Race: A Weapon of Mass Destruction
The Documentary, “Who Killed Malcom X?” introduced to me a different side to who I thought Malcom X was.
Before watching the documentary and exploring my curiosity and interest in Malcom X and his movement, I was only focused on Martin Luther King Jr as the ideal and inspirational activist of his time, with little to no focus on Malcom X.
However, as I watched “Who Killed Malcom X?” I began to see a deeper side to Malcom’s rhetoric and message, and who he was as an activist and a leader.
From the outside, it may look like Malcom’s message is more or less a message on taking revenge on the White Man and doing the opposite of MLK Jr. if turning the other cheek. But I disagree.
Malcom, through his speeches, emphasized the importance of respect going both ways. It wasn’t enough to tell black people to turn the other cheek in the face of oppression. White people had to be held accountable for their actions and inactions towards black people. As we preach to each other to turn the other cheek and forgive and forget, we need to also (and more so) teach the instigators to NOT throw the first punch.
Most importantly, Malcom’s message paid a very deep attention to the ways white people through their power in the system used race as a means to oppress and repress, divide and conquer the black communities. (cite statements made in netflix episodes 1–3).
“Mistress, in teaching the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell” -Federick Douglass
In Douglass’s recant of his time as a slave, he mentioned how his mistress would educate him once in a while, planting in his memory seeds of knowledge. So influential were her teachings — against her best wishes — that Federick has to be stealthy whenever he was reading a book. Now he he had to hide as he read because it was pretty much an abomination to find a black slave with a book. As the old saying goes:
“Give a nigger an inch and he would take the ell”.
From the old saying and Federick Douglass’s use of it, we see the deeper ways by which whites used thier power and influence to oppress black people as slaves. Douglass had to be secretive whenever he read books because he was aware that his desire for knowledge and the truth would be lead to his awareness of the reality of his situation and drive for freedom. White slave owners knew this. They feared that if black people knew the truth about who they were and their worth, it would be over for their slave industry. So, efforts were put in the era of official slavery to ensure that black people remained intellectually enslaved as they were physically enslaved.
The fear of black people recognizing their rights and fighting for them is still felt by the whites in power who are profiting from systemic racism. Till this day, efforts are put on by law enforcement and people in power to over-scrutinize the movements and actions of black people so that they would be stopped in their efforts to fight for their rights to be seen as equal.
There are white people — in spite of their flamboyant feats in denouncing racism and slavery through policies and speeches — who are afraid to see black people as equal and not use race to their advantage because of the power and profits they are harvesting from the seeds of systemic racism.
In the documentary, it was further mentioned that former President Hoover was afraid of Malcom being the black Messiah who would successfully mobilize black people across the US to finally rise up and take what’s theirs. That fear led Hoover to sign off on invasive investgations of Malcom by FBI and secret organizations trained by the FBI to infiringe on Malcom’s rights for the alleged sake of the country’s safety.
The invasive efforts by Hoover and the FBI on Malcom proved that his message was true. The white man yielded power in oppressing black men and women, and saw their rising up for their rights as a threat. Therefore, they used their skilfull allocation of individuals and their worth on the basis of race — having worked successfully in their favor with colonialism and slavery — to segregate black people into poverty.
Black men and women asking and demanding to be treated by human beings was — and still is — a threat to the white individuals enjoying the fruits of their oppression in power because giving black people their rights will mean playing fair and getting what you TRULY deserve in society REGARDLESS of the color of your skin. But no one likes to play fair in a society built on the desire for power and profit and efficiency at the expense of the upholding basic ethical values.
That is why, in spite of the automatic mass emails sent by thousands of coroporations and businesses in the wak of the protests and riots against police brutality, there still is a hesitation on the part of the ones in power to truly use their platform to curb any and every form of systemic racism that comtinues to produce increasing numbers of black lives being lost unjustly.
There’s unfortunately a more likelihood of claiming you’re for justice without actually acting on your words because, saying the truth will mean playing fair. And there’s no fair game in the capitalist system that fuels the America we know and see today — the capitalist system that was and still is an amalgamation of profit over people and efficiency at the expense of the humanity of those who don’t look like you or speak the same language as you.
