'Membering

by Clarke, Austin;

  AC: How close is the white man’s kingdom? I mean, how close an association between a wicked kingdom and a situation of white prejudice?

  MX: It is impossible to separate wickedness, corruption, slavery, colonialism, exploitation, and oppression from what we would call Europeanism or Westernism or Whiteism. Or, as they say, white supremacy. Only when the white man practises it he doesn’t call it white supremacy, nor does he call it slavery. Today, he calls it colonialism. Colonialism was slavery. Colonialism was white supremacy. This was wickedness, this was exploitation, this was oppression, this was corruption, this is what it is predicted God himself would bring an end to at the end of time when he manifests himself in the flesh. When the prophets in the Scriptures refer to the end of time, they didn’t mean by the end of time “the end of earth.” They only meant the end of a system on this Earth that was wicked, or the end of a world on this Earth that was wicked. And most Negros in America, by having a limited narrow religious concept, when they hear the religious leaders say “the end of the world,” they think this is meant to be the end of everything. But the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, our religious teacher, teaches us that God does not intend to bring an end to the earth, but an end to the world. And on this one Earth there are many worlds. The world of socialism, the world of capitalism, the world of communism, the world of colonialism, the world of Buddha-ism, the world of Juda-ism, the world of Islam, the world of Christianity; there are many worlds. When the religious reference is made concerning the end of time, Mr. Mohammed teaches us that this only means the end of time for a certain world, or a certain race, or a certain system.

  As a religious people who have accepted the religious teachings of the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, we feel that we are living now in the last days of the white man’s world, or at the end of time for the white man’s world. Because we feel religiously that his time is up or that his world is approaching its end, its doom, its disaster, or its judgment, we have no desire to accept his belated offers of integration into a corrupt, outdated society that has been sentenced to doom and destruction by the God or lord of all the worlds, whom we refer to as Allah.

  AC: If you are not willing to … let me put it this way, if you do not want to accept any of his crumbs or be in a partnership with him now because you think he’s on the way out anyhow, are you in effect suggesting some form of apartheid? This has been one of the criticisms I have read of your movement.

  MX: Apartheid is misunderstood unless you translate it into English with the proper counterpart. Would you translate the word — I think it’s a Germanic word — apartheid into English under the word segregation? Does apartheid mean segregation?

  AC: The existence of the two races independently of one another.

  MX: Does apartheid then mean segregation or separation?

  AC: Well, the apartheid we know of in South Africa seems to suggest some sort of segregation because the black man is not given all the facilities. In your case if you’re going to establish yourself as independently of the white man I’m wondering if this cannot be termed some form of apartheid.

  MX: See, apartheid has been used or translated or come to be known in the West now by something very derogatory because it’s associated with South Africa. America practices apartheid, too, but she preaches democracy, but she practises the opposite. The reason I ask you for a distinct definition, we are against segregation, but we are for separation. Mr. Mohammed teaches us that the difference between segregation and separation is segregation is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. As you hinted. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals. The people of South Africa practise segregation. Apartheid in a segregated sense. We are against that, but we are for separation, which means the voluntary separation by two equals.

  I have everything that I need to control my destiny, my future. You have everything that you need to control your destiny, your future. An example here in America: an all-white neighbourhood is never referred to as a segregated neighbourhood. It is only a Negro neighbourhood that is called segregated, because the white neighbourhood is controlled, it is lived in by whites, the economy is controlled by whites, the politics is controlled by whites, the society is controlled by whites. Whereas the Negro community here in America is also controlled by whites. The housing is controlled by whites, the educational system is controlled by whites, the politics of the Negro community is controlled by whites, the economy is controlled by whites, all of the businesses in the Negro neighbourhood are controlled by whites, the banks are controlled by whites, and this means that the Negros, even though they live in their own neighbourhood, are controlled by whites. This is segregation. And this is why a segregated neighbourhood is usually deteriorating, economically, politically, intellectually, and otherwise. But the white neighbourhood is separate, but they control their separateness, they’re in command of what they have.

  Now we believe, as followers of the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, that the white man should have his own and that the black man should have his own. The black man should control his own and the white man should control his own but we don’t believe that the white man should control us politically, economically, religiously, intellectually, educationally, or otherwise. We believe that we should be in complete command of our own.

  …

  AC: Going back, Mr. Malcolm, to the subject of integration, and efforts to integrate certain institutions, talking specifically about Dr. Martin Luther King. How do you regard his achievements if at all you regard any of his actions as achievements?

  MX: Our people in America have made no progress economically, politically, intellectually, or any way shape or form when you take into consideration the progress that America itself has made. This is a country that is supposed to be for freedom then why should black people … if this is a country in which the Supreme Court says that American policy is for integration, the congress says that American policy is for integration, the senate says that American policy is for integration, the president of the United States is supposed to be for integration, his brother, the attorney general, is supposed to be for integration. Now you’ve got these Negro leaders like Martin Luther King, who have to get down and allow themselves to be beaten and jailed and spit upon and they can’t get integration? No, why, we haven’t made any more progress in 1963 than our people were making in 1863. The whole thing is a farce; it’s trickery. Not to solve the problem of black people in this country, but integration is just another political trick that the American white man uses to make black people think that we’re making progress when we haven’t made any progress.

  AC: Your movement has been subjected to certain criticisms. You’ve been called a hate group, you’ve been referred to as violent, seditious Americans and instigating or advocating a black supremacy. Could you answer these charges for us?

  MX: Number one, I don’t see how anyone could accuse the Honorable Elijah Mohammed of teaching hate. He teaches black people to love each other. He teaches black people to respect each other. He teaches black people to work together in harmony and unity with each other. Now because he doesn’t waste his time telling our people to run around here and drool at the mouth over white people, the white man jumps up today and accuses him of teaching hate. How can you teach black people in America to hate after we have spent four hundred years in a country that made us slaves? We have spent four hundred years in a country at the hands of whites who kidnapped us and brought us here and sold us from plantation to plantation like you sell cows and horses and chickens and bags of wheat. We have spent four hundred years in the hands of the white man who has lynched our fathers on trees, which is murder. We have spent four hundred years in the hands of a white man who has actually treated us like a beast, more cruelly than a beast would treat another animal. And in the past one hundred years the same white man has used every form of deceit to keep us from being recognized as human beings. Now, behind that kind of treatment, if black people in America don’t hate the white man we would look
like we were fools, we would be fools trying to teach our people to hate someone who had done these things if they didn’t hate them already. And if the black man in this country doesn’t hate the white man behind what the white man has done to him, sir, I think that you can’t teach hate to the black man.

  So what Mr. Mohammed does is he teaches us love, but he teaches us to love our own kind and he says we would be fools trying to run around here and love white people before we learn how to love each other or before we learn how to love our own kind. Insofar as there’s hate, too, the white man in America has a guilt complex. He knows that he is so guilty, he has blood dripping from his fingers, the blood of black people dripping from his fingers, he has the blood of black people dripping from his lips, from his mouth and he knows that if the black man had done to him what he has done to the black man, he would hate the black man. So it is his own guilt complex that makes him think that someone is teaching hate. Not only does the white man in America think that Negros hate him, he thinks the whole world hates him. Because when a man is guilty he knows that everybody should hate him. So this is Uncle Sam’s complex that makes him put out the propaganda and project a religious man like the Honorable Elijah Mohammed as a hate teacher instead of a teacher of love, unity, and harmony among black people. And he accuses Mr. Mohammed of advocating violence, because the Honorable Elijah Mohammed says that the black man in this country should defend himself against the brutalities practised against us by whites. Because the white man is used to exercising brutality against black people without black people defending themselves whenever someone comes along and says we should have the right to defend ourselves, instead of the white man admitting that he is the one that’s violent, he accuses the one who is defending himself of advocating violence.

  It’s like if someone was putting a rope around my innocent neck and I struggle vigorously to keep that man from lynching me, that man has the audacity to accuse me of violence and I’m his victim. This is, again, the trickery of the American white man. Every time a black man stands up and tries to defend himself against a brutality practised against black people in this country by white people. The white man puts out the propaganda that we are violent. He never says that these people in Mississippi who are siccing dogs on our people are violent. He doesn’t say that the man who coils the lyncher’s rope around our necks is violent. He doesn’t say that the people who are bombing the Negro churches are violent. But when a Muslim says that it’s time now for the black people to defend themselves since the government has proven itself incapable of defending us, it’s time for us to defend ourselves, then the government puts out the propaganda that we’re advocating violence. So, we’re not a hate group, we’re not a violent group, we believe in loving our own kind, we believe in defending ourselves. This other thing you asked me about hate and black supremacy was it? Supremacy means to be over someone. To be supreme. To be over someone. Now, our whole philosophy is separation. We don’t even want to be with the white man, much less over him. We believe the white man should be with himself, over himself. We believe we should be with ourselves, over ourselves. We believe that white people should be supreme over white people. We believe that black people should be supreme over black people. We believe white people should rule white people.

  AC: Where would the children of mixed marriages fit into this?

  MX: They’re in trouble. If you notice, the white man always rejects children of mixed marriages. When you become of mixed blood you’re never white. But you’re always considered non-white.

  AC: What is the degree of black blood you must have in order to be black?

  MX: Well, as far as we’re concerned, as long as we can tell that you have black blood, you’re one of our brothers. When you get in that borderline where you can’t tell what you are, or it’s questionable, then it’s best for you to get some papers, especially nowadays. Because you’re going into an era today where the colour of your skin might save your life.

  …

  AC: Do you yourself experience any discrimination in New York?

  MX: I myself don’t experience any discrimination because I don’t go where I can be discriminated. I know who I’m dealing with and what I’m up against and I know how to get around it. But you have just as much discrimination and prejudice and segregation in New York City as you do in Mississippi. The only difference between New York City discrimination and Mississippi discrimination, the white men in Mississippi who discriminate you are just like the wolf. He lets you know he’s a wolf and he lets you know where he stands. But the white man here in New York City is like a fox. When you see the teeth of the wolf, you know what he means, but when you see the teeth of the fox, he holds his mouth in such a way you think the fox is smiling, you think he’s your friend. But the wolf and the fox have the same motivation and if you take either one for a friend you’ll end up in the same way …

  Malcolm was saying these words as he got up from his chair beside me, because he was one hour late for his interview with Time magazine. He said these last few lines as he was going to the door, toward the secretary who had not recognized who he was.

  Harry J. Boyle kept his part of the bargain. He had promised that if the interview (of James Baldwin, when the conditions were agreed to, with no handshake, or written guarantee — just word of mouth; trust) was acceptable, he would give me the regular fee; he would pay the usual CBC per diem; he would pay for the hotel for the time I stayed in New York; he would pay for a return ticket on Air Canada. Some of these fees were wired to New York, as an advance, and Ms. Dorothy McCallum was all smiles, because we had carried out some kind of a scoop; the interview was sent on the wire back to Toronto that same day; and snippets of it were used on “CBC Matinee” as teasers, with the full interview to be used on the Project Series, the most prestigious radio programme in the whole CBC. It was broadcast on Sundays. At the hour for dinner: seven o’clock. Its importance as the best commentary on social affairs in the country was so great that housewives and heads of households postponed the serving of dinner and listened to Project religiously.

  It is not too extravagant to say that my career as a freelance broadcaster was made by this interview of Malcolm X. Harry J. Boyle was a fair man. And to demonstrate his fairness and his sense of justice and fair play, and to throw me deeper into the turbulent waters of competition with the other freelance broadcasters, he chose the toughest and most professional of all the Project’s producers to work with me on the interview. Fräulein Dita Vadron.

  As time would illustrate, Dita Vadron had me on my knees, literally and physically. A piece of audiotape on which a comma was recorded, a comma which she decided had to be retrieved and used, in order to give the sentence from which it had been cut, by accident, the necessary balance and nuance, that she made me spend many minutes, during the preparation of the programme, on my hands and knees, searching for that comma, in the small cutting room.

  My interview with Malcolm X was first copied, then rough cut, and then cut again. Then I wrote a script for it. And then and only then, when the piece was in the shape worthy to be “produced,” did Fräulein Dita Vadron grace me with her professional presence, and started the routine, the regimen, the constructing of a programme, choosing music, listening to the tape so many times that I knew the entire interview and the programme into which it was made, by heart. And the searching on the floor, for the “comma,” in the rising pile of cut tape covering the cutting room floor like a carpet, continued.

  “We have to find that comma, Austin,” Dita would say.

  There were lots of commas on the cutting room floor. But Dita wanted the correct “comma.” I was driven to the brink of tears, as any normal person would have been. I was driven to anger many times. And a smile, from Dita Vadron, and a wink, softened my malevolence. I knew I was being trained by a woman who was the best CBC producer of radio documentaries.

  Chapter Twelve

  With the advance, a considerable amount of money in those days
— and even in these days now, for a freelance radio broadcaster — I bought the things I always wanted to be able to buy. A pair of suede boots. A carton of Gauloises cigarettes. A silver Dunhill lighter. And three pouches each of Erinmore Flake, Condor, and Amphora, in a brown plastic pouch.

  I could not hide my sudden good fortune from Fred, the receptionist at the Amsterdam News. And indeed, I did not intend to do so. It was Fred who had kept me walking through Harlem for days and nights, finishing the unfinished business of tracking down Malcolm X.

  Fred was a part of my fortune. Fred had persisted in keeping me on the trail. He was almost like an agent. He had introduced me to Father Divine’s temple, to Mother Africa, and many other Harlem characters. He knew the back alleys. And the entrances at the back of dark, foreboding buildings, where the concertina doors of lifts did not work, and where the floor retained its indestructible marble with patterns from Greek vases and gods and mythology. And it was Fred who opened the doors to my meeting many of Harlem’s “leaders” and “role models” and pimps; and visiting celebrities from Europe and Africa, who were written up in the social and arts pages of the Amsterdam News.

  One such personage of international renown was the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe. He is one of the few novelists I have envied, for writing a book that I wanted to have written before him. Things Fall Apart was a microcosmic treatment of all the ills in the world at the time. It represented, by its title only, the chaos into which America and its racial segregationist beliefs had thrown the world, certainly the world of liberal-minded, Christian people. And leaving the literary and the philosophical, if not the religious, Things Fall Apart grappled at the heart of the concurrent decolonization of African countries from the yoke of British imperialism, and the political, though not the economic, freedom, being talked about in the West Indian Islands. This coincidence with the “Africanization” of black American thought and customs was most ironical. Africa presented the image of strength and ancient culture that black Americans could never have hoped to boast of: just as black America envied the “history” of black West Indians who had come amongst them, legally as immigrants, and as stowaways.