https://themilitant.com/2018/11/17/uncle-sam-is-all-over-the-world-but-wont-act-for-our-rights-here/
Books of the Month
‘Uncle Sam is all over the world, but won’t act for our rights here’
Vol. 82/No. 44
November 26, 2018
Malcolm X speaks to young people in Selma, Alabama, Feb. 4, 1965, during
civil rights battles there. Listen to what everybody else says, but come
to a decision for yourself, Malcolm advised. Malcolm X speaks to young
people in Selma, Alabama, Feb. 4, 1965, during civil rights battles
there. Listen to what everybody else says, but come to a decision for
yourself, Malcolm advised.
Below is an excerpt from Malcolm X Talks to Young People, one of
Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for November. This speech, titled “See
for Yourself, Listen for Yourself, Think for Yourself,” was given to
high-school-age youth from McComb, Mississippi, who had been involved in
civil rights battles there, at the headquarters of the Organization of
Afro-American Unity in Harlem, Jan. 1, 1965. During their efforts to
register people to vote in 1964, Ku Klux Klan thugs had bombed or set
fire to more than 15 churches, homes and businesses in McComb. Copyright
© 2002 by Betty Shabazz and Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
BY MALCOLM X
[O]ne of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays,
should learn how to do is see for yourself and listen for yourself and
think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for
yourself. But if you form the habit of going by what you hear others say
about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of
going and searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself,
you’ll be walking west when you think you’re going east, and you’ll be
walking east when you think you’re going west. So this generation,
especially of our people, have a burden upon themselves, more so than at
any other time in history. The most important thing we can learn how to
do today is think for ourselves.
It’s good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has
to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of
what you’ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and then
come to a decision for yourself. You’ll never regret it. But if you form
the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without
checking it out for yourself, you’ll find that other people will have
you hating your own friends and loving your enemies. This is one of the
things that our people are beginning to learn today — that it is very
important to think out a situation for yourself. If you don’t do it,
then you’ll always be maneuvered into actually — You’ll never fight your
enemies, but you will find yourself fighting your own self. …
Never at any time in the history of our people in this country have we
made advances or advancement, or made progress in any way just based
upon the internal good will of this country, or based upon the internal
activity of this country. We have only made advancement in this country
when this country was under pressure from forces above and beyond its
control. Because the internal moral consciousness of this country is
bankrupt. It hasn’t existed since they first brought us over here and
made slaves out of us. They trick up on a conversation and make it
appear that they have our good interests at heart. But when you study
it, every time, no matter how many steps they take us forward, it’s like
we’re standing on a — what do you call that thing? — a treadmill. The
treadmill is moving backwards faster than we’re able to go forward in
this direction. We’re not even standing still—we’re walking forward, at
the same time we’re going backward. …
[T]here has been a move on to keep the Negro thinking in this country
that he was making strides in the civil rights field, only for the
purpose of distracting him and not letting him know that were he to
acquaint himself with the structure of the United Nations and the
politics of the United Nations, the aim and the purpose of the United
Nations, he could lift his problem into that world body. And he’d have
the strongest stick in the world that he could use against the racists
in Mississippi.
But one of the arguments against getting you and me to do this has
always been that our problem is a domestic problem of the United States.
And as such, we should not think to put it at a level where somebody
else can come and mess with United States domestic affairs. But you’re
giving Uncle Sam a break. Uncle Sam’s got his hands in the Congo, in
Cuba, in South America, in Saigon. Uncle Sam has got his bloody hands in
every continent and in everybody else’s business on this earth. But at
the same time, when it comes to taking forceful action in this country
where our rights are concerned, he’s always going to tell you and me,
“Well, these are states’ rights.” Or he’ll make some kind of
off-the-wall alibi that’s not a bona fide alibi — not because it’s an
alibi, but to justify his inactivity where your and my rights are
concerned. …
Now, you’ve lived in Mississippi long enough to know what the language
of the Ku Klux Klan is. They only know one language. If you come up with
another language, you don’t communicate. You’ve got to be able to speak
the same language they speak, whether you’re in Mississippi, New York
City, or Alabama, or California, or anywhere else. When you develop or
mature to the point where you can speak another man’s language on his
level, that man gets the point. That’s the only time he gets the point.
You can’t talk peace to a person who doesn’t know what peace means. You
can’t talk love to a person who doesn’t know what love means. And you
can’t talk any form of nonviolence to a person who doesn’t believe in
nonviolence. Why, you’re wasting your time.
So I think in 1965 — whether you like it, or I like it, or we like it,
or they like it, or not — you will see that there is a generation of
Black people born in this country who become mature to the point where
they feel that they have no more business being asked to take a peaceful
approach than anybody else takes, unless everybody’s going to take a
peaceful approach.
So we here in the Organization of Afro-American Unity, we’re with the
struggle in Mississippi 1,000 percent. We’re with the efforts to
register our people in Mississippi to vote 1,000 percent. But we do not
go along with anybody telling us to help nonviolently. We think if the
government says that Negroes have a right to vote, and then when Negroes
go out to vote some kind of Ku Klux Klan is going to put them in the
river, and the government doesn’t do anything about it, it’s time for us
to organize and band together and equip ourselves and qualify ourselves
to protect ourselves. [Applause] And once you can protect yourself, you
don’t have to worry about being hurt. That’s it. [Applause]
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Solidarity, struggle is road to unite the working class
•US troops out of Korea, Middle East, Afghanistan!
•Marriott strike makes gains, picketing goes on at 19 hotels
•Saudi, Tehran fueled war in Yemen brings death, famine
•Amnesty for all immigrants in US, cancel Honduran debt to US banks
•Messages protest Florida prison censorship against the ‘Militant’
Feature Articles •‘Greatest crisis of bourgeois order in our lifetimes’
Also In This Issue •Are acts of Jew-hatred on the rise in the US today?
•Coal miners in Ukraine occupy mine to demand unpaid wages
•Islamic State targeted Christians to terrorize and divide Iraq working
people
•Music, art part of revival of life in Mosul after defeat of IS
•Fall 2018 Militant Subscription Campaign (week 5)
•Socialist Workers Party 2018 Fall Fund Drive (week 5)
Books of the Month •‘Uncle Sam is all over the world, but won’t act for
our rights here’
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Letters
© Copyright 2018 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
York, NY 10018 - themilitant@xxxxxx
--
_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after
death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst
out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement,
and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how
wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous
something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov