Basically she accuses me of "shystering" about Malcolm X's later life without pointing to what of importance has been passed over. I provided a reply to one of Malcolm X's last speeches, though no one responded. Wahneema does not discuss the well known problems to which I pointed (the use of the same colonial model to understand Afro American oppression and the assissination of Lumumba; the limits of post colonial regimes and Nkrumahism discussed by Robt Fitch), but still she calls me a shyster. That doesn't seem like a shy person to me. The only thing shy here is the refusal to name me while heaping insult on me.
At any rate, what are we to make of the following comment 3/12/64:
"Whites can help us, but they can't join us. There can be no black white unity until there is first some black unity. There can be *no workers' solidarity* until there is first some racial solidarity. We cnnot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves."
emphasis mine
Now surprisingly black feminist Patricia Collins cites this as incipient class consciousness and she further points to this well known statement:
"This international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources."
How Collins reads this juxaposition of quotes as indication of the widening of Malcolm X's earlier essentialist stance concerning Blacks and whites in this country and the emergence of a truly class conscious analysis is beyond me. Malcolm X here underlines his commitment to racial explanations and racial alliances.
Wahneema also makes a passionate case for why such language as below against me is to be tolerated. To remind her what she is justifying (Angela reminded me about what has been said):
"I have not read Clayborne Carson, but I don't need to read him in order to characterize this as a bullshit lie." "ignorant garbage." "idiotic bullshit" "More ignorant bullshit." " not much of a Marxist," " lunatic characterization ... Your hysteria ... clueless" "Poor Rakesh, the perpetual graduate student," "you idiot." " stupid phrase-mongering" " incorrect. ... bullshit. You were the one who went beserk, not me."
So this is "chaff" or the desperate effort by some white boys to prove how down they are with black folk by their all out defense of Malcolm X. I think Angela has raised some important questions of the iconisation of black radicals by the white left.
Now here is a reply to Art.
I have been arguing that the NOI's petit bourgeois separatism and nationalism which made tacit agreements with Klan conceivable continue to inform Malcolm X's domestic and international politics to his dying days. At very least, I would make the case that it is impossible to determine where he was going at the end of his life. As I noted, you have black separatism, secessionism, pan africanism, islam, incipient socialism, Nkrumah- and Castro-ism. What does it all add up to? For example, Dyson makes an argument against the SWP case that Malcolm was about on the verge of socialism; at the very least, Dyson's book would be worth consulting as well as the bio of Louis Farakhan Prophet of Rage, introduced by Julian Bond.
I have have been critical of each element as well as the coherence of the overall combination (in particular his domestic economic program), certainly not of the black community's struggle against racism in policing, representation at several levels, the humiliations of daily life, or the development of African American studies programs.
I also don't think there is really a black bourgeoisie or much of a black middle class (Oliver and Shapiro show how little black wealth there is, but by including consumer durables, cars and homes in their definition of wealth, they exaggerate how much white ownership of income yielding assets there really is).
At the same time, I don't know if most black people are black nationalist in the sense of
a. agreeing to the long term goal being a separate nation in the black belt, a goal to which Malcolm remained committed even after the break with Elijah Muhammad (quote in Farakhan bio); by the way, Down in the Delta seems to be based on just such a vision of the utopian possibilities in resegregated black life. Well, in Angelou's movie, the small time, rural,
black entrepreneurial venture of gourmet sausages, organized by Wesley Snipes, is thought to be a viable alternative to the closing of the chicken factory. That scene bothered me in an genuninely moving film.
b. thinking that greater black ownership of ghetto property and election of black officials would solve the most pressing problems, though of course the struggle for community control of schools, police depts and city govts remains emancipatory in its strategic thrust. There is a straight line from Malcolm X to the BPP's efforts at community control, defended best by Robert Allen in Black Awakening in Black America. Again I don't deny that the emancipatory thrust here but raise the question of the real and severe limits of such a program for the unemployed and working class. I would argue that even Allen sidesteps the real limits here.
But Malcolm X supported such community control efforts in terms of the immediate benefits it would bring to long suffering black people while (as just said) pledging allegiance to Elijah Muhammad's separatist vision even after the break (quote in Farakhan bio that I read at Border's last night). And how much real power over production, distribution and the polity can blacks achieve without first entering into workers' alliances?
At any rate, Malcolm X meant several things by black nationalism, which is one reason why I think the term is meaningless and should be used with greatest reservations. It certainly should not be collapsed with the specificity of Afro American oppression; nor do I think African American studies should be justified in the idiom of black nationalism.
I appreciate your argument that white leftists embrace Malcolm X as a way of signalling to the black community that they are not soft on racism and thus welcome minorities as fellow Trotskyists and socialists. I find such a strategy repellant esp if the embrace of Malcolm X prevents the analysis of the problems and considerable confusions in his politics. It seems that there are several black authors more willing to be bothered by the confusions than the good white people on this list.
Now I do have problems with your argument about the importance of blacks controlling the representation of Malcolm X. As you must know, each criticism of Malcolm X that I have presented can be found in the writings of black authors, some of whom are in the BRC. If one criticizes Malcolm X, then is one not really black, whatever his color? If one points to Malcolm X's own homosexual experiences and suggests how he repressed them, only to have them later unconsciously influence his politics--then is such a critic of the destructiveness of homophobia to be dismissed as not black if black people arenot willing to listen? What do you make of Arnold Rampersad's reading of the Autobio?
Can black peole learn nothing about black politics from non blacks who have thought about oppression of minorities in the US? I have heard a lot of crap from black people about what I think; I have had more honest arguments and the occasional agreement (though I am generally disagreeable to everyone); I have been threatened by the bowtied good humor men on the block during a discussion of Malcolm X's assasination ("maybe you're the next guy we are going to have to kill"); but I have never received from black people the kind of insult the whiteys here have been capable of mobilizing, ostensibly in order to prove that they are not racists.
Now I come to you as a left communist, not an SWP'er, and I am not willing to lionize Malcom X. If that convinces you that left communism is not relevant or insensitive to black oppression, I will not attempt to convince you that the theory and practice of left or council communism is really the best theory for that specific form of oppression--it is not, and it was not developed to be. Of course I would argue that by digging deepest into the working class and keeping the interests of the class a whole in view, left communists have functionally been on the side of minorities over-represented in the most oppressed, often non-unionised sections of the working class. However, I think it is dishonest of genuine Marxists to claim that from *Capital* they can develop the best understanding of racism, though certain aspects of it are thrown into new light by that theory. Simply, the analytical focus of Marx's project is the abolition of capital, wage labor and the state. For example, the seizure of unused property by the unemployed, the self reduction in bus fares, wildcatting and the like are the kinds of activities that left communists have historically supported.
Yours, Rakesh