Vol 23, No.3 & 4 $6.00

TH

by JohnWoodford

The Malcohnized Moment:

En-Gendering and·Re-Politicizing the X Man

"M alcolm:X is probably the mostvisibl~(and vigorous) figure on the Afri-

can-Arner ican political landscape today,"reads' the publisher's blurb for Malcolm X InOUT Own Image CSt. Martin's Press, 1992,$18.95 hardcover). It's an ambiguous blurb. Itcould be a statement that the image of Mal- .colm X is currently the most displayed andpolitically potent icon in Afro-American af-fairs, or that a dead man is not only the mostattended to but the most alive player on thestage of Black American politics. Either wayyou take the comment, it paints a patheticpicture of politics and of publishirig.

Malcolmania is (or was, since marketingphenomena of this sort tend to be fleeting) soexploitable that all publishers and other en-trepreneurs had to do was slap Malcolm X'sname, face or even his mere iX' on a cap, ahat, a shirt, a movie, a book, and they'd.reapbig profits or at least respectable sales for aloss leader (via lost leader).

Nevertheless we can be grateful to VillageVoicecolumnist Joe Wood for collecting these14 essays on the meaning of Malcolm X.What's good in the book is very, very good,though what's not is horrid. Two pieces aremust-reads on the subject - those by HiltonAls and Adolph Reed; five other contributionsare worthy.

Unfortunately Wood himself, whose "Mal-colm X and the New Blackness," occupies theall-important lead-off position, is among theseven writers who fail at this particular time atbat. But no one bats a thousand, and Wood isat least in good company since no less thanAngela Davis, John Edgar Wideman, Cornel'West and Arnold Rampersad don't measureup to their usual performances. And a joint

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effort by Ron Simmons and Marlon Riggs (a"Black Gay Dialogue on Malcolm X") readslike an unintended parody of Men on Filmskit on of "In· Living Calor." Wood myste-riously includes an undistinguished article bya college student "as told to" not.one but twowriters, Marpessa Dawn Outlaw and MatthewCountryman - and yet, as you will read later,he rejected an article by the historian HaroldCruse. Big mistake.

A psychologist or historian specializing inpolitical rhetoric might be interested in thefailed essays, however, because they do revealthe continuing mind-numbing absorption intalking about "Black identity" and "gender"that is afflicting oh so many intellectuals. Isuppose it's a sign of our late-Ztlth centurydeconstructionist times that much of whatp!lssses as "analysis" of Malcolm X washesaway most of his substance and leaves only hisscowl and penis as preferred objects of con-ternplation and/or fantasy. Hey, brothers andsisters: Malcolm X wasn't trying to be your.shrink, your guru or your sex therapist. Whenyou cast him in any of those roles, your talkabout him becomes mighty boring.

To avoid being discouraged or put to sleep,I advise the reader to delve into one of the'lesser pieces only after reading at least two ofthe solid works examined below (a few ofwhich are gender-focused, but still deliver theintellectual goods).

The fun begins with the playwright and au-thor Amiri Baraka (isn't it about timewe dropthe aka parentheses?). Baraka blisters 'Spike

/ Lee's film version of Malcolm X, the BrucePerry psychobiography (Malcolm: The Life of aMan 'Who Changed Black America), the SocialistWorkers Party for its litigious zeal to control

THE BLACK SCHOLAR . VOLUME 23, NO.3 &f 4

some of Malcolm X's writings, and "Negro bu-reaucrats" who were "conscientious objec-tors" to Malcolm X's struggles when he wasalive, but who now "furiously, if stiffly, [rub]up against Malcolm like self-manipulated'firesticks' trying to make a little smoke."

Having cited. Lenin's observation that the'petite-bourgeois nationalists.of the world tendto be phony rebels who unite with the richwhen the chips are down, Jones describes a ,Malcolm X celebration in Washington ,DC inwhich the "outspokenly capitalist" MayorSharon Pratt Dixon "led a motley crew of'small businessmen and half-hip promoters of'Black,' the product," all of whom were"using Malcolm as if to sanctify and legitimizetheir own lives and paths, as somehow, anyway, connected to Malcolm,

"It is," Baraka' continued, l)like the para-dox of 'Blackness: as an ideology, in that it isthe most superficial i.d. of the nation, classlessarid ultimately deceptive. Both Buthelezi andMandela are 'Black.' Like Roy Innis and Mal-colm X."

Baraka diagnoses Spike Lee's Detroit Red-oriented view of Malcolm X in the movie "X"as a symptom of the general "retrogradetrend" in J).S. society and politics - a trendhe sees as manifesting itself among Afro-Americans in the solidification of a reaction-ary Black comprador class whose "Black'struggle is mainly commercial. ... African Kingsand Queens can be put to work for Budweiser.Martin Luther King for McDonald's and Mal-colm X for Warner Brothers. ABC makes mil-lions from our Roots."

B araka assails Prof. Henry Louis Gates ofHarvard and other "Negro deconstruc-tionists [who] actually re-raise the reaction ofthe backward white Southern agrarian so-called 'New Critics' of the '40s and '50s. Theattempted disconnection of literature fromreal life." Baraka places his targets within anhistorical scheme and lets loose at them withhis deliciously invective style:

"So we begin to understand if we analyze this retro-grade trend, these boughi-and-paid-for Negro whitesupremacist 'intellectuals' and academics, these pettysurrogau: racist Negro politicians, as mayon, congress-or council persons, corpbrate figureheads, institutionaljigaboos, these eurocentricoon 'happen-to-be-Negro' ar-tists whose notoriety is that now their confessions ofsubmission can be included in the curricula.

THE BlACK SCHOIAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 &4

"After any social-political upsurge !Jy the people, itis necessary for the rulers to, as quickly as possible,cover; obscure, distort, reverse, outlaw any trace of theentire epoch, its meaning, its victims, its ideas, itsvictories, its material human lift."

.Baraka reads Malcolm's life as an increas-ingly conscious expression of the struggle fordemocracy of the Afro-American ethnicgroup or nationality. The lesson of the Garvey-ite, Civil Rights, Black Muslim, Black national-.ist and other groups/movements, he says, 'isthat they express a common "call for Blackunity against White supremacy and Black na-tional oppression."

In Baraka's interpretation of Malcolm X'smetamorphosis, the Malcolm who left the Na-tion of Islam and became Malik El-Shabazzreinterpreted the teachings of Elijah Muham-mad that earlier inspired him as Malcolm Lit-tle/Detroit Red, the petty crook and convict.And, as EI-Shabazz, Malcolm rightly' saw' all -"Black nationalist" movements as a strivingfor political organization, as "a call for Self-

.Determination, as a function of unified Blackpolitical struggle, rather than the 'indepen-dence' Elijah Muhammad preached .... It wasnot a Bantustan Malcolm X called for but mo-bilization against national oppression."

Baraka argues that the Malcolm of Lee'sfilm and other commercialized Malcolmiteicons represent efforts to neutralize and oblit-erate the Black political, social and economicaspirations that he embodied. Baraka seesmuch of today's commercially approved andestablishment-funded Black cultural activityas a trickbag, as "the rulers'" assault on BlackAmericans' ability to distinguish which modesof thought and action are in their interestand which are threats to it. That is why theestablishment, snipe as it may at Spike Leeand his films, hails Lee's works as the standardfor "real" Black films while it categorizes theBlack films of the 1960s and '70s as "Blax-ploitation" cinema.

Today, Baraka says, "Spike Lee and otherslead a trend of real Black exploitation flicks,made by Black reactionaries, while any realanalysis of those '60s films media 'gofers' call'Black Exploitation films' (e.g., The Educationof Sonny Carson, Superfly, The Mack,' Buck and thePreacher, Across llOth Street, even Shaft), wili findthem much more' progressive, even muchmore pro-Black Self-Determination than the

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She's' 'Goita Have It, 'In Living Color,' House,Party syndrome of neo-Step 'n Fetchit deroga-tions and caricatures of Black life, which com-pletely eliminate even the slightest discussionof Black Self-Determination. (Except perhapsthe twisted superficial backwardness of Do the

,Right Thing where Black struggle is pervertedt6 mean photos in a pizza parlor.)"

Spike Lee smeared toe Black liberationmovement through his pandering-to-Establish-merit-stereotypes characterization of ElijahMuhammad and through his failure to giveMalcolm X's life any political meaning. Thatpolitical ,meaning, Lee says, is Malcolm's "veryideological movement, his' groping and seek-ing, his stumbling and continuous rising fromconfusion to 'partial clarity and on." Malcolm'X's purposeful and ~nreknting struggle forpersonal andgroup advancement, Baraka con-cludes, is "something' that should be taughtandstudied and widely understood by all of uswho would make sweeping social transforma-tion and revolution. The very struggle for multi-cultural and Black studies courses in schools is partof that struggle for claritj, and against the masters ofpropaganda." [Emphasis added.]

Patricia Hill Collins, a professor at the Uni-versity of Cincinnati, does what AngelaDavis tries but' fails to do in this collection, andthat is to animate an analysis of the knotty andintertwined problems of race, sex and class.

Collins shows Malcolm to have been likemost citizens of a society conceived and raisedunder a racist ideology: duped into believingthat race. is biologically constructed. One ofthe corollaries of the racist construct of race isthat people fall into the categories of "pure"or "mixed"; this belief leads to other drivelsuch asthe notion that people' can have genet-ically contaminated "blood.". The-terms "bira-cial" and "colored" (as in the apartheiddesignation) are other examples of the socialpower of scientific' falsehoods. Racism can in-fect Blacks as well-as whites, but the symptomsmay be different. Blacks who subscribe to rac-ist pseudoscience are trapped within a para-,dox: fh~se Blacks' who are "tainted" with"white blood" are also cast (and caste), Col-lins says, as "more refined, intelligent' andbeautiful, at least by each other.while darker-skinned Blacks were portrayed as lesser."

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Collins .also examines Malcolm X's limita-tions as a political analyst. She sees him as anexample of one tendency of the multiformand ongoing Black American liberation move-ment highlighted by Baraka:

"Missing from Malcolm XS analysis is a structuralanalysis of socialclass that addresses those features ofcapitalist political economies that profoundly shapeboth Black and .uihite social class dynamics. The dis-criminatory investment policies of banks, the role of thereal estate industry in controlling property in African-American neighborhoods, the culpability of existingapproaches to school financing in fostering Black edu-cational impoverishment, the employment and invest-ment policies of major international corporations, allremain .largely ignored and unanalyzed: "

Not even in his final, EI Shabazz, year didMalcolm take up such theoretical matters,Collins notes. The scarcity of analysis amongBlack conservative, centrist and nationalist po-litical thinkers and organizers leaves themwith a model of society in which "only Blacksappear to possess social class." Collins pointsout that "throughout his speeches and writ-ings, Malcolm X, alludes to the differencesbetween working-class and middle-classBlacks. No such distinction is made for whites.. . . The absence of a comprehensive classanalysis fosters the disquieting assumptionthat the true enemies of working-class Blacksare the 'white man' and his faithful sidekick- middle-class Blacks."

Like the entrepreneurs who' have recent-ly made high-yield investments in his storyand image, Malcolm X chose to ignore the"longstanding Black progressive traditionconcerning social class," Collins says, a tradi-tion "largely silenced by the McCarthyism ofthe early 1950s," and formed by such thinker-activists as W.E.B.' Du Bois, Ida Wells 'Barnett,Oliver Cox; E. Franklin Frazier, Paul Robeson,Pauli Murray and Richard Wright.

Unlike most of today's X-marketeers, how-ever, Malcolm was not ignorant of this tradi-tion. Collins is apparently unaware that manyof his speeches delivered both during andafter his membership in the Nation of Islamare dotted with references to progressive, par-ticularly anti-colonial; struggles. He consis-tently defended Cuban, Algerian, Vietnamese,South, African and other freedom strugglesled in the main by Communists. His articles inthe newspaper Muhammad Speaks show wide-ranging knowledge of international struggles

THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 23, NO, 3 &4

and his partisan responses to them. (It is piti-ful that all contributors to this volume ignorehis brief editorship of that paper and role inbuilding it into the largest-circulation weeklynewspaper in the country). He was no Red-baiter, nor could Red-baiters intimidate him.

A surprising source reveals one likely butignored influence on Malcolm Little's politi-cal development, Redd Foxx's memoir fromthe '70s, Redd Foxx, B.S. The comedian metMalcolm, or "Detroit Red," shortlyafter Foxxhad made a similar youthful exodus from theMidwest (St. Louis) to Harlem. Foxx got ajobas dishwasher and waiter at the Chicken Shackin Harlem, where Little was also a waiter.

"Malcolm was about the same color as me,"~oxx recalled. "You could hardly tell us apart;we both had these conks, and-our hair was redwith a high pompadour; and we wore the zootpants." They often 'got high and chasedwomen, and committed at least one b & etheft together.

One day, according [0 Foxx, he met Mal-colm "walking down Saint Nicholas Ave: withthis white chick." Malcolm introduced hiscompanion as Linda: After some small talk,' -Linda tells Foxx that Malcolm told herthat "you and Malcolm would like, to jointhe Party."

"Oh, sure, I'm always ready for a good party, ' I said.~in't that kind of party, Redd, ' said Malcolm, shak-ing his head. _'It's a political-type party, , she said.'Well, what type? Republican? Democrat?''Neither, , said Malcolm.'It's the Communist Party,' said Linda, real proud."

D>xx protests that Malcolm must be out of.r his mind, but Malcolm pulls him aside andsays, "Redd, you asshole, there's food." Theyaccompany Linda to the basement of anapartment building/where there are "broads,plenty 'of white broads ... [and] tons of[food] all lined up real neat on 'a long table."Someone "shoved some papers at Malcolmand me for our signatures, which I guessmeant we was joining up. Then they handedus stacks of their propaganda literature be-fore they let us get too far past the door."

. "You just couldn't avoid being part ofthings like that then," Foxx said, adding thathe'd have "joined the KKK" for sandwiches inthose days. Nevertheless, he and Malcolm be-

THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLuME 23, NO.3 &4

came regulars in that basement, where they'd"dance with the chicks, smell the perfume.and eat the sandwiches. It saved my ass morethan once."-

Foxx'sdisavowal of interest in Red politicssounds like a successful showman's efforts tonip any neo-McCarthyite attack in the bud incase some accuser popped up with his signa-ture on a Communist Party document. As forMalcolm, many observations in his writingand speeches suggest that he read from the,"propaganda" and put a good deal of cred-ibility in some of it.

But Malcolm Little had to suppress anyawareness of the role of social class, Collinsrightly says, as a price for his emotional rescueby Elijah"Muhammad, for his rebirth as Mal-colm X. He paid that cost by serving for 12years as chief piper for the Black Muslims'chimerical tune of a separate Black capitaliststate. In all fairness to Allah's Last Messenger,however, let's acknowledge that ElijahMuhammad used this Promised Land as ameans to encourage academic and labor disci-pline among his followers, many of whomopened shops, learned trades, read widely,.earned advanced degrees and so on, to pre-pare themselves as future nation builders.The Nation of Islam's rate of achievement inskills-building surely surpassed the public

"school system's, even if the Nation could neverhave served as all of Black America's substi-tute for that system. '

Collins is also right to emphasize that the"checkered record of white progressives onmatters of race may also have contributed toMalcolm X's basic mistrust of social class as astructural category of analysis essential to M-rican-American social struggle."

But Malcolm X's championing of the BlackMuslim's prescription for women - sub-missiveness to masculinity - cannot be ex-plained away. Orthodox Islam, Christianity,Judaism and many other male-enforced,cleric-dominated religions and sects haveconstructed images of "Woman" as helpless-air-heady mother-of-the-race who is alsoa-creature-who-is-a-whore-if-uncontrolled. It isirresponsible, however, to sidestep MalcolmX's male supremacism with the excuse that"that's what everyone was doing back then."

Collins builds her case against Malcolm X'smale supremacism by quoting his own

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speeches and wntmgs. Since his image ofBlack oppression was almost always expressedas ont; of castration of the Black man by the,white man, she observes: "Equating Black op-pression with the state of Black masculinity isin effect offering a masculinist analysis ofBlack oppression." Malcolm X's and others'masculinist ideology requires women to bekept in their inferior place by "strong" men- benevolent dictators with the authority towhip the stubborn "bitches" if that's what isrequired for domestic order. If male suprema-cists approve of such oppression in the home,Collins notes, "We might also question whatversion of Black community control Malcolm X hadin mind for the economic, political and social de-velopment of African-American communities."[Emphasisadded, ]

That is a question we must ask anyone whoadvocates or condones the use of force onmembers of his' or her own movement. Any-one who accepts the brutalization of' womencan or will, if "the cause" demands it, alsoaccept the brutalization of children, weakermales or others who.do not possess the mightto be right. Any self-styled nationalist whowould li~it a Black woman or rrian's right toread, marry, travel, attend school, live, eat orspeak freely, can hardly be a sincere cham-pion of the freedom of the race.

Collins finds much in Malcolm X toadmire, however. He was a keen scholar andactivist, and a bold personality resolute on.the question of freedom, justice and equalityfor his people. -Thus he, offered a "type ofleadership',' that "may prove to be far morevaluable to African-American communitiesthan any specific idea he embraced or actionhe took. He was an individual who was able tothink for himself and act upon the strength ofhis convictions."

No one should take that as faint praise.

Hilton Als, a staff writer for the VillageVoice,presents the most emotionally andintellectually provocative essay, "Philosopheror Dog?", a meditation on the life of LouiseLittle, Malcolm X's mother.

Als begins by exposing the racist intellec-

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tual dandyism underpinning two modish"very stupid words" of today's "critical" theo-rists '- "otherness" and "difference" - themole hills of' big piles of academic discoursethese days. These stupid words, Als says, are"the non ideas stupid people assume about'otherness' and 'difference' - two words thatdefine privilege iri' the epoch of some."

The ability to observe otherness and differ-ence come to an infant early on, -at hisor her mother's knee, perhaps, says 'Als,which means such perceptions are hardly evi-dence of a high power of discernment. Theinfant, however, may not wish to break fromthe protective identity it shares with Mom;may fear Mom's becoming "other," may infact hold subconsciously to the view thatMom's identity is inseparable from the child'sown. So the child's experience, at least theexperience of children with greedy person-alities, becomes, as far as the child is con-cerned, the sum total of the mother's: Thechild dons the mother's mask to protect him/her self from Experience:

, "We apply her mask to get us through a uorld we donot understand wherein we embrace the experience ofpeople who cannot understand us. We accomplish thisbrand of retarded experience by nursing her wordsthrough the tit of her experience. Are we less lonelybecause of it? In X situation, Mother does exactly as Iwould have done. Mother says. And I am so much likeher, et cetera."

The "X situation" that is Als's "ostensiblesubject" is .the life of Louise Little, MalcolmX'S mother. In the Autobiography, Malcolm Xcharacterizes his mother as looking "like awhite woman .... She had straight Black hairand her accent did not sound like a Negro's.... I looked like my mother." This formula for \self-hatred, given Malcolm X's later ideology,intrigues Als, and he undertakes the "gargan-tuan task of remaking Mrs. Little."

Malcolm X left few ingredients for this re-making; he portrayed his mother" accordingtoAls, as "an abhorrent phantom eventuallydriven mad by her ghostly, non-colored half"Her son omitted the story of her odyssey fromGrenada to, Canada to the United States, notdid he retell any of the normal family accountsof what had attracted her to Earl Little, theitinerant preacher and sometime Garveyite. Inthe son's story, she exists "to give birth to Mal-colm, go mad and look nearly colorless."

THE BlACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 &4

Louise Little's father, however, a Scotsmanshe reportedly never saw, "hovers happilyin the Autobiography," Als notes, and com-mands much more attention in the tale thanLouise does -'especially from readers "not ofa color" -,because the Scotsman representspower. "Earl and Malcolm speak of no oneelse with such passion" because the Grand-father stamped the mother and son (at birth,anyway) with "skin not of a color." And "Earland Malcolm attached themselves to Louise'smale, noncolored ha1f, and compet[ed] withhis ghost at every turn." Both men wereavowed Black nationalists. Yet they foundLouise particularly beautiful and seemed tohave attributed her beauty in large part to herskin's relative absence 'of color.

"Malcolm holds Louise Little's father re-sponsible for his mangled consci'iousness," Alssays.Consider the myth of identity Malcolm Xspun to explain his own character: "I was,among the millions of Negroes who were in-sane enough to feel that it was some kind ofstatus symbol to be light-complexioned ....[But] later, I learned to hate every drop' ofthat white rapist's blood that is in me."

Als asks, "How do we know that Louise Lit-tle's mother - who is not mentioned in theAutobiograpliyat all - did not love Louise's fa-

~ ther?" Neither Malcolm X nor anyone else haspresented any evidence that the Scotsmanraped Louise Little's mother. But Malcolm Xseems not to have been interested in hismother's past except to indulge in the "poten-tial fantasy" of his Grandfather as rapist. Inthis fantasy the Grandfather is so hated byLouise Little that she "gave me more hell"than her other children, while his father, Earl,for the same reason of skin pallor, favored Mal-colm for being lighter. If Malcolm knew more

. of his mother's West Indian culture, Als says,"he would know that in the West Indies a fa-ther is an immaterial thing - a scrap of manborn as torment. Louise Little knew that."

Louise Little was smarter than her husband(did Malcolm X attribute this to her skin non-color? Als wonders), and was occasionallybeaten for showing her brainpower. In the Au~

. tobiogr;aphy, Malcolm X condoned his father'saction: "An educated woman, I suppose, can'tresist the temptation to correct an uneducatedman. Every now and then, when she put thosesmooth words on him, he would grab her."

THE BlACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 &4

"Did Louise Little ask, by speaking, to bepunished?" Als wonders. "Is that how she losther mind, really?" Madness threatened herwhether she- expressed hersel( and receivedblows for her thoughts, or held her tongueand smothered her intelligence. But her fates~ems not to have interested her son, Als says,e~cept as it served his self-aggrandizement:

"The famous photograph of Malcolm standing at awindow in his house with a gun looking out the win-dow - I believe he is on. the lookout for his mother.What did he see, looking out the window? Did he seehis mother's quite appropriat» anger? Based on thefact that in the Autobiography he refers to her as,Louise and in Malcolm: The Life of a Man WhoChanged Black America, Bruce Perry refers to her asLouisa? What was her name? Her date of birth? Whatparish was she born in in Grenada? . . . Mrs. Littledid not write anything. I am writing her anger for herand therefore myself since I hate the nonwriting I havedone about my own mother. The fact is, my nonumt-ing couldn't contain my mother's presence ... Since Iam not capable of writing. about my mother, how can Ihonor Mrs. Little? I did not know her. How did I notknow my mother? Whatl know: Malcolm's interestitihis mother is evident in his avoidance."

Als concludes that because she was an im-migrant, and a West Indian at that,"American people of a color" are cheered byLouise Little's characterization and fate in theAutobiography because the plot "plays out theviolence of their' feelings toward the coloredimmigrant." But in their own homelands,"West Indians of-a color are in the majority.They project 'the arrogance and despair that

. comes with this sense of being central butsmall onto everything and everyone else in theworld," And "Americans of a color" defineWest Indians by this arrogance, but do notsense the despair and feeling of smallness thatit masks. Als tells of his 'Barbadian grand-mother, a Royalist who, like Louise Little, "wasYellow" and "attempted to ignore her chil-dren who were women, and their childrenwho were dark."

Malcolm X sneaked in "bits about his ha-tred of Mom" as he developed his Black Mus-lim line, but these bits were only means for his"transferrmg his hatred of Mom's light skinonto a race of people he deemed mad becausetheir skin was lighter than Mom's and, there-fore; madder still."

And for this, Malcolm X was rewarded: "Hewas rewarded by very stupid people who

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--------- -----~ - ------

labeled his ideologically twisted tongue 'mar-velous.' " The word "marvelous" was popularin the fashion and arts world, Als says, fromthe 1930s through early '70s. Diana Vreelandof Vogue magazine -conferred "marvelous" sta-.tus on Malcolm, X because, ever mindful of

"the body and fashion industry as she was,she thought him marvelous "for tellingpeople not of a color that their faces andbodies were ugly." The college campuses, TVshows and press also were drawn to Malcolm Xand "supported his 'rage' because it rein-forced their privilege" -- the privilege ofmy th o-soci o-e con o mi cal ly cons tr uc ted

_,"difference."And as Malcolm X grew in fame, "Mrs. Lit-

tle was diminished by the loving glare of hispublicity .... In the Autobiography, he de-scribes this love [of publicity for him, and vice-versa] in great detail" '-- publicity that grewwhile his mother was spending 26 years in astate mental hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Readers of the Autobiography learn nothingof her "pitiful" (as Malcolm called it) lifethere, nothing of what her son said to herduring his sporadic visits. At what point 'didshe reach the condition in which "she didn'trecognize me at all"? We're not told.

In sketching his reconstructive autobiogra-'phy of Louise Little, Als overwhelms thereader with the force and logic of his imagina-tion. 'Despite the Autobiography's continuingability to inspire us, readers of "Philosopheror Dog" will forever hold in their mind Als'sassessment, too:

"The Autobiogr:aphy .has everything verystupid people embrace -- the mother drivenmad by her husband's murder, the dust ofpatriarchy, religious conversion into the sub-lime -- and yet it has nothing."

The book we need, Als insists, is an auto-I;>iography"rich in emotional fiber, with a loveof God and children and Mrs. Little and so

, forth." Such a book would supersede the so-often-told tale of "a boy who speaks (badly)for women -- the too-familiar story."

In "Can this 'Be the End for Cyclops and'Professor" X," Village Voice staffwriter GregTate invents a short quasi-philosophical dia-logue between two hip-hop young peoplenicknamed "Bullrose" and "Dravidiana," who

PAGE 30

was Bullrose's girlfriend before she "turnedthat lesbonic corner."

Bullrose is a self-declared X-man -- not' asin Malcolm X but as in the squad. of Marvelcomic book heroes. In hip-hop Socraticfash-ion the two take up the question of how toaccount for Malcolm X's resurrected fameamong today's Black youths.

"Why," asks Dravidiana, "are so manyyoung brothers sweatin' Malcolm X's dick sohard these days? Is it 'cause -of Spike Lee,Chuck D, BDP? Why you got 'the sleaze-asslikes of Big Daddy Kane saying he aspires tobe a combination of Malcolm X and MarvinGaye, a great Black leader and a ,sexyentertainer?" . ,

Bullrose attributes Malcolm X's resurgenceto his having been a "bona-fide superstar"with a "multiple-identity crisis going on.Count 'em off: preacher, poet, pimp, pros-titute, player, political activist, warrior-king,husband, father, martyr."

But what do the young brothers reallyknow about Malcolm, Dravidiana asks, beyond"what other niggas say about what a bad niggahe was. . . . What do they know about hispolitics, particularly his gender politics, whichwere like totally fucked up?"

"Brother man was videogenic and gavegreat soundbites," is Bullrose's analysis. "Thehip-hop nation got to dig him because hecould rap, he had street knowledge, motherwit and supreme verbal flow." Furthermore,Bullrose says, to be' turned into a "revolution-ary pop ikon" in America today, the figureneeds to have "lived fast and died young'lun-der "suspicious -and mysterious circum-stances." Malcolm fills the bill and is thus, ."the Elvis of Black pop politics."

He further cynically explains that MalcolmX's spirituality is "part of the package," a partthat serves the young Black male well in hisefforts to become proficient at "Black Male Pos-turing." BMP; Bullrose explains, is an attittidi-nal style that can "carry you farther than youwill ever imagine in this world because thewhole world gives it so much power. Except forthe butch breed like yourself who on the wholeare probably less impressed than anybody.",'

Bullrose pinpoints Malcolm X's way withwords as an especially powerful and enduring'skill: "Certain phrases will stick with me for-

. ever. 'I am the man you think-you are.' 'I'd do

THE BLACK SCHOlAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 & 4

the same as you, only more of'it.' 'You can'tget a chicken from a duck egg.' That onewhere he talks about how if you were a citizenyou wouldn't need no Civil Rights bill."

Even as a child of 7, Bullrose responded tothe Manichean scheme behind Malcolm X'srhetoric: "Maybe because he was talking about

, right and wrong in such binary terms, like infairy tales. You know he painted the world asBlack equals good and white equals evil."

Bullrose argues that compared with Mal-colm X's contemporaries, today's politicians,artists, writers and musicians are failing to"personify Blackness" in their works. Where,he wonders, are the Coltranes, Barakas, LadyDays, Fanny Lou Hamel's, Shirley Chisholms,Jr. Walkers, Bob Marleys, Mlles Davises, Ice-.berg Slims and Gloria Lynnes of the youngergeneratio'n? These figures ~.(>uld"quantify"Blackness by doing things "white boys can'teven contemplate."

"Race," Bullrose says, "doesn't prescribe ex-perience or predict emotional depth, but thereare historical experiences' that only being Blackin space, time and mind will make possible."

When Dravidiana counters that she sees lit-tle difference between Bullrose's aestheticprinciple and "calling white folks grafteddevils," as in the Black Muslim creation myth,Bullrose defends his view with an argumentthat rests on the wound-and-bow theory of ar-tistic creation along with Harold Cruse's cri-tique of the "crisis of the Negro intellectual":

"Look, there is a special kind of alienation you possess asa Black person in this society that is alL mashed up withyour feelings of loueand loathing and loyalty to Black folksas a whole. [There are certain) sensitivities or neu-roses [that make Blacks try) to square things that .have no liners and hard edges, Like where Africa endsand Europe begins. Houi to develop yourself withoutalienating those who aren't interested in developmenton whose behalf you are developing yourself. You knowif Malcolm hadn't had the Nation of Islam's save-a-sinner program behind him to smooth all that kindashit out, he woulda been another alienated Black intel-lectual in deep crisis. "

Editor Joe Wood invited Cruse, emeritusprofessor of .history at the University ofMichigan, to contribute to Malcolm In OurOwn Image, and Cruse did so. Cruse arguedthat even if Malcolm X had' not been killed hewould have got nowhere with his Organiza-tion .of Afro American Unity because he did

THE BlACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 &4

not know how to build a political organizationand had no program that could unify grassroots Blacks or mainstream Black leaders. Fur-thermore, Cruse said, Malcolm X rang up noconcrete accomplishments that could serve asa model for-Black organizational progress to-day. Woods rejected Cruse's cantankerous es-say, perhaps publishing the mawkish piece bythe non-writing college student in its place.

But perhaps Cruse would take solace inDravidiana's reply to Bullrose, which is asugar-coated version of the same bitter pillCruse administered:

"I was never raised to have heroes, I was raised to listen towhat people said and look for how it contradicted' whatthey did, I learned that the person who did a constructive

. thing for the community today could be tearing it down, tomorrow, I was taught, , , that holding power over people

makes [most human beings) even more fragile, vainand lonely and dangerous, Dangerous to others be-cause their charisma makes folks want to let them dotheir thinking for them, Dangerous to themselves be-cau.se they have to give up their humanity on (he wayto the hall of glory. , , , Haw can you respect thecommon humanity of people who hold "our ideas, yourutterances, as more valid than' their own lives? That'swhy I got no use for heroes. I can respect heroic acts butI can't respect anybody who'd want idolatry for break-fast, lunch and dinner,"

The dialogue ends with the protagonistsascending or descending into a mystical in-quiry into the true path of enlightenment.Bullrose maintains that Malcolm's assassina-tion shows that there are evil forces whichinstinctively attack anyone who is breakingdown (he "ism-schisms" that separate com-mon humanity. But Dravidiana counters thathuman society is doomed until it is ruled by acult of women, a cult that would by its naturebring a government organized around theeternal feminine principle embodied by theEarth Mother.

Patricia J. Williams, professor of law atColumbia University, keeps up the genderedemphasis of these meditations on Malcolm X.She sets herself the task of explaining whya Black neoconservative Supreme Court jus-tice like Clarence Thomas could say that hishero "is, was or has, been none other thanMalcolm X."

Spurred.by the comment of a friend that"Malcolm wasn't just a role model; he's be-come the ultimate pornographic object,"Williams takes up the question of pornogra-phy - "the habit of thinking that [sex] is a

PAGE 31

relation of dominance and submission. Ahabit of thinking that permits the imagina-tion of the voyeur to indulge in autosensationthat obliterates the subjectivity of the' ob-served." This definition proves fruitful forWilliams as she depicts Thomas as a man whoclaims to speak for all Black people "whilespeaking exclusively about himself" and aman who represents not the interests of Blackpeople, but only their image.

Williams identifies Thomas as the Blackcorrelative of the sort of woman whosays that a "real woman" likes to please menby making available to them those body partsthat define a "real woman." It is the whore,Williams says; who boasts that she would"never want to be ~ feminist because theydon't believe in having fun and they emascu-late men." Thus pornography is more thanThomas's hobby, it's his entire politics.

Williams then takes, up the question of theiconography of Malcolm X. She points outthat once he's been deformed or simplifiedinto a symbol, "Malcolm X" is a pliable sub-stance for the self-serving manipulations ofClarence Thomas, Spike Lee and other "pre-tenders to the Malcolm legacy." A political /mass media system as adept at instant myth-making as ours "can make Clarence Thomaslook like Horatio Alger, Miss Jane· Pittmanand Colin Powell all wrapped into one." Suchimage-making feats are essentially pornog-raphic because:

"If, as some assert, in sexual pornography men actand women appear, and if, in racial pornographywhite people act and Black people appear, a classicmoment in the political pornography of the Mal-colmized moment is exemplified by when PresidentBush invited the Black Caucus, who representman)'millions of Black and white voters, on up to the WhiteHouse to sit and chat about their concernsfor a while."

As it turned out, the point of the invitationwas the photo opportunity - pictures ofBush" looking as if he were listening" were dis-tributed to the nation's media. Similarly, Will-iams adds, during the Thomas affair, both themedia and Senate functioned in the; sameway; they disguised completely "the extent towhich the witness who represented theNAACP also represented a membership of.thousands upon thousands yet was made the

PAGE 32

imagistic equivalent of the witness who repre-sented the relatively miniscule membership ofthe Black bailiffs association of Southern Cali-fornia." That's America!

But Black people share responsibility fortheir vulnerability to such media ploys, Will-iams emphasizes. The enthusiastic guHibilitywith which many Blacks soak up and spewout conformist chatter about "role models"leaves Williams concerned that "all we areleft with is 'players' in 'roles' rather than sub-stantive, interactive beings." Williams probesthe soft underbelly of 1990s group-think" na-tionalism. Like Hilton Als and "Dravidiana,"Williams argues that idolatry is the motherof surrender:

"I worryabout this tendency to indulge in figurehead-ing oUTideals. / think that the habit of imbuing hu-mans with ideal or essential traits is a formula foreither dashed ideals or corruption of them. It is aformula as wellfor cynicism on the one hand or intol-erance on the other. . . . If Malcolm had conformedhimself to the politically pornographic imagination ofhis generations fixed ideals - evenjust a little - hewould no doubt be alive today, hosting a talk show,lunching with Clarence.But Malcolm never was onefor mannered acquiescence."

Some nationalists who invest "Blackness"with innate progressive power felt obliged toargue that since Thomas was Black, he waslikely to be "sympathetic to the advancementof particularly situated collective agendas."Only by ignoring his legal career could any-one entertain such false hope. His judicialphilosophy has alwaysbeen to reject "statisticsand other social science data" and to dismissentirely "a range of affirmative action re-medies that have been central to Blacks' socialand economic progress over the last 30 yearsor so."

It's not enough to condemn Thomas andhis kind as conservative neo-Toms. We mustdefine the characteristics and describe thedeeds that make them so. There's nothingwrong with knocking the foibles of Blackfolks publicly, But doing so to gain a career,income and approval from an audience ofanti-affirmative action whites makes you aneo-Tom. In Thomas's profession, Williamspoints out, the neo-Tom, like his white spon-sors, "supplants a larger common history withindividualized hypotheses about free choice,in which' each self chooses her destiny even ifit is destitution." Upon the altar of the self-

THJj:BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 & 4

help bootstraps myth Thomas is willing to seethe U.S. judicial system sacrifice as inadmiss-ible all historical evidence that "gives at leastas much weight to the possibility that certainminority groups have not had many chancesto be in charge of things, as to the possibilitythat they just don't want to, or that they justcan't." )

Williams has a powerful epigrammaticstyle - the match of any of our Su-preme Court justices ever - and Thomasgives her a chance to show it:

"While selflrelp and strong personal values are mar-velous virtues, they are no stand-in for the zealousprotection of civil and human rights. . . . ClarenceThomas has added a peculiarly stultifying, nullifyingtwist ~ that of simultaneously individualizing na-tionalism and nationalizing individualism. "

That Malcolm X can be so easily stolen,pawned' off and ripped off is a symptom of illsthat grip the whole of U.S. society, Williamsconcludes. This "repeated emptying of all ofour cultural coffers, of all of our sources ofboth self and unity, has left us much thepoorer," she notes. By being so abused andabusable, Malcolm X serves as "a signifier, ofthe female," not just of the strong-Black-male,because his history has become "a space forsubjugation, a debased emptiness, a loss for 'which there is no voice."

We Americans dwell in a post-OrwellianNever-Never Land, Williams says, "in which ifcalling a Black-person nigger is bad, then call-ing a white person racist must be Exactly theSame Thing Only Twice As Had .... In whichreality is just a high-price form of fantasy. Inwhich marketing trends are the new-age dern-onstratiori of democracy-in-action. In whichthere is justice for sale and media momentsfor all."

The final two essays worth r~ading clashagainst one another, throwing off sparksthat illuminate both our political landscapeand our academic discourse about it. Fromthis reviewer's perspective it might be morefrank to say that Robin D.G. Kelley's "The Rid-dle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cul-tural Politics During World War II" is a handy

THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 & 4

foil for Adolph Reed Jr.'s ':The Allure of Mal-colmX."

Kelley, a professor of history at the Univer-sity of Michigan, provides a wonderfully docu-mented look at the zoot-suit, conk-headedculture that Spike Lee uses so powerfully towhoosh viewers back to 1940s Harlem cool-catlife in the opening scenes of the movie "X".

But like Lee, Kelley strives to imbue thestreet hustling lumpen lads and lassies withinherent revolutionary potential. IgnoringMalcolm X's own interpretation of his transi-tion from hustler to activist, those who idolizethe gangster-rebel as People's Hero maintainthat Malcolm X was no qualitative improve-ment on Detroit Red, and therefore to con-demn the milieu of the petty crook, hustlerand gang banger is to nip a hero in the bud. '

As enjoyable and informative as it is to readKelley's effort to make his case, I remain un-convinced. Granted, denizens of the streetcan be intriguing. Kelley cites no less' a cul-tural observer to emphasize this fact thanRalph Ellison, who wrote: "Much in Negro liferemains a mystery; perhaps the zoot suit con-ceals profound political meaning; perhapsthe symmetrical fantasy of the Lindy Hop con-ceals clues to great political power ,- if onlyNegro leaders would solve this riddle. . . ."

Attempting to fill Ellison's bill requires Kel-ley to indulge in some formidable prosesleights of hand. He has to de-emphasize, evenslander, those young persons and commonfolks who displayed in the 1950sand '60s thediscipline and daring needed to bring downthe walls of segregation. To Kelley, "middle-class" must take on an intrinsically bad conno-tation so that zoot, hipster, hip-hop and otherstrata may be more- easily glorified. Thus weread that the 1960 civil rights fighters were"sons and daughters of middle-class African-Americans, many of whom were themselvescollege students taking a detour on the road torespectability to fight for integration and equality."[Emphasis added.]

Isn't it a put-down to characterize the free-dom fighters as having been on a "detour,"on a well-mapped route to "respectability"?And was the battle for Black freedom andequality ever really for "ir~tegration"? Thatterm was foisted on a movement too busy tothink about word-play. But the objective wasalways desegregation, the crushing of jnnCrow,

PAGE 33

the smashing of the legal framework of U.S.apartheid, and not to foist ourselves into trulyprivate white social settings or even to disman-tle predominantly Black institutions.

,I don't think Kelley in his heart is so con-temptuous of the freedom fighters. But hisobjective in this essay imposes upon him aregrettable rhetorical strategy. Listen to whathe says when the issue is whether MalcolmLittle, rather than Black collegians, made acareer detour: "... it is my contention that[Malcolm's] participation in the under-ground subculture of Black working-classyouth during the war was not a detour on theroad to political consciousness but rather an,essential, element of his radicalization." [Em-phasis added.]

'/:'T7 elley hopes to. convince readers (includ-~ng the college youths to whom he op~nsa path of apathy, frivolity or degeneracyrather than a "detour" into concerted' politi-cal action), that the case he makes for Mal-colm X applies as well to today's devotees ofpetty- (or worse) criminal subculture aka Au-thentic Black Hip Style. And so he says:

''ForMalcolm, the zoot suit, the lindy hop and thedistinctive lingo of the 'hepcat' simultaneously embod-ied these class, racial and cultural tensions. Thisunique subculture enabled him to negotiate an iden-tity that resisted the hegemonic culture and its atten-dant racism and patriotism, the rural folkways (formany the 'parent culture') that still survived in mostBlack urban households, and the class-conscious, inte-grationist auitudes of middle-class Blacks."

We are to accept the proposition, therefore,that it was not the young punk Detroit Red -;:-skillfully "negotiating his own identity" by liv-:ing a prodigal life -who harbored "class pre-tensions." No. It was the ea~nest hard-workingBlack residents of Roxbury, Massachusetts!Thus, when Malcolm/Detroit Red dove intopetty hoodlumism, he was, in Kelley's mind,discovering "the Black subculture" - not thecriminal subculture but THE Black culture.Equating Black culture with criminality issomething only bigots used to do.

The desire to "act out" through bizarreclothing, through avoiding honest labor,through reviling and exploiting women -these acts Kelley exalts as "subversive," as "re-sistance" and as a "rejection of both Blackpetit-bourgeois respectability and American

•PAGE 34

patriotism." This is the text he's forcedto write. Because he can't take seriouslyMalcolm X's own later appraisal of the conkculture as an expression of feelings of inferi-ority and degradation as a vestige of servitude,Kelley must palm off Detroit Red's life as revo-lutionary stylizing and heroic resistance, thatis, as Malcolm X's.

Does the rap culture Kelley glorifies solveEllison's riddle? Does it offer clues as to howto gain political power for the Black commu-nity or other U.S. citizens poorly served by ourdemocracy? Are hip-hop (or, for that matter,acid rock, heavy metal or grundge rock) mod-ern-day incarnations of conk heroism orRobin Hoodism? Is singing nasty songs part ofan unconsciously noble struggle to, as Kelleysays.of Detroit Red's shenanigans, "carve' outmore time for leisure and pleasure; free him-self from alienating wage labor, survive andtranscend the racial and economic bound-aries he confronted in everyday .life"? If so,where's the beef? Where in the USA or any-where else have petty hustlers or, riffraff - orrebel-entertainers who style themselves afterlumpen elements - achieved any gains what-soever for an oppressed people? Hasn't hap-pened. Never will.

Reality is stubborn. Critics may insist fromtheir offices in the halls of ivy that we stopusing "decontextualized labels such as 'nihil-ism' or 'outlaw culture.'." Perhaps otherterms may also offend them, like lump en pro-letariat, declasse or, yes, even underclass. Butthe world inhabited by the majority of Blackurbanites still exists, and its indices of qualityoflife are still dropping. And American apart-heid will always defeat, as it did in DetroitRed's days, any assault armed ideologicallywith the pop-gun notion that there is revolu-tionary magic in syncopated song and dance,iconoclastic clothing, gang-banging, hanging-out or petty thievery.

Malcolm X knew that. That's how and whyhe became Malcolm X. With his considerableintellectual gifts and rigorous scholarly disci-pline, KelleyWillundoubtedly come to the sameconclusion soon, and he'll do so sooner if he'takes to heart the last essay in this volume.

Skip the first five pages of "The Allure ofMalcolm X and the Changing 'Characterof Black Politics" by Adolph ReedJr., who in-

THE BlACK SCHOlAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 &4

dulges himself with some weak and boring au-,tobiography and other blather before he hitshis stride. Start with the paragraph begin-ning, "Malcolm X is attractive to young peo-pletoday in part because he was attractive toyoung people when he was-alive."

What today's youth receive from their el-ders is, in part, "a, Malcolm X fabricatedwithin an abstracted discourse of Black 'great-ness,' " Reed says. Malcolmania, however, isnot just a marketing phenomenon but, farmore than that, a sign of the' desperation ofthose who believe "that Malcolm's apparentpopularity either reflects or may crystallize arising tide of activism."

Reed traces the development of today's se-vere socioeconomic problems from theiremergence after the decline of the BlackPower movement in the mid '70s. There wasconsumerism, militant posturing and mysti-fication of Black identity 'back then, too. Butat least the claims of any Black group or erst-while leader "to serious commitment or so-phisticated analysis [were] judged in relation toan objective of changing social conditions affecting

,Black people. [Emphasis added.] And that'swhat is missing now.

Radicalism has been marginalized, its spaceseized by the model of "Black officeholders andpublic managers" who have pushed the notionthat racial empowerment can result from "in-cremental adjustment of the routine operationsof institutions in their charge," These chiro-practic adjustments have included "improvingminority personnel ratios, opening access topubliccontracting.jmproving the social welfaresystem's methods of distributing what are calledhuman services, and appointing and/or elect-ing more Black officials." The political quack-ery narrows the .horizon of political activity,substituting the maneuvering of "insiders" andagenda-setting elites for the mobilization of theBlack citizenry.

The result is the rise of "venal 'and reac-tionary - but all militantly race-consciousBantustan administrators as a stratum-for-itself': The civil rights organizations "foundtheir way into -public budgets and the innercircles of policy implementation and thereby

-legitImized accommodationist, insider politicsas the proper .legacy of protest activism."

Just as emperors can don new clothes, sotoo can the colonized. Simultaneous with the, -

THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOWME 23, NO.3 &4

rise of the kente-cloth nationalists came thenew guise of the porkchoppers of old: today'ship-hop nationalists. Reed traces their ideo-logical ancestry:

"Beginning in the 1980s also, the invention of ayouth-centered hip-hop culture, whose iconic markersallegedly constitute an immanent form of social criti-cism, once again has blurred the lines between ideologyand style, political action and consumer preference, "

The whole cultural-politics discourse, Reedsays, can be seen on one hand as a sign of the"relatively low level- of political mobilizationamong Black Americans (and its corollary,absence of a dynamic political movement");and on the other hand as "an outgrowth ofthe structuralist and poststructuralist trends.in radical social theorizing." The cultural-politics scholasticists define individuals'and groups' "identification with a 'taste corn-munity' as intrinsically political behavior, onan equal statu's with purposive contests overstate action." -

Pouring into the ever-expanding vacuumformed by political inactivity, Reed says, aresuch pseudo-political behaviors as Black His-tory Month and compendiums of Great Black

-Historical Figures ("a hybrid Homeric narra-tive and Afrocentric version of 'Jeopardy");the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday rituals;and "nationalist psychobabble about the needto repair supposedly damaged self-respect byteaching Black people about 'themselves.' "(Or witness today's NAAC;P calling uponBlacks to pay their bills with $2 notes called"Black-dollars" as if that's effective politics.Do they think big corporations, banks andstores are unaware of Black American pur-_chasing power ~nd spending habits?!)

No "parade of racial self-esteem experts"or purveyors of role-model panaceas will cutany political mustard, Reed says, because"linking examination of the past to a thera-peutic project destroys a sense of history asprocess and reduces it to a field of static, de-contextualized parables."

Reed identifies the kinds of pitifulrneas-ures that have created the big sucking soundassociated with the Black political vacuum. Hetraces a pattern in all this, a pattern of retreatfrom and discouragement of community- andnation-bas~d political organization and pro-test, and a pattern of "channeling Black polit-ical participation into support for the regime

PAGE 35

-'- in part by defining any other course asillegitimate and in part by successfully repre-senting the payoffs generated as both signifi-cant and optimal."

Thus, instead of increasing Black voter reg-.istration and participation, Black elected offi-cials and civil rights organizations havepreferred to fortify their own seats of' privi-lege, where they can serve as power brokersthrough a "strategy of insider advocacy" thatis "incompatible with popular mobilization."As Reed points out, there is more than a littlebit of class prejudice in this commitment to"professionalistic ideology" and defense ofprivilege by a managerial elite.

Like the rest of America's elite, the Blackmanagerial elite indulges in "totemicnostalgia" for CivilRights ~ttivism by concen-trating on King birthday campaigns asa wayof selling the idea that all that is lacking is aGreat Black Leader. But. the idolatry for King- like that for Malcolm X - arose only afterthe political figure was safely dead. The callfor' a l~ader inspired Jesse Jackson to present.himself as "heir t? King's fictitious legacy"(the fiction, that is, that King led an organizednational Black movement): And, like BookerT. Washington before him, Jackson has beenoccasionally denominated National BlackLeader "by the dominant white political, eco-nomic. and philanthropic interests preciselybecause he preached accommodation to theirprogram .of Black marginalization."

Afro~Americans, Reed reminds us, havehad "no referendum or other forum for legit-imizing anyone's claims to be a nationalleader." ,The street riff-raff, the civil rights'kingpins, the film makers, the curse-spewing/self-hating rappers· and others hailed as con-scious or unconscious subverters of the systemof exploitation and oppression can point tonothing but personal achievements: And corn-pared with the expectations he ,aroused,_ nei-ther can Jackson. He can cite "few benefitsbesides his own aggrandizement -:- no shift inpublic policy, no' institutionalized movement,not even a concrete agenda" around which tomobilize c= unless you accept 'jesse for Presi-dent" as such an agenda, and if you do, youmust acknowledge that that is "the most radi-cal narrowing of the focus of Afro-Americanpolitical action to date.'>

.PAGE 36

Jackson, Reed' argues; has actually dimin-ished Blacks' power within the DemocraticParty "by insisting that their preferences bechanneled through him." He demanded a"seat at the table," and the elite of the partyhave been only too happyto accept his scarfingas comprising their program to meet the needsof all Black citizens. (Jackson has merely refinedthe tactics he learned during his phony boy-cotts of Chicago businesses in the late '60s, boy-cotts that ended when his relatives or associates _got jobs and "contributions.") .

,The little increments derived from Blackoffice-holders - "zoning variances, .summerjobs in municipal agencies, waivers on codeenforcement, breaks in the criminal justicesystem, special parks and recreational ser-vices" and a share in public contracts is obvi-ously not. proving sufficient to alleviate the'problems of the day. Because "Black controlof those agencies whose principal function ismanagement of the dispossessed does not alter

-their ultimately repressive function." [Emphasisadded.]

Instead of rituals, Reed .says,Blacks needstrategy and tactics that flow from an aware-ness of present-day realities, of "the intricatelogics of reorganization at work in domesticand global political economy since World WarII." What has happened is this:

': , , the consolidation of a domestic political' model ....:..joining national and Iocal leoels - that cements inter-est group layalties and legitimizes state power through

, participation in a regime of public stimulation of pri-vate economic' growth; the subsidiary role for defensespending, transportation and urban redevelopment pol-icy, in recomposing regional and metropolitan demo-graphic, economic and political organization, "

. A radicalism that does not master the newreality "gives away some of .the .most impor-tant conceptual ground to defenders of thestatus quo" and, in their braying retreat, thepseudo-radicals make big noises, that mystifythe ignorant but do not frighten their ene-mies. These radicals tell us that to becomepolitically effective, we 'must model ourselvesafter some ancient' Egyptian royal house, orunderstand the difference between "Fire Peo-ple" and "Ice People," or regale our children.with fantastic (but easily refutable by a littlehonest book learning) tales of prehistoric M-rican inventions of stainless steel. They ~rgeus to praise the anti-democratic deeds ofslave-holding Black' kings and queens, or to

THE BlACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 '&4

worship a beatific Black Female/Mother, or to"understand Malcolm."

Reed hits the nail on the head: "There isnothing that understanding the 'real'Malcolm X - an impossibility in any event-could do to clarify or to help formulate posi-ti~ns regarding any of those phenomena, nei-ther the internal nor external forces shapingBlack political life. Invoking his image in thesecircumstances amounts to wishing away thecomplexities that face us."

Appeals to special forms of knowledge areI especially harmful when they come from

Black scholars who should know better. Falseknowledge undercuts the ideological develop-ment of young men and women. Especiallydamaging is the "rhetoric of cultural politics"because it "exalts existing practices as intrin-sically subversive and emancipatory":

'~ .. [I]! is a construction of radical opposition thatnaturalizes the demobilized state as outside the scopeof intervention and limits itself to celebrating momentsof resistance supposedly identifiable within fundamen-tal acquiescence.

"Because it rejects distinctions between -style. andsubstance, form and content, this new rhetoric of eva-siveness gives an intellectual justification for conflat-ing political commitment and consumer marketpreference. ... It consequently makes a fetish of youthas a social category (another failure to learn frommistakes of the 1960s) and idealizes trends in inner-city fashion as emancipatory expression."

When rappers project themselves as politi-cal sages, or politicians and scholars hail themas such, there is something rotten in the state.Malcolmania has arisen from this putrefac-tion. The demagogues who draw upon Mal- .colm tend to "reproduce his in'accurate,simplistic reading of Afro-American history..and reinforce inadequate and wrongheadedtendencies in the present." Malcolm X's oft-repeated house-Negro/field-Negro metaphoris a prime symptom of an "historically wrong,obfuscatory and counterproductive" concept.The field Negro in Malcolm's mythologystands for the strong and militant Black, andthe house Negro is the traitor and source ofdisunity. Never mind, Reed notes, that leadersof 'the major slave revolts (including NatTurner, Denmark Vesey and Gabriel Prosser)were house slaves.The house/field dichotomyis a handy weapon for Black yahoos to pre-

THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOWME23, NO.3 &4

serve the notion that there is a fundamentalconflict between educated and under- or mis-educated Blacks.

As it happens, Blacks who exercise criticaldissent are often abused as "house niggers"who are posing a deep threat to a united Blackmass. Criticism delivered anywhere but "in thecloset," in Malcolm's words, is 'dangerous orunwanted; thus he ridiculed Blacks who pub-licly rebutted his house/field nonsense. OKfor Malcolm, however, was his own public at-tack - puritanical and naive though it was -on Elijah Muhammad for consorting withwomen out of wedlock. This is the kind of"criticism" that white supremacists and SpikeLee accept as serious and damaging, so fearfuland eager are they to belittle and explain awayMuhammad, a great figure in American his-tory. (Look, for example, at the Black PantherParty's lO-point social program; it's closelyadapted from the Black Muslim lO-point pro-gr-am printed on the back of every issue ofMuhammad Sp_eaks.)At least both groups un-derstood the importance of having a programand communicating it to the Black public.

Malcolm, Elijah Muhammad an~ others, have also advanced the notion thatBlacks should condemn government pro-.grams that combat or seek to rectify the ef-fects of racism. They call instead for self-helpand self-reliance programs. "In current politi-cal debate self-reliance is a code for Booker T.Washington-style forfeiture of the right tomake claims on public authority," Reed ob-serves, a public authority resting on thewealth accumulated through centuries ofsuper-exploitation of Black enslaved and freeworkers, among others, at home and abroad."In this vein Black conservatives such asClarence Thomas or Tony Brown are at leastas likely to annex Malcolm's authority as arenationalists who prefer not to be thought of asconser:vative."

The truth of the matter, Reed says, is noneof us knows what Malcolm would be doing ifhe were alive today, or what he would havedone from 1965 to the present. And we willgain nothing by speculating about the matter."Part of what was so exciting about Malcolm,'.'Reed notes, "in retrospect anyway,was that hewas moving so quickly, experimenting with

PAGE 37

/

ideas, trying to get a handle on the history hewas living."

Despite Malcolm X's appeals for Blackunity - which included adapting the name ofthe Organization of African Unity for his ownorganization - he "made his reputation byattacking' entrenched elites and challengingtheir attempts to constrain popular actionarid the vox populi: Now he is canonized as anicon, an instrument of an agenda that is justthe opposite of popular mobilization."

Administering a welcome antidote to the,over-dosing on anachronistic Black feudalisticfantasies, Reed concludes: "He was no prince;there are no princes, only people like our-

. selves who strive" to influence their ownhistory."

Apart fro~ the essays t~at art? best ignored(and this book contains no greater por-tion of them than is usually the case with vol-umes of hastily coilected "timely" writings),Malcolm X In Our Own Image is an importantcontribution .to the too often malicious andmindless discussion of the roles of Black folkin American society.

We're witnessing a strong attempt by whiteestablishment figures on both the left, andright to eradicate the distinction betweenBlack group-consciousness, or nationalism,and Black separatism. Television specials, OpEd pages, cartoonists and college officials aregnashing their teeth and wringing theirhands in denouncing "Black separatism" asthe chief problem of race relations ,in theUnited States. )

What they are denouncing, however, is inreality not Black separatism at all. Blacks arenot seeking to bar whites or any other Ameri-cans from living, eating, attending school orworking where they wish, or in receivingequality of opportunity and compensation.Not even those Blacks who claim to be separa-tists call for the denial of any Constitutionalrights or other forms of social equity to whitesor any other citizens.

So why the fuss? Why have we seen thisrecent effort of hypocrites styling themselvesas foes of "Black separatism" making theirappeals not to Blacks but to whites? The an-swer must be that they are seeking to appealto the economic. fears of working-class and

PAG~38

lower-echelon professional whites, to rallywhites under the banner of defensive ratherthan aggressive racism. The budget crunchstops here.

The unspoken thrust of this new attackagainst Blacks is: If the ungrateful Blacks persistin eating With each other, talking amongst them-selves and preserving their presence in predomi-nantly Black middle-class neighborhoods, well then,all bets are off. We've been kind and charitable to-wards them long enough. They don't deserve anyprograms designed to eradicate racism or its effects.Cut the funds, kick 'em out. Don't let 'em in. Theyaren't your fellow citizens. They're un-Americanaliens who would turn our country into anotherYugoslavia. Look at that Afrocentric kick they're on.They're all preparing to go back to Africa anyway.

The writers I've focused on in this reviewshow that group-conscious Black discourse isnot-only stimulating and diverse, b~t terriblynecessary in the lace of white neo-racism.- None. of the writers in this book wouldaccept the notion that non-Blacks can exclu-sively frame any purposeful debate concern-ing issues facing the Black community, Butthis is precisely what the habitually racistAmerican establishment is seeking to do in itsseemingly mad obsession with "Black self-segregation."

In their drive to control the American pub-lic's understanding of "what's going on in theBlack community," however, the white estab-lishment media offer virtually no exposure to'Blacks who make the kind of probing and dar-ing arguments that the reader can analyzeand learn from in this book.

Lacking at this time a national organizationor media that can assess the new ideologicalclimate in private, and coordinate an effectiveprogram of ideological and political action, .we must rely on freewheeling discussion inbooks and journals where' our best scholar-activists can test various interpretations andsuggestions in open debate.

It's not an ideal situation. It would be fatbetter if the Black Congressional Caucus andother bodies did their fact-gathering andthinking in private rather than on C-SPAN,where headline-grabbers and gas-bags fill theair with predictable rhetoric devoid of any in-tellectual engagement over facts or strategy.But this is the situation we're in now, and wemust make the most of it.

THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 ,&4

THE BLACK SCHOlAR VOLUME 23, NO.3 &4 PAGE 39