A few months ago, I missed mentioning the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, which was on February 21, 1965. It was one of those blog-posts I start to write but never finish. It seems apropos to think about it, however, in light of “Baltimore” and the many other events reflecting the dysfunction of racial and racialized politics in the US.
I don’t visit The Atlantic website on a daily basis, as I used to. At some point, I became fed up with the their constant efforts to pander to the lowest common denominator in the new internet-driven culture industry – so much in the same vein that I boycott the Facebook, I have been in a “soft boycott” (meaning not absolutist, but merely trying to avoid it for the most part) – I have stopped visiting The Atlantic website for the most part. Their recent reformats of their website were especially annoying, as it was all re-written to be “mobile-friendly” I guess, which is fine – but programming a website to have a “mobile” version and a “computer” version is technically trivial (well, not trivial, but certainly within the abilities of a competent IT department). So why “dumb down” one on my computer screen, too, making it more difficult to see all the different content they have?
Oops, OK, that was a digression (or a rant). I was intending to write about Mr X.
I mentioned The Atlantic because there is one editor / blogger at The Atlantic whom I nevertheless seek out and read on a regular basis. That is the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. He recently mentioned Malcolm X in passing when discussing the way in which Obama’s rhetoric on personal morality (of “people of color” – e.g. Baltimore) versus his rhetoric on issues of government policy forms a kind of “bait and switch.” This is cogent and uncompromising reasoning – as is almost always my experience with Coates. Anyway, I will let you read his thoughts, here.
However, Coates’ mention caused me to revisit X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech from April, 1964.
Some people might find it dissonant that Malcolm X is one of people whom I most admire in history. I am neither black, nor a muslim, nor a revolutionary. I am not, arguably, American anymore, either. Furthermore, I have strong philosophical opposition to nationalisms of all flavors, and there is no denying Malcolm X’s nationalist bent.
I think I admire him because he seemed devoid of hypocrisy and self-deception, which is possibly the human failing I most dislike – both in myself and in those around me. Malcolm X called out hypocrisy wherever he saw it. His was a righteous righteousness, therefore.
It’s possible, too, that I admire him as a rhetorician. Certainly now, when I am, in essence, a teacher of rhetoric (if you want to reframe middle-school EFL in as grandiose manner as possible), I am very conscious of and inspired by his control of the spoken word. Even before my current career, however, I was quite drawn to talented speakers.
Regardless of why I admire him, I will merely conclude with an acknowledgement that I consider him one of the greatest Americans – something I’ve commented [broken link! FIXME] before on this blog, admittedly.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]