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1991-1992 (2 of 5)
by Kevin Minh Allen
posted 7/14/06
This led me to borrow The Autobiography of Malcolm X from the library. I read the whole thing within two weeks, absorbed by the enlightened discourse on race relations and personal salvation. The words, the ideas, the life experience within those pages were like a breath of fresh, invigorating air. Malcolm went from a self-hating and self-pitying gniggah who felt he had nothing to live for to a man who finally found his calling in life to serve a higher purpose, to rouse Black Americans, as well as other oppressed people, from their passive slumber and to give notice to those authoritarian standard bearers that therefs a new game in town called eself-determinationf. Malcolm Xfs life, travails and convictions brought my own beliefs about independence, accountability and self-worth to the forefront and legitimized my subconscious observations of prejudice and racism while living in a predominately White suburb. Instead of confining my thoughts and opinions to what I had been told to believe and think about the facts of life, I looked beyond my own backyard and started to ask discomforting questions. I learned a true revolutionary is a person with an insatiable curiosity and is unafraid of fulfilling his duty to cut through the official facade in order to expose the unwelcome truth.
Malcolm X demanded a unambiguous answer to the eternal socio-political question about the role of government in its citizensf lives and the responsibilities of the citizen toward that government. The legitimacy and moral weight of a democratic government lie in how it treats its minority populations and its most vulnerable members. If the government, with the majorityfs support, excludes, exploits and dehumanizes those outside of the sanctioned power core, then what responsibilities do the others have toward that kind of government? Itfs a fundamental question that attracts complex individualized answers. Another one of Malcolmfs intellectual projects was to disassemble the myth of the American Dream that says anyone can make it in this country based on his/her own merit and effort. However, armed with historical precedent and the incontrovertible fact of everyday life, Malcolm wanted to shake Americans by the shoulders and show them that contrary to what everyone had been led to believe the American Dream did not apply to everyone; in fact, only a select group of people seemed to be prospering enormously under said dream and had actually rigged the system to benefit only its members. His analysis of American society made me take notice of supposed social/economic inequities between Blacks and Whites that exist to this day and explore the root causes of them which can be found in the Civil War, Reconstruction, the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan and segregation. In a way, I was performing my own personal form of redress for ignoring the voices of the past and naively accepting what I had internalized. I was rebelling against know-nothing-ism and willful ignorance, against White Flight righteousness and self-imposed segregation. And, this rebellion couldnft have come at a better time.
