Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) (28 page)

Malcolm’s marriage was no more unhappy than those of other public figures who shun intimacy for the love of the crowd. Eventually, the marriage nearly broke up, ostensibly over the issue of money. But there were other issues, for Malcolm denied his wife the warmth and emotional support his mother and Ella (his older sister) had denied him. He controlled her the way they had controlled him. His male chauvinism was the predictable result of past tyranny.

This is a fine example of the way Perry attempts to stack the deck psychologically against Malcolm, using his sexist thinking and actions to define the man. Perry refuses to acknowledge those profound changes in Malcolm’s thinking about gender, even his rethinking his relationships to family, because these changes disrupt Perry’s critique. They suggest that while it may be accurate to say that Malcolm’s sexist thinking about women in general and black women in particular was reinforced by his relationships to his mother and older sister, it is equally accurate to say that as he began to replace these dysfunctional kinship bonds with new ties with women, he began a kind of personal
self-recovery that enabled him to see women differently. Interaction with black women such as Fannie Lou Hamer and Shirley Graham Dubois, intelligent powerful leaders, made intense impressions on Malcolm X. Given that many of his misogynist viewpoints on women continually referred to the female body, to female sexuality, it’s important to note that in an attempt to redress, Malcolm’s later speeches emphasized black female intellectualism and intelligence. Hence, he could assert: “I am proud of the contribution women have made. I’m for giving them all the leeway possible. They’ve made a greater contribution than many men.”

There is much documentation to support progressive changes in Malcolm’s attitudes towards women; clearly he believed women should play a role in resistance struggle (one equal to men); he believed the contributions of females should be acknowledged; and he supported equal education for females. Yet there is little documentation providing any clue as to how he perceived these changes would affect gender roles in domestic life. And while we can speculate that Malcolm might have developed the kind of critical consciousness around gender that would have enabled him to listen and learn from black female advocates of feminist thought, that he might have become a spokesperson for the cause, a powerful ally, this must remain speculation—nothing more. Yet we should not minimize the significance of the transformation in his consciousness around the issue of gender late in his political career.

It would be a profound disservice to Malcolm’s memory, his political legacy, for those who reclaim him as powerful teacher and mentor figure today to repress knowledge of these changes. Sexism, sexist oppression, and its most insidious expression—male domination—continue to undermine black liberation struggle, continue to undercut the positive potential in black family life, rendering dysfunctional familial relations that could enable recovery and resistance. Hence, more than ever
before, there needs to be mass education for critical consciousness that teaches folks about Malcolm’s transformed thinking on gender. His move from a sexist, misogynist standpoint to one where he endorsed efforts at gender equality was so powerful. It can serve as an example for many men today, particularly black men. To remember Malcolm solely as a pimp and a batterer, as one who used and exploited women, is a distortion of who he was that is tantamount to an act of violation. Feminist thinkers cannot demand that men change, then refuse to extend full positive acknowledgment when men rethink sexism and alter their behavior accordingly.

Malcolm X would still be an important political thinker and activist whose life and work should be studied and learned from, even if he had never confronted and altered his sexist thinking. However, the point that has to be made again and again is that he did begin to critique and change that sexism, he did transform his consciousness.

When I hear Malcolm urging us to seize our freedom “by any means necessary,” I do not think of a call to masculinist violence but rather of a call that urges us to think, to decolonize our minds, and strategize so that we can use various tools and weapons in our efforts at emancipation. I like to remember him speaking about our choosing to work for freedom “by any means necessary” in his response to the words of Fannie Lou Hamer. I like to evoke Malcolm’s name and his words when writing to a black male lover about how we treat one another, using his evocation of redemptive love between black people, remembering that he told us:

It is not necessary to change the white man’s mind. We have to change our own mind … We’ve got to change our own minds about each other. We have to see each other with new eyes. We have to see each other as brothers and sisters. We have to come together with warmth …

The harmony Malcolm evokes here can only emerge in a context where renewed black liberation struggle has a feminist component, where the eradication of sexism is seen as essential to our struggle, to our efforts to build a beloved community, a space of harmony and connection where black women and men can face each other not as enemies but as comrades, our hearts rejoicing in a communion that is about shared struggle and mutual victory.

18
COLUMBUS

Gone but not forgotten

Late last night a strange white man came to my door. Walking towards him through the dark shadows of the corridor, I felt fear surface, uncertainty about whether I should open the door. After hesitating, I did. He was a messenger bringing a letter from a female colleague. As I took the letter from him, he told me that he was reading my book, Black Looks, that he liked it, but that he just wanted to say that there was just too much emphasis on “Oh,” he insisted, “you know the phrase.” I finished the sentence for him, “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” After a moment’s pause I said, “Well, it’s good to know you are reading this book.”

From the onset when I began to use the phrase “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” to describe my understanding of the “new world order,” folks reacted. I witnessed the myriad ways this phrase disturbed, angered, and provoked. The response
reinforced my awareness that it is very difficult for most Americans, irrespective of race, class, gender, sexual preference or political allegiance, to really accept that this society is white supremacist. Many white feminists were using the phrase “capitalist patriarchy” without questioning its appropriateness. Evidently it was easier for folks to see truth in referring to the economic system as capitalist and the institutionalized system of male gender domination as patriarchal than for them to consider the way white supremacy as a foundational ideology continually informs and shapes the direction of these two systems of domination. The nation’s collective refusal to acknowledge institutionalized white supremacy is given deep and profound expression in the contemporary zeal to reclaim the myth of Christopher Columbus as patriotic icon.

Despite all the contemporary fuss, I do not believe that masses of Americans spend much time thinking about Columbus. Or at least we didn’t until now. Embedded in the nation’s insistence that its citizens celebrate Columbus’s “discovery” of America is a hidden challenge, a call for the patriotic among us to reaffirm a national commitment to imperialism and white supremacy. This is why many of us feel it is politically necessary for all Americans who believe in a democratic vision of the “just and free society,” one that precludes all support of imperialism and white supremacy, to “contest” this romanticization of Columbus, imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy.

Columbus’s legacy is an inheritance handed down through generations. It has provided the cultural capital that underlies and sustains modern-day white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Those of us who oppose all forms of domination long ago debunked the Columbus myth and reclaimed histories that allow us a broader, more realistic vision of the Americas. Hence, we resist and oppose the national call to celebrate Columbus. What we celebrate is our subversion of this moment, the way many folks have made it a space for radical intervention. Indeed, the
invitation to celebrate Columbus was for some of us a compelling call to educate the nation for critical consciousness—to seize the moment to transform everyone’s understanding of our nation’s history. What we acknowledge is that this moment allows us a public space to mourn, an occasion to grieve for what this world was like before the coming of the white man and to recall and reclaim the cultural values of that world. What we acknowledge is the burgeoning spirit of resistance that will undoubtedly rock this nation so that the earth, the ground on which we stand and live, will be fundamentally changed—turned over as we turn back to a concern for the collective harmony and life of the planet.

Thinking about the Columbus legacy and the foundations of white supremacy in the United States, I am drawn most immediately to Ivan Van Sertima and to his ground-breaking book, They Came Before Columbus. Documenting the presence of Africans in this land before Columbus, his work calls us to rethink issues of origin and beginnings. Often the profound political implications of Van Sertima’s work is ignored. Yet in a revolutionary way, this work calls us to recognize the existence in American history of a social reality where individuals met one another within the location of ethnic, national, and cultural difference and who did not make of that difference a site of imperialist/cultural domination. When I recall learning about Columbus from grade school on, what stands out is the way we were taught to believe that the will to dominate and conquer folks who are different from ourselves is natural, not culturally specific. We were taught that the Indians would have conquered and dominated white explorers if they could have but they were simply not strong or smart enough. Embedded in all these teachings was the assumption that it was the whiteness of these explorers in the “New World” that gave them greater power. The word “whiteness” was never used. The key word, the one that was synonymous with whiteness, was “civilization.” Hence, we were made to understand at a young
age that whatever cruelties were done to the indigenous peoples of this country, the “Indians,” was necessary to bring the great gift of civilization. Domination, it became clear in our young minds, was central to the project of civilization. And if civilization was good and necessary despite the costs, then that had to mean domination was equally good.

The idea that it was natural for people who were different to meet and struggle for power merged with the idea that it was natural for whites to travel around the world civilizing non-whites. Despite progressive interventions in education that call for a rethinking of the way history is taught and culturally remembered, there is still little focus on the presence of Africans in the “New World” before Columbus. As long as this fact of history is ignored, it is possible to name Columbus as an imperialist, a colonizer, while still holding on to the assumption that the will to conquer is innate, natural, and that it is ludicrous to imagine that people who are different nationally, culturally, could meet each other and not have conflict be the major point of connection. The assumption that domination is not only natural but central to the civilizing process is deeply rooted in our cultural mind-set. As a nation we have made little transformative progress to eradicate sexism and racism precisely because most citizens of the United States believe in their heart of hearts that it is natural for a group or an individual to dominate over others. Most folks do not believe that it is wrong to dominate, oppress, and exploit other people. Even though marginalized groups have greater access to civil rights in this society than in many societies in the world, our exercise of these rights has done little to change the overall cultural assumption that domination is essential to the progress of civilization, to the making of social order.

Despite so much evidence in daily life that suggests otherwise, masses of white Americans continue to believe that black people are genetically inferior—that it is natural for them to be dominated. And even though women have proved to be the
equals of men in every way, masses still believe that there can be no sustained social and family order if males do not dominate females, whether by means of benevolent or brutal patriarchies. Given this cultural mind-set, it is so crucial that progressives who seek to educate for critical consciousness remind our nation and its citizens that there are paradigms for the building of human community that do not privilege domination. And what better example do we have as a culture than the meeting of Africans and native peoples in the Americas? Studying this historical example we can learn much about the politics of solidarity. In the essay “Revolutionary Renegades” published in Black Looks, I emphasize the importance of ties between the Africans who came here before Columbus and Native American communities:

The Africans who journeyed to the “New World” before Columbus recognized their common destiny with the Native peoples who gave them shelter and a place to rest. They did not come to command, to take over, to dominate, or to colonize. They were not eager to sever their ties with memory; they had not forgotten their ancestors. These African explorers returned home peaceably after a time of communion with Native Americans. Contrary to colonial white imperialist insistence that it was natural for groups who are different to engage in conflict and power struggle, the first meetings of Africans and Native Americans offer a counter-perspective, a vision of cross-cultural contact where reciprocity and recognition of the primacy of community are affirmed, where the will to conquer and dominate was not seen as the only way to confront the Other who is not ourselves.

Clearly the Africans and Native peoples who greeted them on these shores offered each other a way of meeting across difference that highlighted the notion of sharing resources, of exploring differences and discovering similarities. And even though there
may not remain a boundless number of documents that would affirm these bonds, we must call attention to them if we would dispel the cultural assumption that domination is natural.