Roger,
Have you read Manning Marable's biography of Malcolm (2011) it's on BARD there
was definitely some interesting stuff in there.
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 7, 2015, at 6:22 PM, Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender
"rogerbailey81" for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2015/7936/793649.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 36 October 12, 2015
(Books of the Month column)
Malcolm X: ‘Our scope is broad,
our scope is worldwide’
Malcolm X on Afro-American History is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month
for October. A revolutionary internationalist leader of the working class,
Malcolm was an intransigent opponent of the U.S. government and its
imperialist policies; of the rulers’ twin parties, the Democrats and
Republicans; and an uncompromising fighter against the racist oppression of
Blacks. He gave this talk Jan. 24, 1965, at a public meeting sponsored by the
Organization of Afro-American Unity. Malcolm was assassinated at an
OAAU-organized meeting in New York four weeks later. Copyright ©1967 by Betty
Shabazz and Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
BY MALCOLM X
One of the main things that you will find when you compare people who come
out here on Sunday nights with other people is that those who come here have
interests that go beyond local interests or even national interests. I think
you will find most who come out here are interested in things local, and
interested in things national, but are also interested in things
international.
Most Afro-Americans who go to other meetings are usually interested in things
local — Harlem, that’s it; or Mississippi, that’s it — national. But seldom
do you find them taking a keen interest in things going on worldwide, because
they don’t know what part they play in things going on worldwide.
But those of us who come here, come here because we not only see the
importance of having an understanding of things local and things national,
but we see today the importance of having an understanding of things
international, and where our people, the Afro-Americans in this country, fit
into that scheme of things, where things international are concerned. We come
out because our scope is broad, our scope is international rather than
national, and our interests are international rather than national. Our
interests are worldwide rather than limited just to things American, or
things New York, or things Mississippi. And this is very important.
You can get into a conversation with a person, and in five minutes tell
whether or not that person’s scope is broad or whether that person’s scope is
narrow, whether that person is interested in things going on in his block
where he lives or interested in things going on all over the world. Now
persons who are narrow-minded, because their knowledge is limited, think that
they’re affected only by things happening in their block. But when you find a
person who has a knowledge of things of the world today, he realizes that
what happens in South Vietnam can affect him if he’s living on St. Nicholas
Avenue, or what’s happening in the Congo affects his situation on Eighth
Avenue or Seventh Avenue or Lenox Avenue. The person who realizes the effect
that things all over the world have right on his block, on his salary, on his
reception or lack of reception into society, immediately becomes interested
in things international. But if a person’s scope is so limited that he thinks
things that affect him are only those things that take place across the
street or downtown, then he’s only interested in things across the street and
downtown.
So, one of our greatest desires here at Organization of Afro-American Unity
meetings is to try and broaden the scope and even the reading habits of most
of our people, who need their scope broadened and their reading habits also
broadened today.
Another thing that you will find is that those who go to other places usually
think of themselves as a minority. If you’ll notice, in all of their
struggling, programming, or even crying or demanding, they even refer to
themselves as a minority, and they use a minority approach. By a minority
they mean that they are lesser than something else, or they are outnumbered,
or the odds are against them — and this is the approach that they use in
their argument, in their demand, in their negotiation.
But when you find those of us who have been following the nationalistic
thinking that prevails in Harlem, we don’t think of ourselves as a minority,
because we don’t think of ourselves just within the context of the American
stage or the American scene, in which we would be a minority. We think of
things worldly, or as the world is; we think of our part in the world, and we
look upon ourselves not as a dark minority on the white American stage, but
rather we look upon ourselves as a part of the dark majority who now prevail
on the world stage. And when you think like this, automatically, when you
realize you are part of the majority, you approach your problem as if odds
are on your side rather than odds are against you. You approach demanding
rather than using the begging approach.
And this is one of the things that is frightening the white man. As long as
the Black man in America thinks of himself as a minority, as an underdog, he
can’t shout but so loud; or if he does shout, he shouts loudly only to the
degree that the power structure encourages him to. He never gets
irresponsible. He never goes beyond what the power structure thinks is the
right voice to shout in. But when you begin to connect yourself on the world
stage with the whole of dark mankind, and you see that you’re the majority
and this majority is waking up and rising up and becoming strong, then when
you deal with this man, you don’t deal with him like he’s your boss or he’s
better than you or stronger than you. You put him right where he belongs.
When you realize that he’s a minority, that his time is running out, you
approach him like that, you approach him like one who used to be strong but
is now getting weak, who used to be in a position to retaliate against you
but now is not in that position anymore.
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