The "black community" is just a another phrase for black people. It is like the feminist use of the term "sisters" or the gay movement's ironic use of the term "queer". Behind these terms are, as Doug points out, various classes who have different ideas about what black liberation means. Nixon tried to co-opt black power by creating set-asides for black businesses. Meanwhile, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers at the same time interpreted black power as a call to fight GM. Adolph Reed's anti-nationalism has a long tradition. As I pointed out, Frederic Sorge's split with Victoria Woodhull because she was diverting the workers (mostly white) into peripheral issues such as woman's equality or black rights. It doesn't matter that Reed is black. His take on this question is in the Sorge dogmatic Marxist tradition.
>
>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 is a cop-out. There are three interpretations of Malcolm X being put forward. One from Rakesh is that of a black fascist basically, although he steps back from the conclusion he has been driving inexorably toward. Nathan Newman sees Malcolm X as a precursor to Harold Washington and David Dinkins. The less said about this, the better. The view that nearly everybody else puts forward is that Malcolm X was a revolutionary nationalist in the tradition of Jose Marti, Ben Bella, Toussaint De L'Ouverture, Patrice Lumumba, et al. Nobody thinks he was a Marxist, but some of us--including me--think he was evolving in that direction. If Doug assigns equal weight to all three interpretations, he is sadly mistaken...
>This battle has reminded me of all those old Commies who
>re-fight the Trotsky vs. Stalin battles.
There is no "battle". Rakesh has raised a bizarre interpretation that is not even shared by dogmatic Marxists today. Even the Spartacists no longer characterize Malcolm X in this fashion. Rakesh's interpretation is as off-the-wall as the Neue Einheit Maoists who regard gay liberation as a bourgeois plot.
>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.
Haven't you been reading the BRC material? That should answer your question. Malcolm X's politics are expressed in this group, which just held a tremendously well-attended national conference.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)