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- Feb 3, 2004
I've been posting exerts from an old term paper, but I could talk brother Malcolm for days. I actually got a chance to meet his daughter last year, she spoke at my university about how her father was an international man.
My biggest issue is the way people perceive him because of his stance on violence. I feel like King was a good guy, but there's no way I could have been with the non violence movement. Like X, I believe that you have to be mentally ill to set and let someone beat on you because we are all equipped with the instinct of self-preservation. Perhaps the non-violence movement was self-preservation in the long run, but at the end of the day, a man has the right to defend himself, and as John Locke, who Jefferson basically plagiarized said, when the government fails to uphold the law, it's the citizens job to dissolve the government and form a new one.
People also have to put it in context. Malcolm X came from the bottom, pretty much the lowest of the low. He was a self made man who didn't even have a high school education. Give that man King's upbringing and resources, and there's no telling where he would have reached. However, I celebrate the level that he did reach despite his circumstances. Because of where he came from, he had an ability to reach certain people that King just couldn't. And in fact, his 'celebrity' was growing due to the fact that people were getting tired of the non-violent %$!+$*@!. Like I posted before, the March in Washington was put on to persuade Congress to pass civil rights legislation, and a year had passed with nothing. That's what led to the ballot or the bullet.
But here's a quote that really resonates with me. \
My biggest issue is the way people perceive him because of his stance on violence. I feel like King was a good guy, but there's no way I could have been with the non violence movement. Like X, I believe that you have to be mentally ill to set and let someone beat on you because we are all equipped with the instinct of self-preservation. Perhaps the non-violence movement was self-preservation in the long run, but at the end of the day, a man has the right to defend himself, and as John Locke, who Jefferson basically plagiarized said, when the government fails to uphold the law, it's the citizens job to dissolve the government and form a new one.
People also have to put it in context. Malcolm X came from the bottom, pretty much the lowest of the low. He was a self made man who didn't even have a high school education. Give that man King's upbringing and resources, and there's no telling where he would have reached. However, I celebrate the level that he did reach despite his circumstances. Because of where he came from, he had an ability to reach certain people that King just couldn't. And in fact, his 'celebrity' was growing due to the fact that people were getting tired of the non-violent %$!+$*@!. Like I posted before, the March in Washington was put on to persuade Congress to pass civil rights legislation, and a year had passed with nothing. That's what led to the ballot or the bullet.
But here's a quote that really resonates with me. \
They say Malcolm X challenged blacks not merely to integrateAmerica, but also to change it and to redefine how they saw themselves. Hechallenged all Americans to come to terms with a nation that preached libertyon one hand yet treated its darker citizens with violence and hatred on theother, they say. Malcolm X also openly articulated an anger among blacks: manyhad suffocated while hoping that things would change or despairing that theyever would.
Many black intellectuals say few black leaders today canmatch Malcolm X's ability to reach those at the bottom. His contemporary, theRev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while revered by many black people, was achild of the middle class whose measured appeals to white morality and whoseintegrationist blueprint for change could only go so far, they say. What manyyoung people are seeking in Malcolm X is some reflection of themselves andtheir own experience as quintessential outsiders. So Malcolm X perseveres as aparadigm for the black underclass, capable of transcending economic frustrationsand societal dislocations.