The Path Forward: Malcolm X

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Making Way For Malcolm X

There are few figures who can match the degree of the controversy stirred up by Malcolm X. As a Muslim minister and leading figure of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Malcolm X fearlessly advocated for Afro-American freedom, pride, and self-reliance with piercing wit, warrior-like determination, and an indefatigable commitment to truth-telling. However, as with most controversial figures that wed thought and rhetorical finesse so singularly, it can be hard to cut through the cloud of public, media-generated associations about him, and distill his core principles in a way that will suggest paths forward for our own day. 

If one listens to Malcolm without keeping in mind the centuries-old context of slavery, the Afro-American struggle for freedom and equality, and the persistence of segregation well into the 20th century, it can be easy to erroneously interpret his criticisms of the nonviolent movement, early defense of Black separatism, and willingness to entertain violence in self-defense as indications that Malcolm advocated for militarism and violence.

Yet even with this context in mind, Malcolm’s style presents further interpretive difficulty. Because he refuses to locate himself within the circle of American destiny (as Martin Luther King Jr. does) and insists on the fundamental distance between the experience of his people and the priorities of the American nation, he levels his criticisms as an outsider, refusing to couch his arguments in the familiar language of the Union as a redeemer nation—a flawed nation, yes, but one committed to broadening its own democratic promise, generation by generation. In a country founded on such aspirations, Malcolm’s style can seem unsettling in that it refuses even this foundational premise, which may lead some to “otherize” his message and dismiss its relevance to our collective enterprise as inheritors of American democracy. 

With voices like Booker T. Washington and Thomas Sowell in mind, however, one may very well come to a different, and I think truer, conclusion: that Malcolm X embodied a form of righteous indignation wholly consistent with the inhumane treatment of his people, and sought to defend their future by advocating for principles that are quintessentially American, and even at times, conservative. 

The Path Forward: Applications of Malcolm X’s Thought

In arguing that Malcolm X should be taken seriously as a quintessentially American voice (despite his indications to the contrary), and at that, a voice with significant conservative leanings, I do not mean to suppress his prophetic fire as a voice who poses serious challenges to the American consensus about itself. Nor do I intend to suggest that his thought can be reduced to the premises of Anglo-American conservative thought as if his philosophy were equatable to that of Edmund Burke or John Adams. 

On the contrary, one cannot recognize the wisdom of Malcolm’s “conservatism” without incorporating a critical element into one’s national conception. In order to see the productive continuities among such distinct figures, one must embrace what Cornel West calls a Melvillean perspective on American history, and acknowledge the abyssal shadow that covers over its tendencies to domination, imperialism, and dehumanization. Once acknowledged, it becomes possible to broaden the applications of American values to a wider range of freedom struggles and recognize even radical challenges to the American consensus as healthy agitations that mature our democratic culture. 

Malcolm’s conservatism comes down to his fundamental appeal to self-reliance, economic independence, and the central role of power in determining one’s felt sense of freedom and equality. Like Booker T. Washington and Thomas Sowell, Malcolm argues that the key to Afro-American equality is not the acquisition of goods from the government, nor from any power structure predominantly governed by whites, but in the development of Black-owned businesses and property so that the community can achieve self-sufficiency and solve its own problems. Afro-Americans should control the economy of their own community and work together to keep wealth within its circle, for it will be impossible for them to bridge the wealth gap in a domain where whites have enjoyed centuries of advantages and already control most of the property regime.

Like Jefferson, Malcolm argues that freedom fundamentally means the independence of self-determination, and like the prophets of democracy writ large, he adds that equality means the ability to develop one’s latent capabilities, free from the domination of those who would seek to deny that equality. Ever wary of the ephemeral goods given by well-intentioned liberals in government (e.g. houses and jobs), Malcolm shares a conservative skepticism of the sustainability of humanitarian impulses and insists that real equality (as the freedom of self-development) will only come about through avenues that enhances one’s self-possession, self-responsibility, and power of self-determination. As long as someone is giving you something, they can take it away. 

Once these principles have been grasped, the rationale for Malcolm’s earlier calls for separatism becomes much clearer. Afro-Americans must be separated from American power structures and go to a land of their own because, according to Malcolm, integration between groups that were tied in a master-slave relationship for so long simply cannot achieve real equality in a common system. He concludes (at least in his earlier years of public ministry) that Afro-Americans must seek the freedom of self-determination, not faux “integration” in a white society that will never accept its ex-slave as an equal.

For Malcolm, police misconduct is merely a symptom of the same power structures that incentivize government lethargy in meeting the demands of the civil rights movement, as well as the tendency of mainstream media to stereotype Afro-American communities as crime-ridden jungles. All of them, he argues, use modern techniques to perpetuate a subtler form of slavery: the de facto denial of Constitutional liberties already guaranteed through the legitimization of militaristic policing and the hypocritical characterization of Black freedom struggles as violent mob movements. In consistent realist fashion, Malcolm explains this dynamic in clear power terms that echo Frederick Douglass. The group with power is looking out for its own, and will not give up power until the threat of a countervailing power compels it to make concessions.

Aside from his more pessimistic view about the possibilities of reconciling race relations in America, Malcolm’s vision for Afro-American advancement follows many of the same contours as Booker T. Washington and Thomas Sowell’s. For all of their temperamental differences, Booker and Malcolm see insular economic advancement as a surer path to equality than attempts at thorough social integration and view equal social relations more as a matter of power than of humanitarian intervention. In like manner, Sowell and Malcolm wed their faith in self-reliance with skepticism of government overreach, which can create disaster in the name of humanitarian causes. All three agree that the only viable path forward is the enhancement of human capital in Black communities so that the twin values of self-reliance and property work together to lift up their material and spiritual wellbeing. 

Malcolm’s views on education differ in one important respect, however. Where Washington and Sowell call for the kind of education that will expand students’ economic mobility and cultivate values of responsibility and self-confidence, Malcolm zeros in on the issue of cultural amnesia in the Afro-American community, and argues that his people must be re-educated to correct for the erasures enacted by slavery. Because African people were brought to America and denied their own history, they have been stripped of their intellect and rendered unable to think for themselves. Afro-Americans, he argues, must therefore regain a sense of racial pride by learning about their own pre-slavery history and unlearning centuries-old lies about their own inferiority. Only then will they reclaim the dignity and self-respect needed to take care of themselves. 

Instead of convincing “the white man” to accept “the black man,” Malcolm would convince Afro-Americans to accept themselves.

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