The autobiography of Malcolm X (39 page)

Actually, America's most dangerous and threatening black man is the one who has been kept sealed up by the Northerner in the black ghettoes-the Northern white power structure's system to keep talking democracy while keeping the black man out of sight somewhere, around the comer.

The word “integration” was invented by a Northern liberal. The word has no real meaning. I ask you: in the racial sense in which it's used so much today, whatever “integration” is supposed to mean, can it precisely be defined? The truth is that “integration” is an _image_, it's a foxy Northern liberal's smokescreen that confuses the true wants of the American black man. Here in these fifty racist and neo-racist states of North America, this word “integration” has millions of white people confused, and angry, believing wrongly that the black masses want to live mixed up with the white man. That is the case only with the relative handful of these “integration”-mad Negroes.

I'm talking about these “token-integrated” Negroes who flee from their poor, downtrodden black brothers-from their own self-hate, which is what they'rereally trying to escape. I'm talking about these Negroes you will see who can't get enough of nuzzling up to the white man. These “chosen few” Negroes are more white-minded, more anti-black, than even the white man is.

Human rights! Respect as _human beings_! That's what America's black masses want. That's the true problem. The black masses want not to be shrunk from as though they are plague-ridden. They want not to be walled up in slums, in the ghettoes, like animals. They want to live in an open, free society where they can walk with their heads up, like men, and women!

Few white people realize that many black people today dislike and avoid spending any more time than they must around white people. This “integration” image, as it is popularly interpreted, has millions of vain, self-exalted white people convinced that black people want to sleep in bed with them-and that's a lie! Or you can't _tell_ the average white man that the Negro man's prime desire isn't to have a white woman-another lie! Like a black brother recently observed to me, “Look, you ever smell one of them wet?”

The black masses prefer the company of their own kind. Why, even these fancy, bourgeois Negroes-when they get back home from the fancy “integrated” cocktail parties, what do they do

but kick off their shoes and talk about those white liberals they just left as if the liberals were dogs. And the white liberals probably do the very same thing. I can't be sure about the whites, I am never around them in private-but the bourgeois Negroes know I'm not lying.

I'm telling it like it _is_! You _never_ have to worry about me biting my tongue if something I know as truth is on my mind. Raw, naked truth exchanged between the black man and the white man is what a whole lot more of is needed in this country-to clear the air of the racial mirages, clichâs, and lies that this country's very atmosphere has been filled with for four hundred years.

In many communities, especially small communities, white people have created a benevolent image of themselves as having had so much “good-will toward our Negroes,” every time any “local Negro” begins suddenly letting the local whites know the truth-that the black people are sick of being hind-tit, second-class, disfranchised, that's when you hear, uttered so sadly, "Unfortunately now because of this, our whites of good-will are starting to turn against the Negroes. . . . It's so regrettable

. . . progress was being made . . . but now our communications between the races have broken down!"

What are they talking about? There never was any _communication_. Until after World War II, there wasn't a single community in the entire United States where the white man heard from any local Negro “leaders” the truth of what Negroes felt about the conditions that the white community imposed upon Negroes.

You need some proof? Well, then, why was it that when Negroes did start revolting across America, virtually all of white America was caught up in surprise and even shock? I would hate to be general of an army as badly informed as the American white man has been about the Negro in this country.

This is the situation which permitted Negro combustion to slowly build up to the revolution-point, without the white man realizing it. AH over America, the local Negro “leader,” in order to survive as a “leader,” kept reassuring the local white man, in effect, “Everything's all right, everything's right in hand, boss!” When the “leader” wanted a little something for his people: “Er, boss, some of the people talking about we sure need a better school, boss.” And if the local Negroes hadn't been causing any “trouble,” the “benevolent” white man might nod and give them a school, or some jobs.

The white men belonging to the power structures in thousands of communities across America know that I'm right! They know that I am describing what has been the true pattern of “communications” between the “local whites of good-will” and the local Negroes. It has been a pattern created by domineering, ego-ridden whites. Its characteristic design permitted the white man to feel “noble” about throwing crumbs to the black man, instead of feeling guilty about the local community's system of cruelly exploiting Negroes.

But I want to tell you something. This pattern, this “system” that the white man created, of teaching Negroes to hide the truth from him behind a facade of grinning, “yessir-bossing,” foot- shuffling and head-scratching-that system has done the American white man more harm than an invading army would do to him.

Why do I say this? Because all this has steadily helped this American white man to build up, deep in his psyche, absolute conviction that he _is_ “superior.” In how many, many communities have, thus, white men who didn't finish high school regarded condescendingly university-educated local Negro “leaders,” principals of schools, teachers, doctors, other professionals?

The white man's system has been imposed upon non-white peoples all over the world. This is exactly the reason why wherever people who are anything but white live in this world today, the white man's governments are finding themselves in deeper and deeper trouble and peril.

Let's just face truth. Facts! Whether or not the white man of the world is able to face truth, and facts, about the true reasons for his troubles-that's what essentially will determine whether or not he will now survive.

Today we are seeing this revolution of the non-white peoples, who just a few years ago would have frozen in horror if the mighty white nations so much aslifted an eyebrow. What it is, simply, is that black and brown and red and yellow peoples have, after hundreds of years of exploitation and imposed “inferiority” and general misuse, become, finally, do-or-die sick and tired of the white man's heel on their necks.

How can the white American government figure on selling “democracy” and “brotherhood” to non- white peoples-if they read and hear every day what's going on right here in America, and see the better-than-a-thousand-words photographs of the American white man denying “democracy” and “brotherhood” even to America's native-born non-whites? The world's non-whites know how this Negro here has loved the American white man, and slaved for him, tended to him, nursed him. This Negro has jumped into uniform and gone off and died when this America was attacked by enemies both white and non-white. Such a faithful, loyal non-white as _this_-and _still_ America bombs him, and sets dogs on him, and turns fire hoses on him, and jails him by the thousands, and beats him bloody, and inflicts upon him all manner of other crimes.

Of course these things, known and refreshed every day for the rest of the world's non-whites, are a vital factor in these burnings of ambassadors' limousines, these stonings, defilings, and wreckings of embassies and legations, these shouts of

“White man, go home!” these attacks on white Christian missionaries, and these bombings and tearing down of flags.

Is it clear why I have said that the American white man's malignant superiority complex has done him more harm than an invading army?

***

The American black man should be focusing his every effort toward buildinghis _own_ businesses, and decent homes for himself. As other ethnic groups have done, let the black people, wherever possible, however possible, patronize their own kind, hire their own kind, and start in those ways to build up the black race's ability to do for itself. That's the only way the American black man is ever going to get respect. One thing the white man never can give the black man is self-respect! The black man never can become independent and recognized as a human being who is truly equal with other human beings until he has what they have, and until he is doing for himself what others are doing for themselves.

The black man in the ghettoes, for instance, has to start self-correcting his own material, moral, and spiritual defects and evils. The black man needs to start his own program to get rid of drunkenness, drug addiction, prostitution. The black man in America has to lift up his own sense of values.

Only a few thousands of Negroes, relatively a very tiny number, are taking any part in “integration.” Here, again, it is those few bourgeois Negroes, rushing to throw away their little money in the white man's luxury hotels, his swanky nightclubs, and big, fine, exclusive restaurants. The white people patronizing those places can afford it. But these Negroes you see in those places can't afford it, certainly most of them can't. Why, what does some Negro one installment payment away from disaster look like somewhere downtown out to dine, grinning at some headwaiter who has more money than the Negro? Those bourgeois Negroes out draping big tablecloth-sized napkins over their knees and ordering quail under glass and stewed snails- why, Negroes don't even _like_ snails! What they're doing is proving they're integrated.

If you want to get right down to the real outcome of this so-called “integration,” what you've got to arrive at is intermarriage.

I'm right _with_ the Southern white man who believes that you can't haveso-called “integration,” at least not for long, without intermarriage increasing. And what good is this for anyone? Let's again face reality. In a world as color-hostile as this, man or woman, black or white, what do they want with a mate of the other race?

Certainly white people have served enough notice of their hostility to any blacks in their families and neighborhoods. And the way most Negroes feel today, a mixed couple probably finds that black families, black communities, are even more hostile than the white ones. So what's bound to face “integrated” marriages, except being unwelcomed, unwanted, “misfits” in whichever world they try to live in? What we arrive at is that “integration,” socially, is no good for either side. “Integration,” ultimately, would destroy the white race . . . and destroy the black race.

The white man's “integrating” with black women has already changed the complexion and characteristics of the black race in America. What's been proved by the “blacks” whose complexions are “whiter” than many “white” people? I'm told that there are in America today between two and five million “white Negroes,” who are “passing” in white society. Imagine their torture! Living in constant fear that some black person they've known might meet and expose them. Imagine every day living a lie. _Imagine_ hearing their own white husbands, their own white wives, even their own white children, talking about “those Negroes.”

I would doubt if anyone in America has heard Negroes more bitter against the white man than some of those I have heard. But I will tell you that, without any question, the _most_ bitter anti- white diatribes that I have ever heard have come from “passing” Negroes, living as whites, among whites, exposed every day to what white people say among themselves regarding Negroes-things that a recognized Negro never would hear. Why, if there was a racial showdown,these Negroes “passing” within white circles would become the black side's most valuable “spy” and ally.

Europe's “brown babies,” now young men and women who are starting to marry, and produce families of their own . . . have their experiences throughout their lives, scarred as racial freaks, proved anything positive for “integration”?

“Integration” is called “assimilation” if white ethnic groups alone are involved: it's fought against tooth and nail by those who want their heritage preserved. Look at how the Irish threw the English out of Ireland. The Irish knew the English would engulf them. Look at the French-Canadians, fanatically fighting to keep their identity.

In fact, history's most tragic result of a mixed, therefore diluted and weakened, ethnic identity has been experienced by a white ethnic group-the Jew in Germany.

He had made greater contributions to Germany than Germans themselves had. Jews had won over half of Germany's Nobel Prizes. Every culture in Germany was led by the Jew; he published the greatest newspaper. Jews were the greatest artists, the greatest poets, composers, stage directors. But those Jews made a fatal mistake-assimilating.

From World War I to Hitler's rise, the Jews in Germany had been increasingly intermarrying. Many changed their names and many took other religions. Their own Jewish religion, their own rich Jewish ethnic and cultural roots, they anesthetized, and cut off. . . until they began thinking of themselves as “Germans.” And the next thing they knew, there was Hitler, rising to power from the beer halls-with his emotional “Aryan master race” theory. And right at hand for a scapegoat was the self-weakened, self-deluded “German” Jew.