Lately, I have been reading about and listening to the speeches of Malcolm X. I especially liked the Spike Lee movie where Denzel Washington does a fantastic job of portraying Malcolm or, as he comes to rename himself, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. I find that looking into historical figures like this helps understand the present so much more, specifically it helps identify the great divide between African-American values and regular American values. There is in fact a difference and there are reasons for that difference. To get some of the painful facts out of the way: the history of people of African origin in the United States was terrible… but I claim, in the strongest of terms, that slavery was, is, and always will be unconstitutional. This means that our founding fathers behaved unconstitutionally, but man is flawed. Man may, in his soul, know what is right and say what is right but ultimately sin. America was such a man. I know that many of you know what I refer to. Our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights were revolutionary for their time and in our modern time as well, but its application was not universal. It took a long time, but we have come to fix this problem, or at least we have made great progress. Which brings me back to Malcolm X, a person that president Obama says influenced him.

Before I continue, I will again make clear that the author of this post (myself) is not “white” in the racial sense. No one in my family participated in the history of the United States until the communist takeover of Cuba, prior to that my ancestors came from Italy, Africa, Spain, and other parts of the world. I do not feel that tinge of “guilt,” something liberals exploit, for the racism and slavery of the past, so in a sense, I consider myself free of the historical “baggage” that often clouds judgment on racial matters and racial history.

Hearing the emotion behind Malcolm X’s speeches and the ideas that he spewed made me realize that African-Americans today have inherited an ideology that is very different from what non-African-Americans believe in. From libertarians to conservatives to liberals to socialists, the narrative of how society got the way it is varies, and all of them vary from the “traditional” African-American point of view. The black point of view is based in reality. It comes from the fact that they were betrayed by the wielders of power in the United States, by the judges and public servants who did not carefully read the words “all men are created equal” (men in the universal sense, i.e. “humanity"). This betrayal justifiably turned many African-Americans against the system… but oddly enough, while Malcolm X was considered one of the most radical of his time, he in fact did hold up the founding documents of our country as being excellent ideals, ideals that America failed to live up to. To those who find it uncomfortable to point out any social/racial/anything-else-ial differences between Americans (I am in this camp), I remind you that it was Americans in times past that treated an entire race of people as “different,” so in essence we are now paying for the sins of our fathers. The sense of betrayal and alienation is what has defined the African-American experience of the past and it explains the anti-white, reverse racist, anti-American speech that we sometimes hear from people like Jeremiah Wright and his ilk. This is why the world-view of African-Americans sometimes tilts leftward, because to be a conservative to them implies conserving the status quo of yesterday, a status quo that not one of them wants to return to. They sometimes idolize the murderers of the world, the Castros, the Che Guevaras, and the Maos, simply because they represent the idea of destroying an old order in the name of “the people"… but this is not universal, in fact, almost every African-American that I have come to know personally (all 2 of them… just kidding, I’m friends with a lot) recognizes that these people were monsters. It is the inherited ideology of the African-American community, an ideology stemming from the rejection of explicit racism, that has triumphed in the black community. This is the problem and recognizing the problem helps address it better.

Some of Malcolm X’s ideas were genius, while some bordered on insane. He eventually softens his tone (slightly) but throughout his career believed that blacks must fight for their freedom. By using words like “black nationalism,” which brought to mind images of violent revolutions against colonizers in Africa and Latin America, and words like “by any means necessary” he was advocating violence… though he did say only in self-defense. We can understand this, though not necessarily agree, given the context of the times. The ideas that I did like, ideas that seem to have been lost, was that he believed that the black community must earn respect before they are given respect, that they must build themselves up first in order to gain the freedom that they desired. The loss of this lesson is tragic and the fact that many only remember the radical part of Malcolm’s message only worsens the problem.

Now, the realities that brought about the black community’s ideology have been swept away… but the ideology endures. Today, America is haunted by the spectre of old racism and old discrimination with the media on a witch hunt trying to find the most racially insensitive gaffes or comments, trying to highlight the difference between the races as much as possible. On the “establishment” side, this must change if we are ever to advance as a people, an American people. The near-constant identity politics played by the Left only make it less possible for us to be one united country. On the “black community” side, these old ideologies must be re-evaluated. Look at countries like Cuba, where supposedly the working man and the black man was freed, and try to count the number of black leaders in their parliament… better yet, black people should visit Cuba, where they will be frisked for simply walking into hotels (because Cubans themselves are not allowed to go to certain hotels, and most Cubans are black or mixed). The black community should take a good look around their neighborhoods and ask themselves whether the years of pandering by the Left has benefited them at all. For decades the Democrats controlled Congress and the presidency, are the results there? The black community should consider what would happen if they stopped referring to themselves as black or African-American, many already have experienced that liberation. One does not need to be trapped by history or by the color of one’s skin in modern America, for human rights apply to all humans. The inherited ideology needs to change because times have changed. Leftist policies restrict the rights of all and make permanent the problems of yesterday and today. The black leaders of yesterday were a product of their environment, but I find that the black “leaders” of today are actually the products of the reality of the pre-civil-rights era. Time to modernize. True conservatives value the humanity and the rights of all people, those who claim to be conservative and do not are not conservatives. The Constitution is the great equalizer and is a shield for all Americans. Conservatives often think that African-American leaders are anti-American, the case is that these leaders are stuck in old battles against white hooded monsters and have trouble accepting the progress that has been made. They will say things that hurt all Americans, like that 9-11 was deserved, like that white people engineered AIDS for the eradication of gays and blacks, and other conspiracy theories… these things only further divide us. These leaders seem to benefit most from the division of races rather than their unity. It is time to discard the old ideologies and come to realize that we are indeed all the same and we must fight for freedom together or lose it together. There can be no other way.

-AG