Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) (26 page)

The tragic consequences of color-caste hierarchy are evident among the very young who are striving to construct positive identity and healthy self-esteem. Black parents testify that black children learn early to devalue dark skin. One black mother in an interracial marriage was shocked when her four-year-old girl expressed the desire that her mom be white like herself and her dad. She had already learned that white was better. She had already learned to negate the blackness in herself. In high schools all around the United States, darker-skinned black girls must resist the socialization that would have them see themselves as ugly if they are to construct healthy self-esteem. That means they must resist the efforts of peers to devalue them. This is just one of the tragic implications of black reinvestment in color-caste hierarchies. Had there never been a shift in color consciousness among black people, no one would have paid special attention to the reality that many black children seem to be having as much difficulty learning to love blackness in this racially integrated time of multiculturalism as folks had during periods of intense racial apartheid. Kathe Sandler’s documentary film A Question of Color examines the way black liberation politics of the sixties
challenged color caste even as she shows recent images of activists who returned to conventional racist defined notions of beauty. Even though Sandler does not offer suggestions and strategies for how we can deal with this problem now, this film is an important intervention because it brings the issue back into public discourse.

To describe the problems of color caste we must address it politically as a serious crisis of consciousness if we are not to return to an old model of class and caste where those blacks who are most privileged will be light-skinned or biracial, acting as mediators between the white world and a disenfranchised, disadvantaged mass of black folks with dark skin. Right now there is a new wave of young, well-educated biracial folks who identify as black and who benefit from this identification both socially and when they enter the work force. Although they realize the implicit racism when they are valued more by whites than darker-skinned blacks, the ethic of liberal individualism sanctions this opportunism. Ironically, they may be among those who critique color caste even as they accept the perks that come from the culture’s reinvestment in color-caste hierarchies. Until black folks begin collectively to critique and question the politics of representation that systematically devalues blackness, the devastating effects of color caste will continue to inflict psychological damage on masses of black folks. To intervene and transform those politics of representation informed by colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy, we have to be willing to challenge mainstream culture’s efforts to “erase racism” by suggesting it does not really exist. Recognizing the power of mass media images to define social reality, we need lobbyists in the government, as well as organized groups who sponsor boycotts in order to create awareness of these concerns and to demand change. Progressive nonblack allies in struggle must join the effort to call attention to internalized racism. Everyone must break through the wall of denial that would have us believe a
hatred of blackness emerges from troubled individual psyches and acknowledge that it is systematically taught through processes of socialization in white supremacist society. We must acknowledge, too, that black folks who have internalized white supremacist attitudes and values are as much agents of this socialization as their racist nonblack counterparts. Progressive black leaders and critical thinkers committed to a politics of cultural transformation that would constructively change the lot of the black underclass and thus positively impact the culture as a whole need to make decolonizing our minds and imagination central when we educate for critical consciousness. Learning from the past, we need to remain critically vigilant, willing to interrogate our work as well as our habits of being to ensure that we are not perpetuating internalized racism. Note that more conservative black political agendas, such as the Nation of Islam and certain strands of Afrocentrism, are the only groups who make self-love central, and as a consequence capture the imagination of a mass black public. Revolutionary struggle for black self-determination must become a real part of our lives if we want to counter conservative thinking and offer life-affirming practices to black folks daily wounded by white supremacist assaults. Those wounds will not heal if left unattended.

17
MALCOLM X

The longed-for feminist manhood

Critical scholarship on Malcolm X contains no substantial work from a feminist standpoint. Always interested in psychoanalytical approaches to understanding the construction of individual subjectivity, I have been excited by recent work on Malcolm X that seeks to shed light on the development of his personality as militant spokesperson and activist for black liberation struggle by critically interpreting autobiographical information and, as a consequence, seriously highlighting the question of gender.

These are troubled times for black women and men. Gender conflicts abound, as do profound misunderstandings about the nature of sex roles. In black popular culture, black females are often blamed for the problems black males face. The institutionalization of black male patriarchy is often presented as the answer to our problems. Not surprisingly, a culture icon like Malcolm X, who continues to be seen by many black folks as the
embodiment of quintessential manliness, remains a powerful role model for the construction of black male identity. Hence, it is crucial that we understand the complexity of his thinking about gender.

Malcolm often blamed black women for many of the problems black men faced, and it took years for him to begin a critical interrogation of that kind of misogynist, sexist thinking. It seems ironic that Bruce Perry’s recent biographical study, Malcolm: A Life of the Man Who Changed Black America, which offers much needed and previously unavailable information and attempts to “read” Malcolm’s life critically using a psychological approach, holds the women in Malcolm’s life accountable for any behavior that could be deemed dysfunctional. Though Perry appears to be appalled by the depths of Malcolm’s sexism and misogyny at various periods of his life, he does not attempt to relate this thinking to the institution of patriarchy, to ways of thinking about gender that abound in a patriarchal culture, nor does he choose to emphasize the progressive changes in Malcolm’s thinking about gender towards the end of his life. To have focused on these changes, Perry would have had to rethink a major premise of his book, that the “dominating” or abandoning black women in Malcolm’s life created in him a monstrous masculinity, one that so emotionally crippled him that he was unable to recover himself and was, as a consequence, abusive and controlling towards others.

In a sense, Perry’s biography attempts to deconstruct and demystify Malcolm by highlighting in an aggressive manner his flaws, shortcomings, and psychological hang-ups. And it is particularly through his exploration and discussion of Malcolm’s relationship to women that Perry critically interprets material in such a way as to emphasize (even overemphasize) that Malcolm was not the stuff of which role models, heroes, and cultural icons should be made. To decontextualize Malcolm’s sexism and misogyny, and make it appear to be solely a reaction to
dysfunctional family relations, is to place him outside history, to represent him as though he were solely a product of black culture and not equally an individual whose identity and sense of self, particularly his sense of manhood, was shaped by the prevailing social ethos of white supremacist capitalist patriarchal society. Using such a narrow framework to analyze Malcolm’s life can only lead to distortion and over-simplification. Needless to say, Perry does not apply tools of feminist analysis to explain Malcolm’s attitude towards women or his thinking about gender relations. There have been few attempts to discuss Malcolm’s life, his political commitments, from a feminist perspective. All too often, feminist thinkers have, like Perry, simply chosen to focus on the sexism and misogyny that shaped Malcolm’s thinking and actions throughout much of his life, using that as a reason either to invalidate or dismiss his political impact. Contemporary resurgence of interest in the writings and teachings of Malcolm X has helped to create a critical climate where we can reassess his life and work from a variety of standpoints. Young black females and males, choosing Malcolm as icon and teacher, raise questions about his thinking on gender. In my classes, young black females want to know how we reconcile his sexism and his misogyny with progressive political teachings on black liberation.

To reassess Malcolm’s life and work from a feminist standpoint, it is absolutely essential to place him firmly within the social context of patriarchy. We must understand Malcolm in light of that historical legacy in which racism and white supremacy are forms of domination where violation and dehumanization have been articulated and described through a gendered patriarchal rhetoric. That is to say, when folks talk about the cruel history of white domination of black people in the United States—as exemplified by the emasculation of black men—they often make liberation synonymous with the establishment of black patriarchy, of black men gaining the right to dominate women and children.

The “manhood” Malcolm X evoked in his passionate speeches as a representative of the Nation of Islam was clearly defined along such patriarchal lines. While Malcolm did not directly advocate the establishment of black patriarchy as a way of affording black men the right to dominate black women, he talked about the need to “protect” black women, thus using a less obvious strategy to promote black patriarchy. He evoked what might be called a “benevolent” patriarchy in which the patriarchal father/ruler would assume full responsibility for caring for his family—his woman, his children. In one of his most famous speeches, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” Malcolm articulated the tenets of black nationalism using patriarchal rhetoric: “The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community …” Black nationalist liberation rhetoric clearly placed black women in a subordinate role. It’s important to note here that Malcolm did not invent this rhetoric. It was part and parcel of the conservative ideology underlying the Black Muslim religion and both reformist and radical approaches to black liberation.

That ideology was promoted by black females as well as by black males. Many black women joined the Nation of Islam because they felt they would find respect for black womanhood, the patriarchal protection and care denied them in the dominant culture. The price of subordination did not seem too high to pay for masculinist regard. At one of his early appearances with the great black freedom fighter Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm castigated black men for their failure to protect black women and children from racist brutality.

When I listen to Mrs. Hamer, a black woman—could be my mother, my sister, my daughter—describe what they had done to her in Mississippi, I ask myself how in the world can we ever expect to be respected as men with black women being beaten
and nothing being done about it? No, we don’t deserve to be recognized and respected as men as long as our women can be brutalized in the manner that this woman described, and nothing being done about it …

Socialized to think along sexist lines about the nature of gender roles, most black people in Malcolm’s day believed that men should work and provide for their families, and that women should remain in the home taking care of domestic life and children. (Today, most black folks assume that both genders will work outside the home.) It was often understood that racism in the realm of employment often meant that black men were not able to assume the position of economic providers, that black females often found low-paying jobs when males could find no work. One promise of Elijah Muhammad’s Islam was that black women would find husbands who would have jobs. Whatever sexism and misogyny Malcolm X embraced prior to his involvement with the Nation of Islam was intensified by his participation in this organization. In the context of the Nation, the misogynist fear and hatred of women that he had learned as a street hustler was given a legitimate ideological framework. Yet, there it was assumed that if black women were dominant it was not because they were inherently “evil” but because black men had allowed themselves to become emasculated and weak. Hence, any black man who had the courage could reclaim this patriarchal role and thus straighten out the wayward black woman. As a street hustler, Malcolm was often enraged when females were able to outsmart and control men.

Underlying his distrust of women was a fear of emasculation, of losing control, of being controlled by others. Indeed, Malcolm was obsessed with the notion of emasculation and concerned that black men assert control over their lives and the lives of others. In his autobiography, Malcolm explained Muslim teachings on the nature of gender roles, stating that

the true nature of a man is to be strong, and a woman’s true nature is to be weak, and while a man must at all times respect his woman, at the same time he needs to understand that he must control her if he expects to get her respect.

Such sexist thinking continues to inform contemporary Black Muslim thought. It was recently given renewed expression in Shahrazad Ali’s popular book The Blackman’s Guide to Understanding the Blackwoman. She asserts that black female “disrespect for the Blackman is a direct cause of the destruction of the Black family.” In many ways Ali’s book was a rephrasing of the 1956 addresses on black women that Malcolm gave at the Philadelphia Temple. Whenever he spoke about gender during his years with the Nation, Malcolm consistently accused black women of acting in complicity with white men. Calling black women “the greatest tool of the devil” he insisted that the uplift of black people was impeded by “this evil black woman in North America who does not want to do right and holds the man back from saving himself.” Bruce Perry attempts to show that Malcolm generalized about all women based on his personal experiences with individual black females who were not progressive in their thinking about either gender or race.