Doug, discussions on this list can make a difference. There are lurkers who are well connected in the black movement and I've heard from at least one who told me how much she appreciated my CLR James/Malcolm X post. The problem is that there is a terrible tendency on mailing-lists to relax our scholarly standards. One of the great things about the Internet is that it allows people with no formal ties to the academy to discuss important historical and theoretical questions, like black nationalism or Judith Butler. People who are connected to the academy should also look forward to the opportunity to exchange ideas with activists and vice versa. What I find troubling about Rakesh's participation in this discussion is that he does not really want to make the effort to back up his arguments with documentation. I don't want to sound rude, but the problem we are dealing with is falsification.
When he cites a San Francisco Chronicle article as proof that Malcolm X made a deal with the KKK to not protect civil rights activists, I frankly lost my temper. What is the point of discussing social history if you fabricate newspaper articles that will back up your arguments. I wouldn't dream of doing something like this. If I can't provide documentation to back up my arguments, I simply won't make them until I do.
Furthermore, when the subject of Malcolm X's attitude toward whites came up, Rakesh said the following:
"I also think Malcolm X's radical anti white speeches were actually intended for whites. Or perhaps to get a rise out of them in order to entertain blacks. But in so far as his attacks on whites--as evil because of their race, genes, Ice Age Ancestry--implies the deep difference of blacks due to their race, genes, Sun Land Ancestry, I think this kind of anti white mythology (or essentialism!) is quite disturbing both in the attitude towards truth it encourages and in the psychological games it plays with black people."
This is appalling. We know Malcolm X through his autobiography and the various collections of his speeches. The above characterization has absolutely no relationship to the speeches made after his break with Elijah Muhammed or his autobiography. The Malcolm X that people admire had repudiated this sort of thing, along with every other bit of racialism that characterized the NOI. It took enormous personal courage and political honesty for him to come to terms with these questions and move forward. Rakesh does not even bother to qualify his charge. He does not acknowledge that Malcolm X's published mature writings repudiate NOI race-baiting. This in fact is the only way most people today get their knowledge of Malcom X from such sources. Doug, I wonder if you've read any of his collections of speeches or his autobiography. It would certainly balance the undue influence that Adolph Reed has had on you.
This is what Malcolm X said:
"It is only being a Muslim which keeps me from seeing people by the color of their skin. This religion teaches brotherhood, but I have to be a realist--I live in America, a society which does not believe in brotherhood in any sense of the term. Brute force is used by white racists to suppress nonwhites. It is a racist society ruled by segregationists.
"We are not for violence in any shape or form, but believe that the people who have violence committed against them should be able to defend themselves. By what they are doing to me they arouse me to violence. People should only be nonviolent as long as they are dealing with a nonviolent person. Intelligence demands the return of violence with violence. Every time you let someone stand on your head and you don't do anything about it, you are not acting with intelligence and should not be on this earth--you won't be on this earth very long either.
"I have never said that Negroes should initiate acts of aggression against whites, but where the government fails to protect the Negro he is entitled to do it himself. He is within his rights. I have found the only white elements who do not want this advice given to undefensive Blacks are the racist liberals. They use the press to project us in the image of violence.
"There is an element of whites who are nothing but cold, animalistic racists. That element is the one that controls or has strong influence in the power structure. It uses the press skillfully to feed statistics to the public to make it appear that the rate of crime in the Black community, or community of nonwhite people, is at such a high level. It gives the impression or the image that everyone in that community is criminal.
"And as soon as the public accepts the fact that the dark-skinned community consists largely of criminals or people who are dirty, then it makes it possible for the power structure to set up a police-state system. 'Which will make it permissible in the minds of even the well-meaning white public for them to come in and use all kinds of police methods to brutally suppress the struggle on the part of these people against segregation, discrimination, and other acts that are unleashed against them that are absolutely unjust."
Where is there an implication of "Sun People" concepts here? Where is there anything about hating white people on the basis of the color of their skin? I find it totally outrageous that this martyr to NOI and/or FBI violence can be denounced as a "black fascist". Malcolm X took a courageous stand on behalf of every anti-colonial struggle in the world. He stuck his neck out to defend the Vietnamese and Congolese people. Fascists do not do such things. Instead they violently attack people protesting colonialism, as the French rightists did during Algeria. It twists our political concepts and language so violently to even begin to make this comparison that it makes me despair of having a debate. We are essentially in the outer limits of political discourse in the Godena/Olaechea style where everybody in the world is either a fascist or well on the way of becoming one.
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)