Voices/Dr. Jean Daniels

Malcolm: Doer of the world
    He didn’t run from the bullets that day. Neither did he cower to the perpetrators of violence on any day.
    When he ran out the prison gates to Harlem where he overturned tables and condemned the slum landlords, corrupt money lenders, ineffective
pastors, and chastised Black residents willing to accept second class citizenship, he didn’t mince words. He never minced words.  When Malcolm
spoke, he spoke with his heart and he spoke to shake up the “dead” and put the authorities on notice: someone was watching. And someone will call
out the culprits!  
    Recently, I had a conversation with an older Black woman. The conversation turned to weather, climate change, Black youths, and King George’s
reign. After a few minutes, the woman informed me that all that I spoke of is in the Bible.  There isn’t anything we can do about any of it, she added. It
is all there in the Bible.
Jesus was both a religious and a political figure. He challenged the system (Roman taxation) that encouraged the coercion of community leader in
the disenfranchisement of their people, and he challenged the complicit community leaders while educating the people to unite in the spirit of
resistance.      
    Malcolm’s pronouncements under Elijah Muhammad’s tutelage leaned toward recruiting members to the Nation of Islam. But after the police
execution of Ronald Stokes, the Los Angeles secretary of Mosque Number Twenty-seven in 1962, Malcolm pays more attention to the oppressive
political atmosphere that thawed Black life.  Critical of the March on Washington in 1963, he nevertheless recognized the efforts of Black people
“taking a public position against racial tyranny and oppression” (Critical Lives: Malcolm X).  “They were standing up for the humanity of black
people.”  
    The believer struggles to balance his religious perspective with an understanding of the political and economic system that maintained the
marginalization of Black life in America. He struggles to be a doer.
    After Malcolm returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca and to Africa, he spoke about the spiritual and political unification of Black American life
with that of the struggles in Africa; indeed, the struggles of all people fighting for human rights:
“      And the problem of the Black man [and woman] here in this country today have [sic] ceased to be a problem of just the American Negro or an
American problem. It has become a problem that is so complex, and has so many implications in it, that you have to study it in its entire world … in
its international context, to really see it as it actually is.  Otherwise you can’t even follow the local issue, unless you know what part it plays in the
entire international context. And when you look at it in that context, you see it in a different light, but you see it with more clarity.” (Not Just An
American Problem)
    What has happened to our i.e. Black people’s ability to see with clarity — the problem and course of action? How is it that some of us have
accepted aspects of an ideology intended to keep us motionless? Who is served by our inactivity — by our acceptance that nothing can be done?
While Pax Americana is resisting an end that rightly points to inhumanity of an ideology of greed and profit, some Blacks have accepted our end, as
Black people, without resistance.
    What would our shining prince, Malcolm, say to those like the Black woman I encountered the other day?  
“I’m a Muslim minister. The same as they are Christian Ministers, I’m a Muslim minister. And I don’t believe in fighting today in any one front, but on
all fronts. Islam is my religion, but I believe my religion is my personal business. It governs my personal life, my personal morals. And my religious
philosophy is personal between me and the God in whom I believe …
    “Whether you are a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Nationalist, we all have the same problem. They don’t hang you because you’re a Baptist; they
hang you ‘cause you’re black. They don’t attack me because I’m a Muslim; they attack me ‘cause I’m black. They attack all of us for the same reason;
all of us catch hell from the same enemy. We’re all in the same bag, in the same boat. We suffer political oppression, economic exploitation, and
social degradation …
    “And once we see that all these other sources to which we’ve turned have failed, we stop turning to them and turn to ourselves. We need a self help
program, a do-it — a-do-it-yourself philosophy, a do-it-right-now philosophy… This is what you and I need to get with … and the only way we’re going
to solve our problem is with a self-help program. Before we can get a self-help program started we have to have a self-help philosophy.” (The Ballot or
the Bullet)