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Malcolm X and His Unfinished Political Theory
Vishakha Kardam
Research Scholar (M Phil)
Department of English, University of Delhi
Phone: 9953467282
Email id: vishakha878@gmail.com
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Abstract
This article attempts an explanation of Malcolm X’s political self as a product of sub-human
experiences that a whole race of people had to go through. Malcolm X is seen as a radical
element of African-American struggle, as his political ideas continue to challenge the dark
underbelly of the American experience. He rejected the idea of American Dream and became
a member of Nation of Islam. He called for Afro-American unity in order to recognise and
fight the enemy. Later in his political career, his ability to envisage a commonality between
the Third world and the African-American community enabled him to address the issues
through the ideas of human rights. In the process, he deliberately sought to stand at the
margin, challenging the institutions of American society
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Malcolm X and His Unfinished Political Theory
W. E. B. Du Bois described the dilemma created by slavery and segregation for the
African –Americans as a double consciousness. He talked about it as two ideas, two souls in
one dark body. According to James H. Cone, “the ‘twoness’ that Du Bois was describing
stemmed from being an African in America” (3). During the late 1950s and 1960s, in
response to the problem of slavery and segregation, two broad streams of black thought
developed in America. These were Integration and Nationalism. The integrationists believed
that justice for coloured people could be achieved in America by creating wholesome
relations with the whites. The nationalists, on the other hand, contented that blacks will never
be treated with respect in American society and that blacks should therefore separate from
America (Cone 4). While Martin Luther King Jr. was a major exponent of Integrationist
ideology, Malcolm X is seen as a radical leader of Nationalist ideology. In this paper, I would
attempt an explanation of the development of the Nationalist ideas of Malcolm X through a
reading of his autobiography, as narrated to Alex Haley.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X opens with the chapter titled ‘Nightmare’, in which
there is an account of the nationalist affiliations of Malcolm’s parents, Earl and Louise Little
and how it brought poverty, hunger, physical and mental instability upon the family. They are
shown to be the followers of Marcus Garvey, who was the first to observe the need of a black
government, and who also found the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).
Louise is shown to be proud of her African blood and heritage and values dark complexion
more than a light one. Earl Little serves as the president of the Omaha branch of the UNIA,
and he along with his wife, Louise, is an active worker in the Garvey movement. But
Malcolm’s father was not talking in terms of Garvey’s ideals. He moved to a white
neighbourhood, sent his children to a white school, and also sold rabbits to whites (Haley 8788).
Violence and racism had been characteristic features of Malcolm’s early life.
Malcolm’s childhood was a nightmare because of his experience of the violence at the hands
of whites. He writes in his autobiography, “the nightmare night in 1929, my earliest vivid
memory. I remember being suddenly snatched awake into frightening confusion of pistol
shots and shouting and smoke and flames…. The white police and firemen came and stood
around watching as the house burned down to the ground” (Haley 81). Later, his father was
murdered because of his association with Garvey’s UNIA, and his family was forced to
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accept public relief. Malcolm calls the white welfare workers as “home breakers” as it was
because of the authority they exercised over his family that his mother suffered from a mental
breakdown and was placed in a state hospital, making them state children. Being state
children they were under the authority of a white judge. Malcolm views this as nothing short
of a legal, modern slavery.
Malcolm’s parents were unable to protect their children from the violence of either
white hate groups or from the more civilized violence of the institutional slavery as they lived
in an integrated society where the few black families were ‘adopted’ by their white
neighbourhood and treated condescendingly (Haley 87).
In school, a teacher sharply
discouraged him from becoming a lawyer and instead suggested carpentry as a more realistic
goal. The Swerlins, who ran a detention home, were proud of him but at the same time aware
of his being a racial ‘other.’ He was their favourite nigger, but no more (Cone 45). Such
Incidents made Malcolm aware of the social distance between him and others. The violence
experienced by Malcolm in his childhood, because of his race becomes the reason for his
rejection of non-violence as a solution to the race problem later in his life.
Malcolm made a trip to Boston in the summer of 1940, where he realised that the
educated, high class, city Negroes behaved just like an educated country Negro. The only
difference being that the ones in Boston had been brain-washed even more thoroughly (Haley
122). Later, when he joins the Nation of Islam, his distaste for the middle class would deepen
and it would lead to his utter rejection of the integrationist principle and the Civil Rights
Movement leadership associated with it. In the city what he found fascinating was not the
‘hill elites’ but the world of the black underclass, which was not pretentious and accepted him
wholeheartedly. This was also where he started conking his hair until he went to prison.
Eventually he came to disdain this practice and saw it as an act of self-debasement.
According to Cone, “Malcolm’s description of his life in the world of the black underclass is
a powerful story of what white society did and still does to those who are its black victims”
(48). This sense of alienation that is imbibed in the black underclass life is tapped by the
Nation of Islam leadership in their propagation of Black Nationalism and rejection of the
white society altogether.
In 1946, Malcolm was taken to prison, charged with illegal possession of a firearm. It
was in prison that he experienced ideological freedom for the first time. There he read books
from the prison library and learned about the sufferings his black forefathers had undergone
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as slaves, working for the Americans. It was in prison, a place where he was sent to reform
himself, that he developed a revolutionary attitude towards the whites. He got introduced to
Nation of Islam through his brother’s letter in which he talked about Islam as the natural
religion for the black man. The Nation of Islam condemned all-white institutions, especially
Christianity, and saw it as a means through which whites have been able to rule over blacks.
For Malcolm, who had never been a believer in organised religion, and saw Christianity as a
mainstream religion, the lure was more secular. The Nation of Islam, combined with the ideas
of Black Nationalism provided the much needed collective space for the poor blacks. It
affirmed the personhood of the black people and also validated the cultural identity of the
black race. This helped Malcolm to discover for the first time the respect for himself as a
human being that had escaped him before. It was when he became a member of the Nation of
Islam that his ideology of Black Nationalism developed.
James H. Cone writes in his book Martin and Malcolm and America, “Malcolm’s
conversion to Islam was striking and instantaneous....The truth of Muhammad’s teachings
was like a ‘blinding light’” (50). According to Cone, Malcolm became interested in the
Nation of Islam because of its two central claims. First was its definition of the white man as
a devil. Second was its affirmation of the black culture (Cone 51). The Nation of Islam held
an attraction for Malcolm also because it was a religion which identified itself with the “black
ghetto experience.” Christianity was a religion of the whites as its god and angels were white.
It identified black as the colour associated with devil. In contrast, Nation of Islam was
defined by Elijah Muhammad, who was a self-proclaimed messenger of Allah, as essentially
the religion of black people as its god and followers all were black. Since it rejected the
whites as devils, the followers of Nation of Islam replaced their surname by ‘X’ which
signified an act of discarding the surnames given to them by their white masters. The ‘X’
stood for their unknown African names which have been taken from them by the slave
owners (Ovenden 19). According to Muhammad, the white man had tried to keep blacks
away from their real origins and history, and therefore blacks are ignorant of who they are.
This ‘X’ signified the ignorance of the blacks and their resistance against the authority of the
white capitalists.
The Nation of Islam, and Garvey before him, rejected white values and affirmed black
history and culture. They rejected the ideology of integration. The Black Muslims advocated
complete economic separation from whites. For the nationalists, the solution to race problem
was separation and not integration. A point stressed by nationalists is that they want
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‘separation’ and not ‘segregation’. According to the nationalists, segregation is when your
life and liberty is controlled by someone else. It is that which is forced upon inferiors by
superiors; but separation is that which is done voluntarily.
Malcolm’s political philosophy cannot be understood apart from his faith and
theology. He was a fiery spokesman against whites. James H. Cone notes, “Elijah
Muhammad gave Malcolm a metaphysical foundation for his affirmation of blackness and
rebellion against white western civilisation” which had treated him and other blacks as sub
human (155). Malcolm’s faith was a product of his African American religious experience
which was defined by his total rejection of Christianity. Interestingly though the Bible, not
the Quran, is the central document in the black religious experience in America. Both
Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad, in trying to locate the origins of the Nation of Islam in the
African-American experience, have frequently quoted from the Bible. And it is possible that
Malcolm would never have been able to gain acceptance in the black community without his
profound knowledge and creative use of Bible (Cone 161).
Malcolm’s idea of Black Nationalism is seen by scholars as sexist. The leaders on
nationalist movement could not see sexism as a major problem along with racism. Malcolm
had a rigid perspective on the role of women during his Black Muslim years. It is mainly
because of his adherence to the principles of Nation of Islam which put emphasis on
patriarchal values. As Cone puts it, “The dominant mood in the black community emphasised
the need for black male assertiveness” (276).
Malcolm‘s break with the Nation of Islam became public in March 1964. After his
break from Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm revisited many of his ideas. While he was affiliated
with Muhammad, he did not consider his public addresses political, but rather spiritually
inspired. But after his break with the Nation of Islam, his public addresses became more
politically focussed but his ideas of self-love, self-defence and separatism remained his
uncompromising principles. He also came with the formulation that freedom would come to
blacks either through ballot or bullet. His call ‘by any means necessary’ meant precisely that.
Towards the end of his life, however, he realised that freedom would not come through the
ballot.
Malcolm looked at the situation of blacks in America from his experience of having
lived in the urban ghettos. He was the only black leader who could not only talk about the
ghetto dwellers, but also talk to them. It was possible for him as he could understand their
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language. He said aloud the things which blacks have not been able to discuss among
themselves. It was possible because he was not speaking to stir the moral conscience of
whites. Rather he addressed his words to the blacks. According to Malcolm, there was no
American dream for the blacks. It was meant only for the whites. For blacks there was only
the reality which was like a nightmare. It was because of this inherent inequality that existed
in white society that Malcolm rejected integration.
In his essay “The Angry Children of Malcolm X,” Julius Lester writes, “When it
became more and more apparent that integration was only designed to uplift Negroes and
improve their lot, Negroes began wondering whose lot actually needed improving…. Thus,
negroes began cutting a path towards learning who they are.” (445). Malcolm also began to
resent the use of the term ‘Negro’ for the blacks after his visit to Africa. Instead, he started
using the term ‘African-American,’ which reflected a new found pride in black culture
(Ovenden 45). It led Negroes to assert their identity. They were not Negroes any longer and
had become black men.
As a prisoner, Malcolm accepted an anti-white Islamic religion which he later found
was at odds with the orthodox Islam, the Islam of the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It does
not differentiate between blacks and whites. He experienced this while on the pilgrimage to
Mecca, where he met many white Muslims who treated him as a man and not as a black man.
After this experience, he wanted the black Muslims to know that their religion was a part of a
worldwide Islamic community and that they were not alone in their fight for justice (Cone
164). As this made him more tolerant of the whites, he began to acknowledge the value of
Martin Luther King Jr.’s contribution to the black freedom movement. But there still existed
points of divergence between these two black leaders. While Martin believed in non-violence
and viewed the white Americans as allies, Malcolm’s life experiences created a belief that
only violence on the part of blacks can help them attain their goal of social, economic and
cultural equality. While Martin is rarely associated with the ghetto blacks, Malcolm was
essentially a representative of the black underclass. But, according to James H. Cone, “no
black thinker has been a pure integrationist or a pure nationalist, but rather all black leaders
have represented aspects of each” (4). This implies that both King and Malcolm were interdependent on each other for their ideologies.
It is notable that Malcolm changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X when
he joined Nation of Islam, which may be seen as his search for an identity as a black man in
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America and a rejection of the white supremacy. The second time he changed his name was
when he dissociated himself from the Nation of Islam, and went to Mecca for a pilgrimage
where he adopted a new name, El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. This may be seen as his acceptance
of his identity as a black American Muslim. Apart from these names, some others were
bestowed upon him, like, Detroit Red, Big Red and Satan. But no single personality could
define him.
Though Malcolm X has never been seen as a heroic leader like Martin Luther King Jr.
because on his insurgency profiling, his major strength as a political leader had been his
uncompromising pursuit of justice for the underclass. He called for Afro-American unity in
order to recognise and fight the enemy. But what makes him an important leader in the
nationalist tradition is his ability to envisage a commonality between the African-American
and the Third World community, which enabled him to address the issues related to human
rights later in political career. But he could not theorise the unity of blacks all over the world.
Malcolm set up two organizations which point towards his divided self. While Muslim
Mosque, Inc. had religious objectives, the Organisation of Afro-American Unity had political
agendas. But among these two organizations, only the Muslim Mosques, Inc. has been
mentioned in his autobiography. Nowhere in the text is OAAU talked about. It is because
Malcolm was still formulating his objectives for OAAU and unity of blacks when he was
assassinated.
According to Manning Marable, a major function of a biography is to map the social
architecture of an individual’s life. The Autobiography of Malcolm X has been written based
on Alex Haley’s conversations with Malcolm X. Haley writes in the foreword that Malcolm
wanted Haley to write his autobiography as a writer and not as an interpreter (78). This
suggests a desire on Malcolm’s part of not being misrepresented.
Manning Marable wrote in his biography of Malcolm X, “Malcolm deliberately
sought to stand at the margins, challenging the United States government and American
institutions. There was a cost to all this. The state branded him as a subversive and a security
risk” (479). He sees Malcolm as a conscious performer, who presented himself as a medium
through which the black masses could convey their anger and impatience to the American
society (480). Malcolm’s ability to weave a narrative of suffering and resistance drawn upon
his experiences as a black man in America and from African-American folklore and culture
made him a prominent leader of Black Nationalism.
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Works Cited
Cone, James H. Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare. Maryknoll:
Orbis Books, 1991. Print.
Haley, Alex, and Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (with the assistance of Alex
Haley). New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1965. Print.
Lester, Julius. “The Angry Children of Malcolm X.” Afro-American History: Primary
Sources.
Ed. Thomas R Frazier. USA: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1970. 438-448. Print.
Marable, Manning. Malcolm X. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2011. Print.
Ovenden, Kevin. Malcolm X: Socialism and Black Nationalism. London: Bookmarks, 1992.
Print.