Malcolm X: The Pragmatic Nationalist

Tale of contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE
1 THE DOMESTIC PARAMETERS: AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE STRATEGIC USE OF RACE
1.1. Black Solidarity as a Reaction to American Racism
1.2 Whiteness as a Site of Privilege
1.3 Black Skin, White Masks: The Black Bourgeoisie / Elite and the Grassroots

CHAPTER TWO
2 THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION: PAN-AFRICANISM, SUBALTERN POLITICS AND ISLAM
2.1. Recovering a Lost Base: The (Re) turn to Africa
2.2 Blackness as Oppression: Malcolm X and Pragmatic Nationalism
2.3 Universal, yet Exclusive: Islam in Malcolm X’s Political Ideology

3 CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

Over the years, much has been written on Malcolm X, most particularly the last year of his life. The period extending from 12 March 1964, the date he officially announced his split from the Nation of Islam, to 21 February 1965, when he was assassinated, has attracted the most attention due to its political significance.^[1] The change in Malcolm X brought about by the split was both secular and religious. During the last year of his life, Malcolm’s critique of the American social, political, economic structures was incisive as he identified and tried to solve the central problems facing the African-American community. Adopting a pragmatic position, Malcolm formulated conceptual strategies which he believed would help to bring an end to oppression. Central to this was his strategic use of race to unite African-American initially and then the oppressed people in the world. Race was used as a strategy with the aim to abolish racial oppression. The literature devoted to Malcolm’s last year is both diverse and enriching. The scholarship which will be discussed in the following paragraphs either deals with how the domestic and international dimensions of Malcolm’s thinking are linked or some of the domestic factors which shaped Malcolm’s global perspective.

George Breitman was among the most prolific scholars writing on Malcolm X during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In line with his own socialist leaning, Breitman, in The Last Year of Malcolm X, explores Malcolm’s links to the left, and posits that after his break from the Nation of Islam, Malcolm became increasingly pro-socialist and anti-capitalist.^[2] Breitman highlights the fact that the change in Malcolm’s approach to the black struggle in the United States, his political involvement in particular, upset white supremacists who “believed that the ‘new Malcolm’ could pose a greater threat to the status quo than the Black Muslim Malcolm.”^[3] Although Breitman identifies black unity as a pre-requisite to freedom and equality, he however concedes that “Black nationalism is a means, not the end; it is a means, but not the only means; it is probably and indispensable means toward a solution; but it is not the solution itself.”^[4] Despite his new, pragmatic approach, Malcolm X remained deeply suspicious of whites in the United States, fearing their complicity – whether voluntary or involuntary – with the oppressive structures of the country. In this regard, Breitman points out that: “he [Malcolm] did not share the belief of the Marxists that the working class, including a decisive section of the white workers as well as of the black workers, will play a leading role in the alliance that will end both racism and capitalism.”^[5] Breitman’s The Last Year of Malcolm X highlights the political contribution of Malcolm X after his break from the Nation of Islam. Although he explores Malcolm’s connections with leftist organizations, mainly socialism, Breitman acknowledges that race, as a marker of identity, often displaces class.

In its “attempt to place the political thought of Malcolm X within a broader context of fundamental concepts of Geography,”^[6] James Tyner’s The Geography of Malcolm X highlights the political importance of Africa in his thinking. Malcolm X’s attempt, during the last year of his life, to build a diasporic consciousness in African-Americans was above all aimed at creating a positive sense of identity for the community. Tyner points out that “the recognition and analysis of negative representations of African Americans provided an important building block to the development of Malcolm X’s own political thought and geographical imagination.”^[7] By extension, Malcolm X’s exhortation for African-Americans to recover the lost base that was Africa was likewise part of the evolution of his political thought. Tyner acknowledges the fact that the American political, economic, and social structures could not ensure the equal participation of blacks. He argues that “the objective of Malcolm X’s black radicalism was the attainment of respect and equality within American society; this was to be achieved through a remaking of American space.”^[8]

Robert Terrill, in Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgement, posits that Malcolm’s thinking was in incessantly evolving after his separation from the Nation of Islam and thus he did not leave behind a set ideology or strategy. Instead, Malcolm encouraged people “to think for themselves in ways beyond the limitations imposed by the dominant culture and to entertain a wide range of inventional possibilities always tempered by the need to stay focused on making positive contributions toward obtaining freedom.”^[9] Robert Terrill does well to identify the importance of both the domestic and the international dimensions working in tandem in Malcolm’s thinking. Terrill says that during the post-Nation of Islam phase of Malcolm’s life, his speeches followed a pattern where “Malcolm works first within a scene defined by the borders of the United States and then expands it to an international scene, drawing parallels between the two.”^[10] In line with his view that Malcolm’s thinking was in constant flux, Terrill posits that “Malcolm does not offer any political action.”^[11] As such, Malcolm’s contribution was in terms of changing the mindset of the African-American community, by encouraging them to think independently instead of abiding to a specific framework.

Like Terrill, Eugene Victor Wolfenstein highlights the link between Malcolm’s domestic and international politics. In The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution, Wolfenstein posits that in the post-war period, during the decolonisation process, Malcolm X “was the most persistent and most successful in heightening black American consciousness of the African cultural heritage, and in linking the national struggle to the international one.”^[12] Wolfenstein underlines “Afro-American Unity, Black power, and Black Pride” as representative of Malcolm’s significance.^[13] Wolfenstein’s analysis of Malcolm’s political thinking leads him to conclude that “Malcolm both represented the interests and mobilized the emotional resources of the black masses and black people in general.”^[14]

Both James H. Cone and Michael Eric Dyson delve into the influence that intra-racial class differences had on Malcolm’s articulation of black struggle. While both of these scholars affirm the existence of such differences, they nevertheless have diverging views on how such differences shaped Malcolm’s ideology. Cone, a professor of Theology, sets out to underline the distinct differences between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King in Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. Cone says that Malcolm’s perspective “of the ‘black masses living at the bottom of the social heap’” was “in opposition to Martin King’s middle-class, integrationist image.”^[15] In addition to class differences, Cone states that divergences between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King also stemmed from geographical differences as “each developed a strategy for freedom that was appropriate for the region in which he worked.”^[16] Dyson’s analysis of class differences existing within the African-American community during the 1960s is much more critical of the middle-class. Dyson says that:

It is the presence of class differences within black life that bestowed particular meanings on King’s and Malcolm’s leadership. Such differences shaped the styles each leader adapted in voicing the grievances of his constituency – for King, a guilt-laden, upwardly mobile, and ever-expanding black middle-class, for Malcolm, an ever-widening, trouble-prone, and rigidly oppressed black ghetto poor.^[17]

According to Dyson, Malcolm’s close links to the lower class put him in a better position to criticise the racist American political, social, and economic structures. Dyson talks of “the common moral worldviews occupied by King and his white oppressors,” and is of the opinion that “Malcolm was perhaps the living indictment of a white American worldview.”^[18] Cone and Dyson both contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of black solidarity in the face class differences.

There is sufficient proof in Malcolm’s speeches and interviews to say that after his break from the Nation of Islam, he developed a concept of strategic black racial identity. ‘Race’ was a strategy in the sense that it was a necessary rallying point; one of several stages in his ultimate objective of bringing about an egalitarian and colour-blind society. This, arguably, was his most significant contribution to racially-oppressed people in general and the African-American community in particular. Malcolm X’s particular conceptialisation of ‘race’ sought to resolve a dilemma, found in the 1960s black struggle, and which Howard Winant explains below:

“The very comprehensiveness of the racism the movement sought to overcome served as a practical limit to the movement’s demands. The movement was repeatedly forced to choose between radicalism and moderation: the former was a constant temptation, imposed by the embeddedness of race in the social and psychic structures of U.S. life. The latter was a political necessity, a pragmatic imperative in the real situation where (let it be remembered) whites vastly out-numbered blacks.”^[19]

In a nutshell, either African-Americans complied with the white power structure and articulated their demands according to the possibilities offered within such a framework or they risked being branded subversive and radical. Acting within the framework offered by the United States, according to Malcolm, meant acceptance of tokenism. Malcolm tried to find a way out of this conundrum. The intractability of racial formation highlighted by Winant led Malcolm X to embrace this marker of identity in a way which was distinctly different from that used by white supremacists to project African-Americans. Essien-Udom, in his 1962 analysis of the African-American community, points out that “they [African-Americans] cannot wish away their racial identity. Whether they view it positively or negatively, they cannot be indifferent to it.”^[20] Malcolm chose the first option and tried to instil pride and self-respect in African-Americans through the recovery of their African roots. Employing what Gayatri Spivak has termed ‘strategic essentialism,’ “a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest,”^[21] Malcolm X sought to initially effectively counter white racism with the long-term vision of abolishing this form of oppression.

While Malcolm acknowledged the need to work within the domestic framework, he constantly stressed the importance of Africa in order to inculcate African-Americans with a positive sense of identity. This dual aspect of Malcolm’s thinking is highlighted in one of his last interviews, given on 12 December 1964, where he says that African-Americans need to “migrate back to Africa culturally, philosophically, while remaining here [in the United States] physically.”^[22] Malcolm X’s emphasis on the recovery of a positive identity (via Africa) however does not necessarily imply that he was a separatist and/or an essentialist. I regard Malcolm X as a pragmatic nationalist, espousing ideals of a black nationalism which in Tommie Shelby’s words,

“urges black solidarity and concerted action as a political strategy to lift and resist oppression ... it could ... mean working to create a racially integrated society or even a ‘post-racial’ polity, a political order where ‘race’ has no social or political meaning.”^[23]

A necessary point of departure, Malcolm’s strategic use of race to unite blacks was designed to ultimately defeat racism.

In the first chapter of this study I look at the constraints, most notably the white power structure, present in the United States during the mid-1960s which, on one hand gave form to Malcolm’s thinking, and on the other, made it necessary for Malcolm to add an international dimension to his thinking. The second chapter explores Malcolm’s racial theorising in 1964-65 when he identified the two stages which were necessary for the attainment of a colour-blind society. While Africa, as both idea and place, served as a cultural base, it also acted as a springboard to an international coalition of oppressed people. By linking the domestic and the international politics of Malcolm X, this study highlights the sense of purpose with which Malcolm X articulated his arguments concerning the future of the African-American community and their involvement in the American society.

CHAPTER ONE

1 THE DOMESTIC PARAMETERS: AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE STRATEGIC USE OF RACE

1.1. Black Solidarity as a Reaction to American Racism

This section deals with the effects that Malcolm X’s understanding of the American system had on his conception of black solidarity. Malcolm X saw the American political, social, and economic structures as inherently racist and oppressive. Howard Winant highlights the fact that the major obstacle of the civil rights movement was “the embeddedness of race in the U.S. socio-political system.”^[24] As such, for Malcolm X, only a revolution, a complete overturning of the American system could lead to a colour-blind society. Much like Du Bois’s ‘veil’, the African American had to live and act within a racial framework. Thus, black solidarity, as Malcolm X conceived it, can be seen as a reaction to racist oppression. Black solidarity as a reaction to racism implies a form of coalition – if seen as a derivation of racist logic – resembling, but not necessarily similar, in its outlines, to such logic.

Malcolm X discerned the inherent racism present in the United States. This situation, he argued, made achieving genuine equality for African Americans by appealing to domestic authorities impossible. No one would be able to explain Malcolm X’s perception of the American system as clearly as the man himself. In an article written on 25 August 1964 for the Egyptian Gazette, Malcolm states that:

The present American ‘system’ can never produce freedom for the black man. A chicken cannot lay a duck egg because the chicken’s ‘system’ is not designed or equipped to produce a duck egg. The system of the chicken was produced by a chicken egg and can therefore reproduce only that which produced it. The American ‘system’ (political, economic, and social) was produced from the enslavement of the black man, and this present ‘system’ is capable only of perpetuating that enslavement.^[25]

This quote of Malcolm X conveys his belief in the impossibility of equality and justice in a society which, in its very structures, is racist. The analogy between a chicken producing a duck egg and the American system producing freedom demonstrates just how unconceivable such a development was. Such a conception of the American system not only establishes the basis of black solidarity in the United States but also forms and informs the international coalition, discussed in the next chapter, which Malcolm X sought. Stokely Carmichael, a major figure in the Black Power movement who also took up some of Malcolm X’s ideas, coined the term ‘institutional racism’ to explain the racist framework of American society. In “Toward Black Liberation,” Carmichael explicates ‘institutional racism,’ saying that:

racist assumptions of white superiority have been so deeply ingrained in the structure of society that it infuses its entire functioning, and is so much a part of the natural subconscious that it is taken for granted and is frequently not even recognized.^[26]

Malcolm X demonstrated the impossibility of black progress under American jurisdiction by pointing out, in a speech given on 31 December 1964, that:

Never at any time in the history of our people in this country have we made advances or progress in any way based upon the internal goodwill of this country. We have made advancement in this country only when this country was under pressure from forces above and beyond its control. The internal moral consciousness of this country is bankrupt. It hasn’t existed since they first brought us over here and made slaves out of us.^[27]

Thus, the structure of the United States be it political, economic, or social, is seen by Malcolm X as unadapted to be egalitarian. The rigidity of such a racist framework shaped and outlined the racial character of black organisation.

The ‘embeddedness of race’ mentioned by Winant led to the overarching influence of racial identity in the United States. This put African Americans in a situation where their racial identity defined how they were viewed. Faced with its inescapability, Malcolm sought to use this identity in his quest for black freedom and equality. In his 1962 study of Black nationalism in the United States, Essien-Udom explains the racialisation of African Americans: they cannot wish away their racial identity whether they view it positively or negatively, they cannot be indifferent to it. It is the stuff of their lives and an omnipresent harsh reality. For this reason, the Negro masses are instinctively ‘race men’.^[28]

The use of racial traits – however these traits may be defined – to categorise blacks as a distinctive group is then seen as directly stemming from racism and its proponents. Viewed through such a lens, the basis for Malcolm X’s call for blacks to unite can be regarded as more political than cultural. Malcolm X alludes to this in the Egyptian Gazette article, when he says that: the first law of nature is self-preservation, so my first concern is with the oppressed group of the people to which I belong, the 22 million African-Americans, for we, more than any other people on earth today, are deprived of these inalienable human rights.^[29]

Oppression, then, becomes the basis for black solidarity. It is the fact that white racists see blacks as distinctive and such distinctiveness is used as a justification for oppression that gives birth to a black coalition. Du Bois’s concept of the ‘veil’ to analyse the situation of the African American faced with a racist society can be useful in understanding black solidarity. Du Bois writes, in The Souls of Black Folk that the African American is born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, - a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar situation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.^[30]

The African American, having been lumped together with other African Americans, cannot help but be conscious of his racial identity. His/her identity is inescapable in an American system which sees him/her first and foremost as black. Jean-Paul Sartre, involved in the project of Négritude, shows how exactly the assigned identity as black must become the locus of organisation for all those oppressed on the basis of their being black:

But even though oppression itself may be a mere fluke, the circumstances under which it exists vary according to history and geographic conditions: the black man is a victim of it because he is a black man and insofar as he is a colonized native or a deported African. And since he is oppressed within the confines of his race and because of it, he must first of all become conscious of his race.^[31]

However, Malcolm conceived ‘race’ as a strategic tool in the black struggle. The term was devoid of any supremacist implications which characterised whiteness. As Essien-Udom pointed out earlier, whether positive or negative, the racialised identity of the African American is inescapable. Thus, the most effective method available to blacks is the strategic use of such an identity. Malcolm X believed that initially organizing blacks according to the same terms under which they were oppressed was the most effective method to proceed toward true abolition of black oppression. On 16 December 1964, responding to accusations of being a black racist, Malcolm highlights the fact that “usually the black racist has been produced by the white racist. In most cases where you see it, it is the reaction to white racism, and if you analyze it closely, it’s not really black racism.”^[32] Black solidarity, while deriving from racism, does not necessarily contain the same principles and as such it resembles racism only in form and not in substance. In a similar vein, Sartre proposed the use of ‘anti-racist racism’ as a necessary stepping stone in the struggle for black freedom, saying that:

The unity which will come eventually, bringing all oppressed peoples together in the same struggle, must be preceded in the colonies by what I shall call the moment of separation or negativity: this anti-racist racism is the only road that will lead to the abolition of racial difference.^[33]

Such a coalition of African Americans, brought together by their common plight, stems not from any self-conscious identification but rather from their shared status as victims of racism. Malcolm X put it clearly that he is primarily concerned with racism as an oppressive tool designed to maintain white supremacy. Shortly after his break from the Nation of Islam was made official, Malcolm X, in his speech “The Ballot or the Bullet,” given on 3 April 1964, stated that:

Now in speaking like this, it doesn’t mean that we’re anti-white, but it does mean we’re anti-exploitation, we’re anti-degradation, we’re anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn’t want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us.^[34]

Black solidarity in such a context then is strategic in the sense that, taking racism and oppression as a point of departure and articulating the struggle according to it, abolition of racism is its point of arrival. Borrowing Gayatri Spivak’s concept ‘strategic essentialism’ is perhaps the best way to illustrate and explain the particular type of black solidarity Malcolm X had in mind. Spivak’s historical analysis of resistance by the oppressed led her to use the term ‘strategic essentialism’ to explain a “strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest.”^[35] As said earlier, Malcolm X’s call for African Americans to unite was based more on political rather than cultural grounds. The discussion of the international dimension of Malcolm X’s struggle will shed more light on this particular point. Suffice it to say here that although Malcolm X articulated an exclusively black resistance, there is enough proof that he was far from being a traditional essentialist. For Spivak, while discussing this particular type of essentialism, makes a parallel with class-consciousness which she believes, as a basis for solidarity, shares some characteristics of an oppression-based solidarity:

‘Class’ is not, after all, an inalienable description of a human reality. Class-consciousness on the descriptive level is itself a strategic and artificial rallying awareness which, on the transformative level, seeks to destroy the mechanics which come to construct the outlines of the very class of which a collective consciousness has been situationally developed.^[36]

Black racial solidarity exists insofar as racism itself is present. The parallel with class-consciousness helps in gaining a better understanding of black solidarity given that both of these coalitions are based upon arbitrary rallying points and both of them adopt the very framework within which oppression takes place to abolish that oppression.

This section lays the foundation of the central argument of this book; that ‘race’ was above all a strategy to abolish racism. A product of the racism so pervasive in the American system, black solidarity, as Malcolm defined it, sought to use ‘race’ as a positive identity. The particular essentialism which Malcolm X articulates in his speeches can be better situated with a discussion, in the sections below, of his respective attitudes toward whites and the black bourgeoisie or elite.

[...]

^[1] Breitman G. 1970, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary, Pathfinder Press, Inc., New York; Dyson M. E. 1995, Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York; Terrill R. 2004, Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgement, Michigan University Press, East Lansing; Tyner J. 2006, The Geography of Malcolm X: Black Radicalism and the Remaking of American Space, Routledge, New York & London.

^[2] Breitman G. 1970, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary, Pathfinder Press, Inc., New York, p. 27.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Breitman G. 1970, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary, Pathfinder Press, Inc., New York, p. 67.

^[5] Ibid., p. 50.

^[6] Tyner J. 2006, The Geography of Malcolm X: Black Radicalism and the Remaking of American Space, Routledge, New York & London, p. 13.

^[7] Ibid., p. 106.

^[8] Tyner J. 2006, The Geography of Malcolm X: Black Radicalism and the Remaking of American Space, Routledge, New York & London, p. 13.

^[9] Terrill R. 2004, Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgement, Michigan University Press, East Lansing, p. 145.

^[10] Ibid., p. 122.

^[11] Ibid., p. 127

^[12] Wolfenstein E. V. 1981, The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, p. 23.

^[13] Ibid., p. 24.

^[14] Ibid., p. 369.

^[15] Cone J. 2005, Martin and Malcolm and America: Dream or Nightmare, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, pp. 38-9.

^[16] Ibid., p. 247.

^[17] Dyson M. E. 1995, Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, p. 43.

^[18] Ibid., p. 45.

^[19] Winant H. 2001, The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II, Basic Books, U.S.A., p. 149.

^[20] Essien-Udom E. U. 1962, Black Nationalism: The Search for an Identity, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, p. 3.

^[21] Spivak G. 1985, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” In: Donna Landry & Gerald Maclean (eds.) 1996, The Spivak Reader, Routledge, New York & London, p. 214.

^[22] Malcolm X 1964, “Last Answers and Interviews,” In: George Breitman (ed.) 1965, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches & Statements, Grove Press Inc., New York, p. 210.

^[23] Shelby T. 2005, We Who are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity, The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 28.

^[24] Winant H. 2001, The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II, Basic Books, U.S.A., p. 149.

^[25] Malcolm X 1964, “Racism: The Cancer that is Destroying America”, In: John Henrik Clarke (ed.) 1969, Malcolm X: The Man and his Times, The Macmillan Company, New York, pp. 304-5.

^[26] Carmichael S. 1966, “Toward Black Liberation,” The Massachusetts Review 7 (4), p. 643.

^[27] Malcolm X 1964, “To Mississippi Youth,” In: George Breitman (ed.) 1965, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches & Statements, Grove Press Inc., New York, p. 142.

^[28] Essien-Udom E. U. 1962, Black Nationalism: The Search for an Identity, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, p. 3.

^[29] Malcolm X 1964, “Racism: The Cancer that is Destroying America”, In: John Henrik Clarke (ed.) 1969, Malcolm X: The Man and his Times, The Macmillan Company, New York, pp. 303.

^[30] Du Bois W. E. B. 2008, The Souls of Black Folk, Arc Manor, Rockville, Maryland, p. 12.

^[31] Sartre J-P. & MacCombie J. 1964/1965, “Black Orpheus,” The Massachusetts Review 6 (1), p. 18.

^[32] Malcolm X 1964, “Last Answers and Interviews,” In: George Breitman (ed.) 1965, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches & Statements, Grove Press Inc., New York, p. 195.

^[33] Sartre J-P. & MacCombie J. 1964/1965, “Black Orpheus,” The Massachusetts Review 6 (1), p. 18.

^[34] Malcolm X 1964, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” In: George Breitman (ed.) 1965, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches & Statements, Grove Press Inc., New York, pp. 24-5.

^[35] Spivak G. 1985, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” In: Donna Landry & Gerald Maclean (eds.) 1996, The Spivak Reader, Routledge, New York & London, p. 214.

^[36] Spivak G. 1985, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” In: Donna Landry & Gerald Maclean (eds.) 1996, The Spivak Reader, Routledge, New York & London, p. 214.