Teaching Malcolm X

For most students, their high school education on the Civil Rights movement revolves around the image of nonviolence, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and an integrationist dream. Little is taught regarding Malcolm X and the limited amount said usually portrays him as Dr. King's violent alternative who marginalized whites while contributing little to the movement's success as a whole.

In universities and colleges throughout the United States, however, The Autobiography of Malcolm X has long been a part of the curriculum as they have become more inclusive. However, in order to teach Malcolm X, professors have had to sanitize his anger, compromise his hate and dilute his impact. Most classes stress the "change" Malcolm X is said to have experienced after his return from Mecca as documented in the final chapters of his autobiography.

It is taught that he no longer viewed all whites monolithically as devils and recognized that there were some good white people. Basically this is true. Malcolm X did change. However, society had not. As taught in most classes, this change somehow absolved all the "good whites" from blame. Thanks to Malcolm's trip, Northerners were saved.

He was no longer mad at the good whites who felt Blacks were equal as long as they did not try to live in their neighborhoods, date their children or start running things. All the violent rage that had so frightened them was directed at the racists, the Southerners, the Ku Klux Klan, but not people who "even had some Black friends."

This is where the teaching of Malcolm X goes astray from a true understanding of both the origins of his anger and his place in the framework of Black America's movement for equal rights.

For the better part of his years in the national spotlight, Malcolm X was a spokesperson. Consequently, the study of Malcolm X the man should not minimize or neglect the role that the Nation of Islam played in shaping and influencing both his life and his philosophy.

Professors too easily reduce the movement's entire Black nationalist strain to a single person. This person is then dissembled into a single phrase ("By any means necessary") and finally into a letter.

The study of the Autobiography of Malcolm X should not be limited to a contrast between the philosophies of Dr. King and Malcolm X, peace and violence or integration and separatism. Although these are important themes to be examined, these are only surface issues. They are the most readily evident, but not the most profound.

The underlying significance of Malcolm X evolves from the differing environment that he and Dr. King were addressing. Nonviolent tactics worked in a region that was plagued with de jure segregation and overt discrimination.

However, even Dr. King quickly realized that the institutionalized and entrenched nature of Northern racism and discrimination could not be effectively combated through nonviolent protests and demonstrations.

The study of the Autobiography of Malcolm X must also emphasize the evolution of the movement's goals from symbolic concessions to real empowerment, both political and economic.

Too often, Malcolm X's radicalness, tactics and anger are taught as breaks with the past and ideas that go against the grain of the movement. However, a historical and sociological perspective must interpret his views as inevitable shifts inherently attached to the move from the South to the North.

Integration did not alleviate the deeper problems that more than two centuries of segregation had created. Dr. King's tactics played on white consciences as they saw the violent brutalization of peaceful protesters.

Malcolm X's tactics attacked the mentality inherent in consciences that had let this situation go on for so long--a mentality that has caused racism and discrimination to persist covertly throughout integrated Northern area until this day.

Jennifer E. Fisher '93 is the Press Secretary for the Black Students Association, and this editorial represents the view-point of that organization.