Before Malcolm, most of us, Black and white alike, basked in the aura of American goodness. It was something we took for granted and never, therefore, basically questioned. We tended to think of the country as we thought of ourselves: as immortal, as special, as flowing on ... like a river. In fact, despite our periodic misgivings, frustrations, and exasperations with her sins and foibles, Black folk tended to identify with America most of all. Back then, whoever might call us
In those days, few of us had thought very deeply about race, because beginning in the mid-fifties,, race seemed an about-to-be-conquered problem in America. The Supreme Court had ruled favorably in the Brown decision, restrictive covenants were being struck down almost routinely, the NAACP had embarked on its ten-year plan-Free by '63-to coincide with the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, while in the South, the Montgomery bus boycott had triumphed and a new young Black leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had emerged.
Then . . . along came Malcolm, burning down our straw-filled beliefs with his mocking fire words. He stung our consciences and awakened our minds. Taken aback, we would stammer, bluster, lash back, talk about his mama. But deep down, we knew that his questions were real and that we did not have real answers for them, He was-and there is no other honest way to put this-our spiritual and intellectual father, breathing into us a new mental and racial life. And pride was only part of it.
Where we were stumbling, Malcolm picked us up. Where we were confused, Malcolm illuminated. Where we were timid, Malcolm emboldened. Malcolm was the Messenger's Messenger, but he was our prophet, our crusader, our heretic, our big brother. If they insulted us, he sprang to our defense. If they lied, he exposed. If they slandered, he ridiculed. And if they injured, he threatened. Ossie Davis has called Malcolm "our Black shining prince," but he was also our champion, the Joe Louis / Muhammad Ali of our time, knocking out chump challengers who dared to enter the intellectual ring against him with the blows that rendered them defenseless: the truths of Western and American history.
From the very beginning of America's history, racism has been its deepest shadow. More than any other force, race has divided the American people, subverted the country's fullest potential, and mothballed our dreams. The wrongs committed in Its name over four hundred years have been incalculable, destroying or damaging countless lives, But from the very beginning, America failed to acknowledge this deepest flaw....
Until Malcolm, It was Malcolm who redefined the discourse on race in this country. He moved the discussion from 'notions of "prejudice'' and "discrimination" and ''civil rights'' to racism. It was Malcolm who broadcast concepts like ''community control'' and "white power structure" (taking the blame out of the realm of the amorphous and popularizing a whole new vocabulary with which to help
Malcolm pulled the covers off the concealed dynamic of race and political reality in America. His unflinching critical comparison of what was with what was supposed to be is what gave Malcolm .his moral authority. He would "tell it like it is.'' And then ask: ''Is that right or wrong?'' How he gained such clarity and then passed it on to others is the true significance of Malcolm X, a significance that defines the essence of leadership in his time and ours.
Borrowed From The Book & Documentary of Malcolm X "Malcolm Make It Plain"
Before Malcolm, the relationship between Black people and America was equivocal, elliptical, elusive-and dishonest. It was the Age of the Negro, an era of pseudo racial ''peace," upon which Malcolm exploded like a wanton shell burst and changed forever the way that "Negroes'' and America thought about themselves and one another.
''Black" or ''African'' would probably, almost surely, have a fight on his or her hands.
Blacks interpret and combat their condition). It was Malcolm who insisted that the
problem was not civil rights but human rights. And it was Malcolm who made it clear that Blacks were victims of a system of domination and exploitation that was not regional but national, not superficial but structural, not episodic but ongoing and intentional. ''Stop talking about the South," he would say. ''When you cross the Canadian border you're in the 'South.''
