Malcolm X: Legacy of a revolutionary

Socialist Worker February 18, 2005 | Pages 6 and 7

http://www.socialistworker.org/2005-1/531/531_06_MalcolmX.shtml LEE SUSTAR looks at Malcolm X and the relevance of his ideas 40 years after his assassination. WHEN THE historic leaders of African American struggle are briefly acknowledged during Black History Month in February, schoolchildren get to hear a few quotations: Frederick Douglass indictment of slavery, Rosa Parks refusal to sit at the back of a segregated bus, Martin Luther Kings dream of a non-racist U.S. Malcolm X, however, is usually left mute. Seen, perhaps--in a photo in a textbook, a name on a street sign or community college, even as an image on a U.S. postage stamp. But very seldom heard. ItsIm not hard understand why. not to standing here Every time you see a white speaking to you as anman, think about the devil seeing! American, or a youre patriot, or Malcolm said when he was the a flag-saluter, or a flagleading spokesperson the Nation waver--no, not I.for Im of Islam, a Black speaking as nationalist a victim of religious group headed by Elijah this American system. Muhammad with an estimated And I see America 100,000 members at its peak. Think through the eyes of the of how it was on your slave victim. I dont see any foreparents bloody, sweaty backs American dream; I see an thatAmerican he built this empire thats today nightmare. the -richest of X, allThe nations--where Malcolm Ballot or the his April cause 3, 1964 evilBullet, and greed him to be hated around the world!

Just in case a student stumbles upon such quotes, a typical summary of Malcolms life reassures us that he broke with [the Nation of Islam], rejecting racial separatism and continued to speak out until his assassination on February 21, 1965, urging Blacks to take pride in their race and to take action to claim their civil and human rights. This mild rendering of Malcolms political development comes from a Web-based diversity calendar posted by the Los Alamos National Laboratory--birthplace of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Second World War, and the ongoing site of U.S. nuclear weapons development. The Los Alamos officials, of course, omitted Malcolms devastating summary of U.S. foreign policy: I could see that America itself is a society where there is no brotherhood, and that this society is controlled primarily by racists and segregationists, Malcolm said in a speech shortly before he was murdered. And from Washington, D.C., they exercise the same forms of brutal oppression against darkskinned people in South and North Vietnam, or in the Congo, or in Cuba, or in any other place on this earth where theyre trying to exploit and oppress. This is a society whose government doesnt hesitate to inflict the most brutal form of punishment and oppression upon dark-skinned people all over the