I’ve been thinking about King because I’m writing an academic paper about media representations of him…and have been thinking about Malcolm X because his birthday coincides with that of my middle son. Next week I will be as old as Martin Luther King jr. was when he was brutally assassinated, leaving behind two sons and two daughters. In one year I’ll be as old as Malcolm X was when he was murdered, leaving behind six daughters.
I am where I am because of the dual legacies they represent.
Although Malcolm X never engaged in the organizing work that Martin Luther King did, for a number of reasons, it is very difficult to talk not only about black nationalism but about the development of Black Studies without talking about Malcolm X. And of course Martin Luther King Jr. led the desegregation movement.
But both families were financially and mentally broken after their assassinations, signaling that neither King nor X thought much about what would happen to their families afterwards. The reason why the King family held on to King’s legacy and fought to be compensated for it was not because they were selfish, but rather because they needed the income. Neither Coretta nor Betty was ever able to really get over the deaths of their spouses because of who their spouses were and neither remarried.
I do not believe that the gains made because of their activities outweigh the damage caused to their individual families. Every action that movement folks participated in carried immense risk. But while King and X chose to bore the risks they took, their children did NOT. Further those risks could have been minimized, with either a different strategic approach that emphasized life rather than martyrdom, or at least with some type of planning.
I’d be interested in knowing your thoughts, particularly if you have children.
Your kwestins beg a number of other kwestins here Les;
1. What documentation leads you to conclude that either man was a master planner and architect of a strategy, rather than the exemplar and prophetic voice of a collective psychological movement?
There were planners and operations managers in both movements. Does culpability for the lack of a plan, or disavowel from the plan, if any, for the spokesmen of the movements thus fall to the operations manager(s) of said movements – doesn’t it?
2. Why the suggestion that either man “chose the risks” which their prophetic voices engendered, instead of “accepted the risks” which the voice of conscience seems almost necessarily to entail?
3. Do you consider either man a conscious and intentional status seeker?
The main social motivation for humans (besides eating, drinking and fucking) is the struggle for “status” (or in Pelican Bay: “respect”). People who are the most like mindless status-seeking robots — the people best at attaining “status” in the political systems they are embedded in — control those political systems to reinforce their own status.
Neither martyred mouthpiece did a competent job of status seeking or maintenance. Both acted contrary, not only to the interests of their offspring, but in stark opposition to their own personal safety and self-interest, right?
These are all excellent questions. In order:
1. King was recruited, after being browbeaten, to serve as the leader of SCLC, and was browbeaten to continue the movement after the success of the bus boycott. He was largely responsible for articulating the philosophy behind nonviolence, but there are no signs that he was responsible for the day to day activities of SCLC. Malcolm X too was chiefly a spokesperson.
2. “Chose” implies a greater degree of agency than “accepted.” But “chose” does not mean or does not HAVE to mean “sought out.” But even here each individual accepted the risks for people who did not have the capacity to disagree. Here I’m not referring to the wives of course, as even though they were women, they had the capacity to say no, or to exhort their husbands to say no.
3. Status-seeking within the context of a political movement designed to overthrow or overturn a political system means something very different than status seeking within the context of the status quo itself doesn’t it? In the latter case status seeking can lead to increased material, increased ability to provide for progeny (if not necessarily take care of them). In the former case status seeking is attached more to psychic goods–because material doesn’t come out of revolutionary movements in general. So it’s clear that they acted in opposition to their own interest in personal safety…but it is not clear that they were not conscious and intentional status seekers because they acted within the confines of a different set of interests.
Most successful revolutions are highly profitable for their agents, at least according to the reported contents of revolutionaries’ swiss bank accounts. When everything is said and done, I believe we’re compelled to conclude that we’re not looking at either real revolutions, or, architects and change agents.
As a practical matter, a ruthlessly cynical game theoretician would be compelled to define both Malcolm and Martin as pawns played and expended by status-seeking others. As a moral matter, perhaps we can conclude that each had involved and consigned himself to a wholly other level of engagement.
As you know, I have children. It is inconceivable to me to imagine, strategize, or act around anything other than the maximization of THEIR fitness – within the limits of my capacity as an intentional actor.
Please don’t take my comments as condemnatory. Twice now, I’ve opted for conscientious paths rather than paths that would have greatly enhanced my professional status.
So this begs the question. What do we gain from valorizing them? Take a look at the hip-hop political convention email list, and it’s filled with “what malcolm said”. Not King so much, of course because he’s perceived to be an integrationist (rather than an aggregationist). We end up losing not only because we are attempting to apply rhetoric designed for a very specific time period to a very different one, but also because the people we are valorizing were not change agents worth modeling. Particularly because they did not work to do as you (and I) work to do.
I don’t take your comments as condemnatory at all. But they are critical, as are my own.
We place an extraordinary premium on rhetorical skill? Likely to the detriment of institution building and operational competency.
Les, it strikes me that you’re faulting them for being casualties of a depraved and vicious system. It’s like faulting slaves for not having life insurance. Anyone who dared to stand up and simply assert their dignity and manhood took the same risks they did. Some folks died for having the temerity to ask for correct change. They were simply two of the most prominent casualties. They neither chose nor planned their deaths. They simply chose to exercise their inherent right to live as free men. The weight of the consequences rests on the shoulders of their murderers, not theirs. And what they gained for their children was far more valuable than any amount of money, because really, what does it mean to have nominal ownership of material goods, if any passing wretch has the power to arbitrarily deprive you of your property and your life, with impunity? You can’t have security without power, and you can’t get power without the willingness to struggle, and you can’t win the struggle if you’re not willing to die for it. Freedom ain’t free doctor.
Malik I don’t think I’m arguing against either the Black Power or the Civil Rights Movement. I am arguing that the choices that both made ended up causing more damage to their family than the benefits, particularly given that there were literally hundreds of leaders who were able to come into the new era comparatively unscathed. Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, Diane Nash, Robert Moses, etc. etc.
Now if you’ve got a vision of either movement that requires some sort of messiah as a spokesperson then from that perspective freedom does require martyrs. And it might as well be them.
But I recall another conversation we had. Here is a comment you made about fatherhood:
How do you compare the ideas evinced in the quote above, with what you appear to be saying to me?
Les, the leaders you named weren’t necessarily better fighters, which is what you seem to be implying, they were luckier fighters. Any one of them could’ve eaten a bullet at any time. And I didn’t say freedom requires messianic spokespeople. I said it requires a willingness to die for it. Many, if not most, of the people who died for their freedom are anonymous.
As far as the scenario you outlined, risking your life in order to earn a grip of money for your family is not the same as defending your family’s life with your own life. I wouldn’t throw my life away just to give my family some extra privilege when their basic needs are perfectly well met, but I wouldn’t hesitate to risk my life in order to save my family from immediate danger. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what every single person who participated in the struggle was doing. Some of them came out on the losing end of the battle, as is bound to happen.
And as far as benefits, I’ll just reiterate what I said previously:
Malik I’m not making a claim against either the civil rights movement or the black power movement. Whatever I may be communicating it is not my intent to communicate that. I read you as saying that there are not substantive differences between the behaviors of Parks, X, King, and Marshall. To the extent their lives have different trajectories after the movement, it is solely because of luck. Is this what you are saying?
No, I’m saying the fact that some prominent figures survived to reap the benefits of what others struggled and died for, while King and Malcolm were killed, is not a result of superior organization and planning on the part of those who survived. It’s a result of the fact that it wasn’t possible to kill everyone at the same time under the circumstances. And the fact that there was sufficient resistance to prevent wholesale slaughter of the participants in the struggle is due in no small part to the tactics that King and Malcolm used.
And I may be misunderstanding you Dr., but I read you as saying that the liberation struggle wasn’t worth participating in if it meant risking your life unless you could guarantee the physical security of your family, which again is impossible unless you’re liberated in the first place. What I’m saying is, King and Malcolm had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Literally. Whatever the outcome, their families weren’t going to be any worse off than they already were under a regime that treated them as expendable commodities.
If you think there were other tactics that could have produced a less costly victory for them, that’s worth considering. But it seems that you’re claiming they’re at fault for not being around to reap on behalf of their families the fruits of the victories they helped to achieve.
But they were liberated enough to participate in the liberation struggle in the first place right? And we can think of a number of examples of people who were able to work, receive the victory, AND the fruits. You appear to be suggesting that this is random.
Random? No.
Les, you raise a great issue, and a tough one. Both King and X lived during extraordinary moments in history. On one hand, I feel like they couldn’t have done things in any other way than they did.
Now, as a father, this kind of thing is on my mind a lot, i.e., balancing pursuing the things in life that are important to you and that give your life meaning vs. ensuring that your family is provided for. When you have children (and I say this knowing that I, too, am a beneficiary of their sacrifice) you can’t just think about yourself. If whatever you’re doing, whatever passion you’re following, is that important to you, then maybe you shouldn’t have kids. They are totally dependent on you, both financially and emotionally. It’s like in Crooklyn when the kids ask Delroy Lindo’s character why he doesn’t have a job and he says, “Daddy just wants to make HIS music.” I was like, Brotha, you need a job. You got kids! Inherent in this is a sense that yes, you’re responsible.
I struggle with this particularly now since, in addition to my son, we just adopted a little girl from Ethiopia. At the same time, I’m pursuing several entrepreneurial ventures and am finding that my time work on them (after a full day’s work) is even more limited. But, the reality is that I’m a grown man and I agreed to be a father. So it’s no longer just about me (as much as I’d like it to be). This is where the rubber meets the road: My challenge is to create the life I want IN ADDITION to being present and providing for my family today and tomorrow.
I’m not sure that anyone, even Martin or Malcolm should be excused from this responsibility. And, let’s be clear, I’m not (and I don’t think you are either) blaming them or branding them as irresponsible. That said, given that we now have 40 years of hindsight, we can take their lives both as inspiration and as opportunities to remember that once you have a family, everyone is implicated by the situations you put yourself in.
Responses to a few comments above.
Some said that Malcolm was little more than a spokesman.
Malcolm took an obscure group whose glory days were two decades gone, a group whose members numbered in the low hundreds, and turned it, one mosque at a time, into a national organisation with international reach with a national weekly newspaper, a multi-million dollar budget, and numerous social outreach programmes which flourished under his leadership.
Was he the day-to-day manager of everything?
Of course not–and no competent leader would micromanage a national organisation. A transformative leader’s most important role is to create more leaders. Malcolm’s leadership inside the NOI was so solid that the group outlasted him and would have continued indefinitely had Warithuddin Mohammed not conducted the perestroika that he did. Had Malcolm lived longer, he might have been able to accomplish similar heights and organisational stability with the MMI and the OAAU, but he had barely 12 months, during much of which he was overseas, not to mention *running for his life.*
He was also, as Karl Evanzz reports in *The Judas Factor*, working behind the scenes for a year on an alliance with MLK.
Furthermore, many of those who followed in the movement, and who turned out to be capable organisers, stated explicitly that it was Malcolm’s example which inspired them–most notably the BPP, which, with whatever failings it had, demonstrated the delivery of social programmes and took a leading role in delivering medical services for sickle cell anemia.
Malcolm was, clearly, a superb organiser, an excellent example of a leader who was brave enough to challenge much of his own thinking on a variety of subjects (including race, gender and religion), and an inspirational icon whose image, even when simplified, continues to offer comfort and momentum to those who struggle for justice and who wish to transform themselves and their societies. He was a masterful teacher who illustrated regularly that highly complex ideas could be made understandable for regular folk, who might thereby assert control over their destinies.
To reduce Malcolm, as one comment seemed to do, to nothing more than a spokesman, is grossly to underestimate his accomplishments. “Spokesman” does not do justice to Malcolm’s role as transformative leader, one whose ideas and means of transmitting them had a profound and enduring effect on the perspectives, ideologies, strategies, tactics, rhetoric and even aesthetics of so many early adopters in a variety of fields.
Was Malcolm X much of a family man? No one who devoted as much time to work as he did could be called father of the year. In this regard we should not use Malcolm as an exemplar, and as a father myself, I do not.
But we need also have compassion for this man, whose father (by some accounts Earl Little was, as a man typical of his times, a harsh, corporally punitive man) was murdered, whose mother psychologically cracked, whose siblings were scattered, who became a criminal and then a convict. The fact that Malcolm became as much of a family man as he did is stunning, and given his history, it’s remarkable that no account has ever emerged that he was a cruel husband or father.
Indeed, if there’s been any mythologising, it’s more likely been about Betty Shabazz. Clearly the two had a rocky marriage, with more than one separation. What’s been emerging slowly via letters (of contested reliability, yes) is that Betty Shabazz may have been a harsh and even cruel wife, who humiliated Malcolm’s value as a husband and sexual partner (this from a letter allegedly handwritten by Malcolm X to Elijah Muhammad); she may also have been having an affair with a member of Malcolm’s security detail after Malcolm’s split from the NOI (this from an interview I conducted with one of the world’s leading authorities on Malcolm X).
Who among us is so strong that, while facing institutional betrayal and expulsion and assassination, and then betrayal at home, we are capable of being the best of fathers… all the while we’re trying to build two new organisations with the express intention of confronting the empire and saving our people?
I’m not underestimating Br. Les’s legitimate concerns about the quality of Malcolm’s family life, and indeed, Malcolm’s own willingness to engage in rigourous self-criticism (to borrow the Maoist phrase, which psychopath Mao could not himself have employed) models for us that we must subject Malcolm himself to such criticism. I include this under the discussion of self-criticism because Malcolm-Icon is, for many of us, part of our own minds, and in some cases, a substitute father).
When I was 23, writing my first novel manuscript and reflecting sadly on the fate of many revolutionaries, I wrote the line which defined my political perspective for the rest of my life (thus far): “It is better to live for the people than to die for the people.” This is why Ralph Nader (who decided to sacrifice having a family instead of sacrificing a family) is as much a hero to me as is Malcolm X.
Malcolm deserves our respect, and in uncountable ways, our emulation. Where he failed, he deserves our compassion.
Minister Faust
THE BRO-LOG http://www.ministerfaust.blogspot.com
thanks for the comments, bros. field, and faust. in writing where do we go from here, king argued that dismantling jim crow segregation was the easiest thing to do, that institution building in effect was much harder.
faust the line you wrote when you were a kid constitutes a revolutionary act, just as it was revolutionary for enslaved africans to NOT throw themselves and their children overboard. wherever we choose to go from here, i think that institution building and black families (however they might be constituted) have to go hand in hand. to this degree the examples of king and malcolm x should not be discarded lightly, but rather should be understood as particular attempts to wrestle with the tribulations of a specific time, and that the strategies and tactics they used has gotten us (blacks in the US and to a lesser extent blacks throughout the diaspora) this far. but we’ve got to do the heavy lifting on our own to take us further.
Doc,thanks for opening door,what damage did the two families incur?
Rethinking King and X through the lens of a father http://t.co/442KmrDO