics, and Moslems; black feminists and black patriarchs; etc. There's a common interest between racists and nationalists in effacing these differences - and not only racists of the Klan variety, but of the more tepid establishmentarian sort, who annoint certain "leaders" as the "authentic" voices of the "black community," who recognize them as members of what Adolph Reed calls a race management elite. Or have I fallen too much under Adolph's spell to think this way?
This battle over Malcolm & the NOI that's gone on here recently makes me wonder what it tell us about racial politics today (and it's hard to think of a more important issue for U.S. politics than "race"). Historical figures inevitably become floating signifiers we project our own preferences onto, each of us claiming to have the real authentic figure in our sights. This battle has reminded me of all those old Commies who re-fight the Trotsky vs. Stalin battles. But what about race and racism in 1999? The Klan is pretty much a residual enterprise, and racism lives on in the U.S. today mainly in codewords and barely expressed sentiments. The fight against affirmative action is prosecuted using the language of civil rights, not racial hierarchy - deviously, of course, but the shift is important. Compare David Duke today with George Wallace a generation ago - Duke a marginal figure, and Wallace a presidential candidate who attracted millions of votes. Yes there are neoconfederates all across the South, and yes Trent Lott did give a speech to one of their gatherings, but there's a time when he would have proudly done so, and now it's something done evasively. I'm not sure how what Malcolm X did or said, or didn't do or say, in 1963, bears on politics right now.
Doug