FWIW I have a big problem with giving Daffy Duck a stamp when none of the Hanna Barbara characters, Rocky and Bullwinkle, or Homer Simpson have one. Not that Daffy would not deserve it in an ideal world. Just kidding.
Micah
++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++ ++++ if you agree copy these 3 sentences in your own sig ++++ ++++ see: http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm ++++
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 07 Jan 1999 19:22:49 From: Marpessa Kupendua <nattyreb at ix.netcom.com> Subject: !*Malcolm X Stamp--An Analysis By Paul Lee
FORWARDED MESSAGE ==============
>Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 18:04:12 -0500 (EST)
>From: Pan-African News Wire <ac6123 at wayne.edu>
>
>Pan-African News Wire, Weekly Dispatch VI, Thursday 7 January 1999
>
>Malcolm X Stamp--An Analysis By Paul
>
>Michigan Citizen, January 3-9, 1999
>
>Editor's Note: Paul Lee is a Highland Park, Michigan-based researcher and
>is considered the foremost expert on the life of Malcolm X. He is the
>director of Best Efforts, Inc., a private research and consultancy firm
>based in Highland Park.
>
>Text:
>Nearly thirty-four years after the assassination of Malcolm X, the United
>States Postal Service will issue a Black Heritage stamp bearing his
>likeness--and, in the process, fulfill the martyred black nationalist and
>Sunni Muslim leader's posthumous prediction of how "the white man" would
>misrepresent him.
>
>"He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive," Malcolm X
>declared in the final chapter of his autobiography, ghost-written by Alex
>Haley and published after his 1965 assassination, "as a convenient symbol
>of 'hatred'--and that will help him to escape facing the truth that all I
>have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of
>unspeakable crimes that his race committed against my race." The United
>States Postal Service (USPS) has achieved this, not by labeling Malcolm X
>as a "black racist," as was common during his controversial public career,
>but, more subtly, by selecting and retouching an unflattering photgraph
>which portrays him as a sinister, brooding figure--the news media
>caricature of Malcolm X rather than the visionary time and evolving social
>relations have increasingly revealed him to have been.
>
>Our Malcolm
>
>"This is one thing that worried him sometimes," the late Wilfred Little,
>Sr., Malcolm X's eldest brother, recalled in Gil Noble's 1981 documentary
>"The Loss of Our Warrior...Malcolm X." "He used to say, later on, if I'm
>dead or something...people are gonna think that I'm what they saw on
>television..because, he says, the press and the media always takes out the
>part that shows me as if I'm some defiant someone that's ready to jump on
>someone all the time, a radical. He said, they pick out those parts to
>show, and they never know the real me," Little quoted his brother as
>saying. "Which was?" Noble asked. "Which was really a gentle person,"
>Little explained. "He was very sensitive to people, and he was very
>observant and perceptive. And, as a result of this, it brought out a part
>of him that you wouldn't see ordinarily, unless you happened to have the
>opportunity to be close to him or travel with him or be in his
>presence...."
>
>Such photos are easily available. Malcolm X, himself, made sure of it by
>requesting photgraphers such as Earl Grant, Robert L. Haggins, Jr., and
>the late Robert Parent to shoot photos that made him look "human."
>However, these images, many picturing Malcolm X flashing his
>ingratiatingly toothy grin, apparently did not fit the image that the USPS
>wanted to portray. Moreover, the USPS has compounded this
>misrepresentation, and reinforced its growing reputation for treating with
>carelessness the images and histories of African-Americans, by
>misidentifying the photo, which claims "was taken by the Associated Press
>at a press conference in New York City on May 21, 1964." In fact, the
>photo was taken, as the original cutline states, "during an interview in a
>Cairo hotel, July 14, 1964." This fact, in part, accounts for the
>uncharacteristically dark image of the fair-skinned Malcolm X, as the
>hotel lobby was poorly lit. This, in turn, led the USPS to distort the
>photo.
>
>Their Malcolm
>
>Because the photographer was compelled to use a flash, which only
>partially illuminated Malcolm X's face, two negative effects resulted. It
>created a shadow behind Malcolm X, nearly obliterating the outline of his
>head, and produced "flare" in his glasses. As a result, the USPS
>literally guessed at the outline of Malcolm X's head, cutting off his left
>in the process, and, in eliminating the "flare" in Malcolm's glasses, the
>USPS retouched the photo--and thereby exaggerated the dark circles under
>his eyes. Indeed, the USPS could hardly have chosen a worst period of
>Malcolm X's life to represent him, as he was, at that time, extremely
>harried and exhausted--as the photo attests. Writing from Ethiopia to a
>New York friend on October 26, 1964, Malcolm X recalled the stressful
>circumstances of that period.
>
>"Just before I left the States", he wrote,"...my wife had just given
>birth, there were a variety of factions trying to get a shot at me so they
>could blame it on someone else, I was busily trying to lay the foundation
>for OAAU while still preparing to leave...and mainly I was trying to stay
>healthy and alive" (last ellipsis Malcolm X's). The OAAU was the
>Organization of Afro-American Unity, Malcolm X's pan-Africanist group.
>The latter reference was to a knife attack on Malcolm X in front of his
>home--in full view of two of his young daughters--by followers of his
>former leader, Elijah Muhammad, on July 3, 1964, six days before his
>departure for London, then Cairo, Egypt, wher he engaged in intense
>lobbying at an Organization of African Unity summit conference to marshal
>support for the "human rights" struggle of African-Americans.
>
>O.J. II
>
>The result is an image of a dark, dangerous-looking Malcolm X, reminiscent
>of TIme magazine's infamous 1994 electronically-manipulated "photo
>illustration" of then-accused murderer O.J. Simpson, which the Washington
>Post claimed made him look "sinister." Both images easily lend themselves
>to the association in white Western culture of "black" with "evil," a
>notion whose disastrous consequences to the images and lives of non-white
>peoples are well established, whatever the intentions of those who
>selected and manipulated the photos.
>
>And, as if to add insult to injury, the stamp's cutline (posted with the
>photo on the Internet at www.usps.com/images/stamps/99/malcolm X.html)
>misrepresents Malcolm X's philosophy, as well. Noting Malcolm X's break
>from Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, where he rose to become the
>group's most influential minister and national representative, the USPS
>asserts that he "disavowed his earlier separatist preaching and supported
>a more integrationist solution to racial problems." But did he?
>
>A Budding Integrationist?
>
>"People cloud the issue when they bring in the word integration," Malcolm
>X told the May 1964 news conference which the USPS mistakenly identified
>the stamp photo as picturing. "Integration can't even be defined--which
>is one of the reasons why it hasn't been realized." Announcing to the
>assembled media his revised views on race following his pilgrimage to the
>Muslim holy city of Mecca--where he rejected Elijah Muhammad's blanket
>indictment of all whites as racist "devils" by nature and embraced the
>traditional Muslim judgement based on one's deeds--Malcolm X declared: "I,
>personally, don't believe that integration will solve the problem in this
>country." "I believe, "Malcolm X told Canadian television host Pierre
>Berton on January 19, 1965, a month before his assassination, "in a
>society in which people can live like human beings on the basis of
>equality"--but he took pains to distinguish his pluralistic view from that
>of the "mainstream" civil-rights leaders and their "liberal" white allies.
>
>Speaking to reporters during a tour of the volatile Birmingham, England
>suburb of Smethwick on February 12, 1965, nine days before his murder,
>Malcolm compared that town's racial assumptions with those of white
>Americans. "We do not want integration--not in the way white people mean
>it, at least," he said. "When the people here speak of integration they
>mean that they want my people to forsake their identity and merge. But
>they can never do that. The only way we can live together is in a
>brotherhood of equals," he said. (Other accounts reported him as
>referring African-American's "individual identity" or "national
>identity.")
>
>Unanswered Questions
>
>Equally as puzzling as the misrepresentation of Malcolm X's image and
>philosophy is the relative silence surrounding the stamp's issuance
>(vaguely announced for "late" January 1999) and the identities of the
>Citizen's Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC), appointed by the Postmaster
>General, which, according to the USPS, "recommend[s] subjects and
>designs," the selection having to be made "at least three years in advance
>of the proposed date of issue..."Said to "reflect a wide range of
>educational, artistic, historical and professional expertise," it is
>self-evident that this body lacks expertise in African-American history.
>
>Long-time students of Malcolm X's life were caught off guard by the
>Internet posting of the Malcolm X stamp, and queries have so far failed to
>identify any noted Malcolm X scholar who was asked to advise the USPS on
>the selection of the photo and the characterization of his philosophy.
>Any competent Malcolm X scholar, it is pointed out, would have recognized
>the misidentification of the stamp photo because of the historic nature of
>the May 21, 1964 news conference it is said to picture. This was, as
>Malcolm X described it in his autobiography, "the biggest press conference
>that I had ever experienced," being his first post-Mecca public
>appearance. Scholars and students of Malcolm X's life are very familiar
>with the film clips in most of the Malcolm X documentaries showing a
>cluster of reporters seated in a semicircle around him, eagerly vying to
>determine if there was a "new" Malcolm X.
>
>In these clips (and in photos by the USPS's source--the Associated Press),
>Malcolm X is seen wearing a dark suit, not the "quiet pen-checked" one, as
>Malcolm X biographer Peter Goldman described it, pictured in the stamp
>photo. Also, any well-grounded student of Malcolm X would have caught the
>misrepresentation of his philosophy whether or not they objected to the
>photo, or to the distortion of it. This recalls a previous problem the
>USPS has had with their African-American Stamps. In 1994 alone, the USPS
>misdated the year of birth of Nat King Cole as 1917 (his widow said it was
>1919), and the Bill Pickett stamp erroneously used a photo of his brother
>Ben, forcing an embarrasing recall and new printing--and a lawsuit from
>collectors clamoring for sheets of the misprint.
>
>To date, USPS has not responded to queries regarding the composition of
>the CSAC, nor explained why, a month before the stamp's projected release,
>so little publicity has preceded it. Given the foregoing, students of
>Malcolm X's life argue, it doesn't matter whether the selection and
>distortion of the photos was deliberate or unintentional, whether its
>misidentification was "merely" due to accident or carelessness, or whether
>the misrepresentation of his philosophy was an expression of wishfulness
>or ignorance. The effect is the same--a false portrayal of the image and
>message of one of the twentieth century's seminal world figures.
>
>The fact remains: These distortions would not have happened had the USPS
>simply asked those who are in the best position to know. If, as a result,
>some are led to question the racial assumptions, motives and competence of
>the USPS, or feel compelled to challenge this misrepresentation, surely
>they can be forgiven for doing so.*
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