> 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.
This is quite bizarre, given the fact that Rakesh provides more references than any contributor. Louis could learn a lesson from Rakesh's willingness to introduce new material into these discussions.
Then Louis objects to Rakesh's characterisation of Malcolm X's anti- white speeches.
>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.
But the problem here is that Louis is defending the Malcolm X that he admires. The strategy of the, well, white leftists of the Pathfinder Press was to recruit X retrospectively to their cause, by placing great stress on his later writings to the exclusion of his earlier. In such speeches X was swept up in the new left agitation of the time, and many of the things he had to say were in the vein of Louis' own politics.
But it is a mistake to think that the contemporary relevance of Malcolm X is reducible to what the Trotskyist left saw in him. To many young blacks it is precisely his militant anti-white message that appeals. And presumably it is quite another Malcolm X that appeals to the teachers and educationalists who have made him part of the school curriculum. There Malcolm becomes a part of the American struggle against adversity to personal triumph. No doubt it is Malcolm X's subsequent clash with the NOI that appeals to the establishment, less than his earlier association. The assassination was manipulated by the US secret services to criminalise Farrakhan. Presumably it is that idea of the recantation of black nationalism that recommends Malcolm X to the US postal services.
Now, if young blacks have strong feelings against white people, one can hardly complain. But Rakesh is right that any politics built on such reactions are ultimately conservative. -- Jim heartfield