It’s no accident that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X have been set up as dueling dichotomies, because if MLK scared white people, if he got other Blacks to shame whites into admitting, “okay, maybe we were kinda sorta wrong”, then Malcolm X was terrifying. Here he was saying, “I’m going to give you a chance to do this Martin’s way. I’m going to give you a chance to do what you know is right, but know that we are not asking to be removed from second-tier citizenship, we are demanding it. We are demanding equal treatment. We are demanding that we be given all the rights promised to everyone in this country, and if you do not comply, well, essentially, we’re gonna set this motherfucking place on fire.”
And I cannot fault him for that.
It always kills me, that when I hear white people talk about Malcolm, they think he should have come bearing doves, waving white flags, with a peace symbol pinned to his lapel. But why? It is the height of fucking arrogance to think that a people who have been beaten, shamed, degraded, enslaved, given vastly fewer opportunities, hanged from trees, prevented from voting, and told that this was the lot of their race, should ask for rights. Should come timidly to beseech those in power for just treatment.
And I cannot fault him for that.
It always kills me, that when I hear white people talk about Malcolm, they think he should have come bearing doves, waving white flags, with a peace symbol pinned to his lapel. But why? It is the height of fucking arrogance to think that a people who have been beaten, shamed, degraded, enslaved, given vastly fewer opportunities, hanged from trees, prevented from voting, and told that this was the lot of their race, should ask for rights. Should come timidly to beseech those in power for just treatment.
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