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brisingr's review against another edition
5.0
Read this speech here: http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/malcolm_x_ballot.html
megnut's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
schmidtmark56's review against another edition
3.0
I read this and MLK's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" back-to-back today, and I'll be reviewing them together as well.
Malcolm's work I'm reviewing is a speech instead of a letter, like MLK's work, so it is different in cadence and tone; it's also very different in audience (MLK's was to fellow (white) christian clergy, whereas this was in the presence of christian clergy but intended for his black audience. The other interesting contrast is that MLK was in jail for passively resisting the state (as a result of his Christian conviction), whereas Malcolm was radicalized and converted in prison.
Malcolm's speech also came at an important time in his life, shortly before his Hajj which would show him how well muslims of different races could get along together. The main issues he missed were that:
1) Muslims have historically been very intolerant toward non-believers and even other types of muslims (I wouldn't call the jizya "tolerance")
2) Mohammed was white and owned black slaves, so Islam is actually more of a white man's religion, and cares less about equality than Christianity (especially for women)
Malcolm's main split with MLK is his approach. Though not condoning offensive violence, he takes the common western muslim approach of having no issue with fighting back and even making fun of turning the other cheek. He insults the sit-ins that MLK had been doing. Malcolm has little ethos to speak of; he is not humble, is not wise [at least at this point], and only shows how well-read he is by referencing current events (which isn't nearly as effective as pointing to great intellectual traditions like MLK does).
His actual politics are an interesting mixture of claiming institutionalized racism, but since everything is the white man's fault, black people cannot rely on them to fix anything, and thus they must be self-reliant and pick themselves up. Malcolm is bitter, and understandably so, but this at times clouds his judgement exceptionally and in my mind prevents him from being a great thinker. To me one of the worst parts of the speech was when he spits on the graves of hundreds of thousands of union soldiers who fought to end slavery, saying:
"If you black you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. As long as you south of the Canadian border, you South."
He has some clever passages, but that was not one of them. However, this is all part of his larger policy of extreme skepticism toward any American political parties, especially the democrats who are supposedly on his side. He is very mistrusting of them and of any whites who attempt to help out blacks. Frankly, between that and his black-self-sufficiency arguments, I'm not sure how he's popular with American leftists nowadays... other than his anger, his honesty, and his insults towards white people, which feature regularly in his speeches.
Perhaps it is a false dichotomy between MLK and Malcolm X, but I'll pick the humble, warm, martyr-minded MLK over the insulting, combative, bitter Malcolm any day. And I think the world would be better if we would follow the less flashy but more substantive and sacrificially-Christian MLK instead of the edgy and whitewashed-muslim Malcolm.
P.S. This documentary was a good, humanizing find: https://youtu.be/mRtYluUXZ8Q
Malcolm's work I'm reviewing is a speech instead of a letter, like MLK's work, so it is different in cadence and tone; it's also very different in audience (MLK's was to fellow (white) christian clergy, whereas this was in the presence of christian clergy but intended for his black audience. The other interesting contrast is that MLK was in jail for passively resisting the state (as a result of his Christian conviction), whereas Malcolm was radicalized and converted in prison.
Malcolm's speech also came at an important time in his life, shortly before his Hajj which would show him how well muslims of different races could get along together. The main issues he missed were that:
1) Muslims have historically been very intolerant toward non-believers and even other types of muslims (I wouldn't call the jizya "tolerance")
2) Mohammed was white and owned black slaves, so Islam is actually more of a white man's religion, and cares less about equality than Christianity (especially for women)
Malcolm's main split with MLK is his approach. Though not condoning offensive violence, he takes the common western muslim approach of having no issue with fighting back and even making fun of turning the other cheek. He insults the sit-ins that MLK had been doing. Malcolm has little ethos to speak of; he is not humble, is not wise [at least at this point], and only shows how well-read he is by referencing current events (which isn't nearly as effective as pointing to great intellectual traditions like MLK does).
His actual politics are an interesting mixture of claiming institutionalized racism, but since everything is the white man's fault, black people cannot rely on them to fix anything, and thus they must be self-reliant and pick themselves up. Malcolm is bitter, and understandably so, but this at times clouds his judgement exceptionally and in my mind prevents him from being a great thinker. To me one of the worst parts of the speech was when he spits on the graves of hundreds of thousands of union soldiers who fought to end slavery, saying:
"If you black you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. As long as you south of the Canadian border, you South."
He has some clever passages, but that was not one of them. However, this is all part of his larger policy of extreme skepticism toward any American political parties, especially the democrats who are supposedly on his side. He is very mistrusting of them and of any whites who attempt to help out blacks. Frankly, between that and his black-self-sufficiency arguments, I'm not sure how he's popular with American leftists nowadays... other than his anger, his honesty, and his insults towards white people, which feature regularly in his speeches.
Perhaps it is a false dichotomy between MLK and Malcolm X, but I'll pick the humble, warm, martyr-minded MLK over the insulting, combative, bitter Malcolm any day. And I think the world would be better if we would follow the less flashy but more substantive and sacrificially-Christian MLK instead of the edgy and whitewashed-muslim Malcolm.
P.S. This documentary was a good, humanizing find: https://youtu.be/mRtYluUXZ8Q
cowhill's review
"All of us have suffered here, in this country, political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic exploitation at the hands of the white man, and social degradation at the hands of the white man."
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