Encountering Malcolm X

So Malcolm X would’ve turned 85 this week, had he not been murdered in 1965. It’s curious – though maybe not really – that no one in the media acknowledged this opportunity to reflect on his legacy, as it would for Martin Luther King Jr. or JFK. Mainstream America has never really known what to do with Malcolm X, and I’m including myself in that.

I first read The Autobiography of Malcolm X in my junior year of high school, so I would’ve been about 16 at the time. And, as anyone who knew me then will tell you, I considered myself to be pretty enlightened compared to most teenaged white girls in Mayberry. It was purely an act of rebellion against the small-town conservatism surrounding me. My attitude when I started reading the book (co-authored with Alex Haley and released after Malcolm’s death) was a recognizable mix of white liberal guilt and condescension – look at me, I’m soooooooo down, I’m reading about Malcolm X where people can see me! And let me tell you, the man formerly known as Malcolm Little humbled me like I’d never been humbled before, and maybe since.

You see, I had this very simplistic Big Rock Candy Mountain outlook on the world, and earnestly believed that we were all the same and should just get along. But we’re not. Our society doesn’t treat everyone the same, based on arbitrary categories like our skin color, our gender identity and where we grew up or how much money and education we have. We’re not going to find solutions to our common problems if we just pretend that privilege doesn’t exist. And only by examining the experiences that inform another person’s worldview are we ever going to figure out how to talk to one another.

Not long after I read the autobiography, Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz was critically wounded in a house fire. My family and I were visiting New York when I read that a group in Harlem had organized a blood drive to try and save Shabazz’s life. Of course I got all excited – OMG, we should totally go up there and donate blood, it would be the best experience ever, and aren’t I such an enlightened little white girl?

But it didn’t feel right. I don’t know what kind of reception I would’ve gotten, and I certainly don’t think I would’ve been in any danger. I couldn’t articulate this at the time, but on some level I understood that it would have been deeply wrong to insert my need to assuage my racial guilt into a sacred space – literally and figuratively – for the area’s black community. It’s not about racial separation (something Malcolm X did NOT push, despite the myth to the contrary); it was about respect for someone else’s needs. If I’d gone to that blood drive, it wouldn’t have been about Betty Shabazz; it would’ve been about me. And to this day I’m glad I didn’t barge into Harlem like some little Caucasian Mighty Mouse to save the day.

I got more schooling this week, when Samhita at Feministing did a post about Malcolm X’s birthday. The comments got pretty heated at times as some posters crashed head-on into their assumptions. I learned a lot. For one thing, I have a greater understanding of the challenges that feminist women of color still face in “mainstream” (aka white) communities. A non-white feminist doesn’t like being told to be “polite” in her critiques any more than I like being told to be nice and smile while resisting patriarchal BS.

I still have a tendency to want a pat on the back when it comes to dealing with people of other races. But I shouldn’t get a cookie just for treating other people as if their personhood is just as valid as my own.