Black Prophetic Fire

by Cornel West

  Now, back to Garvey. Garvey also said that as long as Black people live in America, most of them will live lives of ruin and disaster, especially the poor and working class. Malcolm took that very seriously. When he looked at Black life in America, he saw wasted potential; he saw unrealized aims; he saw ruin and disaster. He saw forms of self-hatred and self-destruction running amok. So he is building on this Black Nationalist tradition that says, “America you have a weak will to justice when it comes to Black people and poor people. America, we have no disappointment in you because we have no expectations of you. You have no soul, you have no conscience when it comes to the plight of Black people, either enslaved, Jim Crowed, ghettoized, hated, despised, lynched, subjugated, whatever.” This Black rage, viewed through the narrow lens of the American mainstream as Black revenge, sits at the center of Malcolm’s soul. And there is just no one like him in terms of having the courage to risk life and limb to speak such painful—not just unsettling in the Socratic sense, but painful—truths about America, truths that are so difficult to come to terms with that they seem to be too much for the country. It’s unbearable for the country to really look at all the rape, the violation, and the exploitation of Black people over four hundred years. It echoes Patrice Lumumba, when he told the king of the former Belgian Congo: “We shall never forget these scars, no matter how much reconciliation, no matter how much integration even, we shall never forget these scars.”7 That’s Malcolm.

  It reminds me of Faulkner when he says: “Memory believes before knowing remembers.”8 Memory of scars, memory of lynching, memory of being despised and spit on, rebuked and scorned—it’s not a victim’s mentality, as my right-wing brothers and sisters would put it, because there is and ought to be Jewish memory of pogroms, Jewish memory of Shoah and Holocaust; there is and ought to be Indigenous peoples’ memory of dispossession of land and genocidal attack. It is that fundamental role of memory that Malcolm always invoked.9 And to think that someone in a brief twelve-and-a-half years of his ministry could have had this kind of impact at the level of psyche and spirit is unique in modern history. Malcolm was a revolutionary prophet in speech and in spirit, and I think we need to hear him now as much as we need to hear Martin and Ella and Du Bois.

  CHB: Malcolm X said that “the best thing that a person can be is sincere.”10 I think his sincerity is something that also made him so convincing to Blacks when they listened to him, because it was clear he would not put on a show, he would not engage in any sweet talk, but he would stand for what he presented to them.

  CW: That’s exactly right. The young hip-hop generation talks about “keeping it real.” Malcolm was as real as it gets. James Brown talks about “make it funky.” Malcolm would never deodorize his discourse; it was always: “Bring in the funk, bring in the truth, bring in the reality.” There is a fundamental sense in which Malcolm specialized in de-niggerizing Negroes. He took the nigger out of them. To niggerize a people is to make them afraid and ashamed and scared and intimidated, so that they are deferential to the powers that be. They scratch when it doesn’t itch; they laugh when it ain’t funny. They wear the mask, as Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote in his great poem.11 And Malcolm came along and said, “No. I will take that nigger out of you. I’m gonna take it out of you.” There is a wonderful motto on Elijah Muhammad’s newspaper, founded by Malcolm X: “Islam dignifies.” A niggerized people must be dignified. And if they are dignified in the right way and take that nigger out of themselves, they can stand up like human beings, with a steeliness in their backs and a heartiness in their hearts and a fortitude in their soul that allows them to think for themselves and work for themselves in the name of a self-respect and self-determination that was required if Black freedom was not to be a pipe dream, if Black history was not to be a curse, if Black hope was not to be a joke, and if being Black was not to be a crime.

  CHB: It is an interesting strategy, if you think of the relation between the established who define you as an outsider and how difficult it is to get out of the range of the defining power. So what do you do? You reach out to another tradition, in Malcolm X’s case, Islam, and that tradition gives you the possibility of a different self-definition in turn. But is there not at the same time a certain problem, if you then operate within a tradition that is not the common one within the Black community?

  CW: Absolutely. Because you don’t have any roots that resonate deeply in the culture of the people that you are speaking to. Islam did not have any deep roots in the history of Black people the way Christianity did. That’s one of the reasons why Marcus Garvey always remained a Christian. His father, Marcus Sr., was very isolated but a great man; he always stood straight in Jamaica. His mother was Methodist. Garvey himself allowed for Muslims, atheists, different kinds of Christians to constitute his movement. But he had that deep Christian sensibility, whereas Malcolm, coming out of Elijah, went radically against the grain. He would identify with Christians like Nat Turner and John Brown and some of the great insurrectionists, or even the Deacons for Defense, who had their guns to defend themselves in North Carolina, with Robert Williams that influenced the Black Panther Party later on.12 They were Christians coming out of the churches, but Malcolm, Elijah, they were starting something that was new in the States.

  CHB: But not central.

  CW: That’s right. You know I have had wonderful dialogues with my dear brother Minister Louis Farrakhan, and I would push him on the issues of patriarchy and homophobia, anti-Semitism, and he always pushed me in his own powerful way.13 But I used to tell him that the Nation of Islam could never become a mass movement among Black people because there is no music in their ritual. And music has really been the fundamental means by which Black people have been able to preserve sanity and dignity and, at our best, integrity. And to have no music in your ritual is an over-reaction against what Elijah Muhammad understood to be the naïve emotionalism of many Black churches. We should remember that Elijah Muhammad was Reverend Elijah Poole in the Baptist church before he was a Muslim, so he had his own Black Baptist roots, as it were. But he wanted to look outside to get a different vantage point. Christianity was, in the view of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, a tool of the white man; it was an extension of white supremacy. You had the white Jesus looking like Michelangelo’s uncle on the wall, rather than the Palestinian Jew that he was with a swarthy complexion and linked to Northern Africa as well as the Middle East. And they were right about that. Christianity had been whitewashed and Europeanized in a fundamental way, and there was no doubt that the white supremacy in the Christianity that the slaves appropriated was pervasive. Yet the prophetic tradition within the Christian context was able to listen, to resonate with much of what Malcolm X was talking about, even as we remained Christian. The theological genius of James Cone is the best example of the Christian response to Malcolm.14

  CHB: I think, in terms of tactics, Malcolm X was so clever as to combine Muslim belief and Christian belief, in that in his speeches he would use Christian stories from the Bible, which were more familiar to his audience.

  CW: Absolutely. And I think both the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X always looked at the world from below, echoes of the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew: What you do for the least of these—the prisoner, the poor, the stranger, the widow, the fatherless, the motherless, the weak, the vulnerable—has lasting value. Even as Black Muslims, they could resonate with that theme, so they invoked Hebrew prophets, Isaiah, Amos; they invoked Jesus, emphasizing that sense of coming from below, looking at the world from below. One of my favorite formulations of Malcolm X is the epigraph in my chapter “The Crisis of Black Leadership” in Race Matters, where he tells the white mainstream: “You all say you respect me. If you can’t respect the brother and sister on the block, the Black brother and sister on the block, then you don’t really respect me.”15 And that’s missing these days among most Black leaders. They think they are respected in some isolated, individualistic way as a Black person, and yet their second cousi
n is despised and held in contempt by the same white people or white establishment that respects them. And Malcolm says: “Wait a minute, this is a contradiction. Something wrong is going on here. Of course, we are individuals. We understand that. But the ways in which you separate me from my brother and sister on the block is just a way of viewing me as exceptional, incorporating me and still turning your eye or being indifferent toward my folk, my own family, community, slice of humanity.” Malcolm would never, ever sell out to the powers that be. There would never be enough money, position, power, whatever that would allow him to violate his integrity and what I would call his magnanimity. And that’s what makes Malcolm stand out these days, because everybody is up for sale, everything is up for sale. And if Malcolm were around and looked and saw all of these folk who have sold out he’d say: “I didn’t know there was such a mass movement of house Negroes.”

  Who would have thought that the expansion of the Black middle class would lead toward a re-niggerization of Black professionals, because that is really what you have. You have Black professionals who have big money, a lot of prosperity, but are still scared, intimidated, have low self-respect, don’t take a stand, don’t want to tell the truth about the situation, let alone say, “If you don’t respect the brother and sister on the block, the ones you send into prison, then you don’t respect me.” All they want is position, status, and cash. You see, Malcolm is too much of a challenge to them. That’s another reason why we need him, because he shakes us, doesn’t allow us to sell out in that way.

  CHB: I’d like to come back to the point you make as to the importance of music. As far as I know, Malcolm X—at least during the phase when he was a member of the Nation of Islam—would not often refer to music or use musical metaphors, probably owing to the restrictions imposed by the leaders. And yet, one associates him in his appearance, in his rhetoric with music, with the tradition of jazz, especially.

  CW: Malcolm was music in motion; he was Black music in motion; he was jazz in motion, and, of course, jazz has improvisation, swing, and the blues, as brother Wynton Marsalis says, those three fundamental elements. Malcolm could be improvisational; he could be so lyrical and so funny all at the same time, and in the next minute shift and be serious and push you against the wall. The way he spoke had a swing to it, had a rhythm to it; it was a call and response with the audience that you get with jazz musicians. And he was the blues. Blues is associated with catastrophe, and Malcolm would say over and over again: “You are not going to get something detached and disinterested from anybody who is sitting on the stove and the stove is burning their behind, no, they’re going to holler out, they are going to respond deeply and viscerally.”16 He never forgot the Black folk on the stove. He never forgot the prison system: Black folk on the stove. Massive unemployment: Black folk on the stove. Indecent housing: Black folk on the stove. Inadequate healthcare: Black folk on the stove. And from the very beginning, from slavery to Jim Crow, so that the sense of catastrophe, the sense of emergency, the sense of urgency, the sense of needing to get it out, to cry out, to shout, somehow allowed that fire inside of his bones to be expressed with power and with vision. He never lost that. He never, ever lost that. The great Amiri Baraka has the same fire—literary genius, spiritual warrior, a Black revolutionary who never sold out. And that’s so rare these days.

  When you think about the legacy of Malcolm, you think, for example, of the great Reverend Walter Newton of Monroe, Louisiana, pastor of Bethel Baptist church.17 He was full of fire. His son, Huey Newton, was full of fire, too. Yes, Huey was a preacher’s kid. Walter was just like Malcolm’s father, he was known to be always demonstrating, wouldn’t allow his wife to work in the white households, would stand in front of the police telling them the truth. That’s what Huey was exposed to when he was young. And Huey understood Malcolm’s spirit. And so did the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale,18 Ericka Huggins,19 and so many others. They understood Malcolm’s spirit. The same is true of Amiri Baraka. Malcolm changed that brother’s life from Le Roi Jones to Amiri Baraka.20 There was something in Malcolm’s sincerity, something in his integrity and his willingness to live and die that hit people so. He hit me hard too. Malcolm means the world to me, because he was someone with a deep love for people, in his case, especially, a love for Black people, and a willingness to speak the truth knowing that he would be crucified, knowing he would be demonized, knowing that he would be misunderstood, misconceived and yet continuing on in the Black context as well as the larger national and international context. And for someone to say I’m gonna bring the US government before the United Nations for the violation of human rights21—wow. Lord, Lord, that’s my kind of brother!

  CHB: I think, in a way, you break his message down to a core that would then also allow you to make the connection with the other figures, whereas in public discourse Malcolm X is usually separated from them owing to his demonization. In fact, the way you talked about why he is so important to you, you might even exchange the name and put in Martin Luther King, and there would be so many resonances, despite the differences with regard to certain issues.

  CW: That’s true. I think James Cone’s great book on Martin and Malcolm is still the best juxtaposition we have.22 He understands that the two go hand in hand. You can’t talk about the one without the other. As for me, Malcolm has a revolutionary fire that Martin didn’t have; Martin has a moral fire from the very beginning that Malcolm didn’t get until later. Malcolm’s love for Black people is so strong and so intense that early on it leads him to call white folk devils and give up on them, and I think he is wrong about that. Martin never did that, but Martin doesn’t have the revolutionary fire that Malcolm had until the very end of his life. And by revolutionary fire I mean understanding the system under which we live, the capitalistic system, the imperial tentacles, the American empire, the disregard for life, the willingness to violate law, be it international law or domestic law. Malcolm understood that from very early on, and it hit Martin so hard that he does become a revolutionary in his own moral way later in his short life, whereas Malcolm had the revolutionary fire so early in life. It’s just that he had to continually grow into his analysis of the system, when he embraces critiques of imperialism and capitalism, and he just tells the truth: “It looks like vultures to me.”23 He just lays it out.

  Now, Malcolm wasn’t talking that way in the 1950s, because he hadn’t been exposed to it. But he never allows the analysis of the system to override or displace his understanding of the psyches, the souls, and the culture of Black people. You have to hold both at the same time, your analysis of the system—capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, homophobia, these days, the ecological catastrophe owing to the capitalist domination—but at the same time, the need for an unleashing of the fire of the soul and an acknowledgment of the power of the spirit that fortifies us in order to fight. You can’t be a warrior or a soldier without having your spirit intact, without having your sense of self-respect, self-regard, and self-esteem intact, and Malcolm always understood this fundamental truth.

  CHB: The fact that he would keep the systemic analysis in the background was in part probably due to the restrictions of the Nation of Islam in terms of political engagement. He was not supposed—

  CW: To be too politically involved. I hear what you are saying. The thing is, Elijah Muhammad did give Malcolm more freedom than he gave the other ministers, partly because Malcolm was just so charismatic, attracting so much attention. But at the same time, it’s also true that Elijah Muhammad’s own programs were not revolutionary programs at all—despite their powerful impact on many Black people, especially young Black men.

  CHB: Malcolm stood out in that regard. But he becomes more politicized, consciously speaking about the system, about capitalism, later, after his break with Elijah Muhammad. What is interesting, though, in your talking about Malcolm is that you don’t seem to rely on that break in your interpretation. As important as the change in Malcolm is—and I am sure you agree that it i
s—what you are saying is that there is a continuity that we must not overlook.

  CW: I think that Malcolm X’s break with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam was primarily driven by his deep love for Black people, and he did not see the Nation of Islam speaking to the suffering of Black people in the way that he would have liked. Now, we know there is a personal issue in terms of Elijah Muhammad’s relations with women and so forth, but politically and ideologically, Malcolm was driven into a more radical direction because he could not accept some of the theology of the Nation of Islam, that part that was still waiting for the mother plane to arrive, waiting for the reign of the white man to come to an end, which was not principally a matter of Black action but still divine action. So that even given Elijah Muhammad’s critique of Christian pie-in-the-sky theology, he still had an otherworldly element in his Black Muslim theology. And Malcolm was just more and more talking about human action and collective agency and organization on the ground.