I believed the lie. For most of my life I, like many of you, saw Malcolm X as the violent and less-successful opponent of the docile MLK. There he stood, angrily signifying, indicting white America for the ill-treatment of its darker brothers and sisters. Malcolm said that black was beautiful and that white society possessed no divine standard by which the black community needed to measure itself. Malcolm’s analysis troubled me. His palpable anger made me uncomfortable. The white society that he described, infused through and through with the philosophy of white superiority, sounded nothing like my bevy of white friends at my college preparatory high school in downtown Chicago. He was divisive. He was arrogant. He was nothing like our good Baptist saint MLK. And most importantly, he wasn’t a Christian – he was a Muslim. Appraising his ideology and religious affiliation as less than stellar, I had respect for Malcolm but no need for him. Or so I thought.
In October of my junior year at Houghton, I obtained a copy of the best-selling Autobiography of Malcolm X in the college library and committed myself to reading the entire memoir. Commitment gave way to utter captivation as I consumed the entire book with an almost sacred delight. Upon finishing the book, I read and watched everything that I could find about Malcolm. Consequently, I came to see that I had been mistaken – flat-out wrong – in my premature interpretation of Malcolm X. Malcolm was no violent, victim-playing vigilante. He was courageous enough to speak the unmitigated truth to American society about the horrors of the black American experience. He hated no one, but he loved black people too much to dilute the reality of their condition. Getting to know the real Malcolm X changed my life, sparking within me an interfaith dialogue that left me more Christian than ever.
Malcolm taught me that I must have a Christianity that addressed me totally – including my blackness. It is not secret that Evangelical Christianity has largely been interpreted in Euro-centric perspective, often devaluing, intentionally and unintentionally, Afro-centric religious presentations. Seeing a theology that justified white superiority, Malcolm saw American Christianity as an aid in enslaving the black conscience. As a devout Christian and lover of history, I take issue with Malcolm. It was also the black church that had the greatest purveyor of black dignity. Black Christianity was in and of itself liberating.
However, I could not dismiss Malcolm’s contention. Too often black Christians have espoused a Christianity that ignores their blackness instead of appreciating and speaking to it. Even I had been guilty of this, tricked by the illusion. Malcolm reminded me that though I am at Houghton – a predominantly white institution – that I am black, and that my faith would have to be able to work outside of the safe confines of this community and speak to the violence and poverty of the largely black and brown Chicago community from which I come. My faith would have to speak to me wholly.
Malcolm was loud and honest about black injustice. Possessing a swift silver-tongue and a keen intellect, he was able to communicate what Dr. Cornel West terms, “black rage” like no other. Even MLK, who purposely avoided such rhetoric in an attempt to avert inciting violent reaction, comes second to Malcolm in this respect. Malcolm was upfront about black frustration with American racism, and as a result he is scary. He was a prophetic voice, issuing the clarion call in a strange and desolate land. Malcolm proved to me that empowerment and reconciliation sometimes means being honest about the horrors of oppression.
Too often, in the interest of cheap, rapid reconciliation, we are encouraged to forgive and forget; to be silent about the atrocities of abuse. Malcolm said that it was OK, in fact, morally obligatory, to be angered by injustice. True reconciliation is impossible without an acknowledgement of and repentance from the wrongs committed. Some dismiss Malcolm as divisive and unhelpful for his honesty. He showed me that “crying aloud” means “sparing not”, even when the truth is hard and painful to hear.
Perhaps one of the greatest lessons I learned from Malcolm X was taught to me not by his strengths, but by a weakness of his. While Malcolm’s ability to communicate black beauty, self-reliance, and rage is unparalleled, his early methodology for handling the issues of the black experience was limited, even tenuous. Thus, he is a compelling reminder that communicating the plight of the oppressed is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
This is where Malcolm is most weak in the first years of his career (1959-1962), and I believe that he knew this. It is clear following his departure from the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1964 that he, no longer bound by the exclusionary policies of the NOI, sought to implement a program of political liberation for black people – Black Nationalism. Meaning, as he said, that black people “should control the politics of [their] own community.” Malcolm came to see that talking about black dissatisfaction with the system was only effective when coupled with activism to bring about sustainable change. He “gets” this by 1964, but is unfortunately killed before his maturing revelation can come to fruition. Malcolm reminds us all that powerful prophetic voices also seek to be solution-finding voices.
Malcolm X wasn’t supposed to teach me anything. My education and earliest exposure to him sought to assure this. Malcolm is dangerous. His dedication to communicating the woes of the marginalized and his appeals to self-reliance pose a threat to the maintenance of the status quo. I found in Malcolm a challenge to be realistic and intentional about dealing with justice and a renewed dedication to Christian methodology in the fight for human dignity. My hope is that the entire community will seek to learn more about him. Allowing his prophetic voice and spirit to motivates us to speak-up and act out. Let us not believe the lie – Malcolm has something to say and it is worth hearing “by any means necessary.”