faust the line you wrote when you were a kid constitutes a revolutionary act, just as it was revolutionary for enslaved africans to NOT throw themselves and their children overboard. wherever we choose to go from here, i think that institution building and black families (however they might be constituted) have to go hand in hand. to this degree the examples of king and malcolm x should not be discarded lightly, but rather should be understood as particular attempts to wrestle with the tribulations of a specific time, and that the strategies and tactics they used has gotten us (blacks in the US and to a lesser extent blacks throughout the diaspora) this far. but we’ve got to do the heavy lifting on our own to take us further.

Some said that Malcolm was little more than a spokesman.

Malcolm took an obscure group whose glory days were two decades gone, a group whose members numbered in the low hundreds, and turned it, one mosque at a time, into a national organisation with international reach with a national weekly newspaper, a multi-million dollar budget, and numerous social outreach programmes which flourished under his leadership.

Was he the day-to-day manager of everything?

Of course not–and no competent leader would micromanage a national organisation. A transformative leader’s most important role is to create more leaders. Malcolm’s leadership inside the NOI was so solid that the group outlasted him and would have continued indefinitely had Warithuddin Mohammed not conducted the perestroika that he did. Had Malcolm lived longer, he might have been able to accomplish similar heights and organisational stability with the MMI and the OAAU, but he had barely 12 months, during much of which he was overseas, not to mention *running for his life.*

He was also, as Karl Evanzz reports in *The Judas Factor*, working behind the scenes for a year on an alliance with MLK.

Furthermore, many of those who followed in the movement, and who turned out to be capable organisers, stated explicitly that it was Malcolm’s example which inspired them–most notably the BPP, which, with whatever failings it had, demonstrated the delivery of social programmes and took a leading role in delivering medical services for sickle cell anemia.

Malcolm was, clearly, a superb organiser, an excellent example of a leader who was brave enough to challenge much of his own thinking on a variety of subjects (including race, gender and religion), and an inspirational icon whose image, even when simplified, continues to offer comfort and momentum to those who struggle for justice and who wish to transform themselves and their societies. He was a masterful teacher who illustrated regularly that highly complex ideas could be made understandable for regular folk, who might thereby assert control over their destinies.

To reduce Malcolm, as one comment seemed to do, to nothing more than a spokesman, is grossly to underestimate his accomplishments. “Spokesman” does not do justice to Malcolm’s role as transformative leader, one whose ideas and means of transmitting them had a profound and enduring effect on the perspectives, ideologies, strategies, tactics, rhetoric and even aesthetics of so many early adopters in a variety of fields.

Was Malcolm X much of a family man? No one who devoted as much time to work as he did could be called father of the year. In this regard we should not use Malcolm as an exemplar, and as a father myself, I do not.

But we need also have compassion for this man, whose father (by some accounts Earl Little was, as a man typical of his times, a harsh, corporally punitive man) was murdered, whose mother psychologically cracked, whose siblings were scattered, who became a criminal and then a convict. The fact that Malcolm became as much of a family man as he did is stunning, and given his history, it’s remarkable that no account has ever emerged that he was a cruel husband or father.

Indeed, if there’s been any mythologising, it’s more likely been about Betty Shabazz. Clearly the two had a rocky marriage, with more than one separation. What’s been emerging slowly via letters (of contested reliability, yes) is that Betty Shabazz may have been a harsh and even cruel wife, who humiliated Malcolm’s value as a husband and sexual partner (this from a letter allegedly handwritten by Malcolm X to Elijah Muhammad); she may also have been having an affair with a member of Malcolm’s security detail after Malcolm’s split from the NOI (this from an interview I conducted with one of the world’s leading authorities on Malcolm X).

Who among us is so strong that, while facing institutional betrayal and expulsion and assassination, and then betrayal at home, we are capable of being the best of fathers… all the while we’re trying to build two new organisations with the express intention of confronting the empire and saving our people?

I’m not underestimating Br. Les’s legitimate concerns about the quality of Malcolm’s family life, and indeed, Malcolm’s own willingness to engage in rigourous self-criticism (to borrow the Maoist phrase, which psychopath Mao could not himself have employed) models for us that we must subject Malcolm himself to such criticism. I include this under the discussion of self-criticism because Malcolm-Icon is, for many of us, part of our own minds, and in some cases, a substitute father).

When I was 23, writing my first novel manuscript and reflecting sadly on the fate of many revolutionaries, I wrote the line which defined my political perspective for the rest of my life (thus far): “It is better to live for the people than to die for the people.” This is why Ralph Nader (who decided to sacrifice having a family instead of sacrificing a family) is as much a hero to me as is Malcolm X.

Malcolm deserves our respect, and in uncountable ways, our emulation. Where he failed, he deserves our compassion.

Minister Faust
THE BRO-LOG http://www.ministerfaust.blogspot.com

Now, as a father, this kind of thing is on my mind a lot, i.e., balancing pursuing the things in life that are important to you and that give your life meaning vs. ensuring that your family is provided for. When you have children (and I say this knowing that I, too, am a beneficiary of their sacrifice) you can’t just think about yourself. If whatever you’re doing, whatever passion you’re following, is that important to you, then maybe you shouldn’t have kids. They are totally dependent on you, both financially and emotionally. It’s like in Crooklyn when the kids ask Delroy Lindo’s character why he doesn’t have a job and he says, “Daddy just wants to make HIS music.” I was like, Brotha, you need a job. You got kids! Inherent in this is a sense that yes, you’re responsible.

I struggle with this particularly now since, in addition to my son, we just adopted a little girl from Ethiopia. At the same time, I’m pursuing several entrepreneurial ventures and am finding that my time work on them (after a full day’s work) is even more limited. But, the reality is that I’m a grown man and I agreed to be a father. So it’s no longer just about me (as much as I’d like it to be). This is where the rubber meets the road: My challenge is to create the life I want IN ADDITION to being present and providing for my family today and tomorrow.

I’m not sure that anyone, even Martin or Malcolm should be excused from this responsibility. And, let’s be clear, I’m not (and I don’t think you are either) blaming them or branding them as irresponsible. That said, given that we now have 40 years of hindsight, we can take their lives both as inspiration and as opportunities to remember that once you have a family, everyone is implicated by the situations you put yourself in.

. . .some prominent figures survived to reap the benefits of what others struggled and died for. . .the fact that there was sufficient resistance to prevent wholesale slaughter of the participants in the struggle is due in no small part to the tactics that King and Malcolm used.

And I may be misunderstanding you Dr., but I read you as saying that the liberation struggle wasn’t worth participating in if it meant risking your life unless you could guarantee the physical security of your family, which again is impossible unless you’re liberated in the first place.

But they were liberated enough to participate in the liberation struggle in the first place right? And we can think of a number of examples of people who were able to work, receive the victory, AND the fruits. You appear to be suggesting that this is random.

And I may be misunderstanding you Dr., but I read you as saying that the liberation struggle wasn’t worth participating in if it meant risking your life unless you could guarantee the physical security of your family, which again is impossible unless you’re liberated in the first place. What I’m saying is, King and Malcolm had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Literally. Whatever the outcome, their families weren’t going to be any worse off than they already were under a regime that treated them as expendable commodities.

If you think there were other tactics that could have produced a less costly victory for them, that’s worth considering. But it seems that you’re claiming they’re at fault for not being around to reap on behalf of their families the fruits of the victories they helped to achieve.

what does it mean to have nominal ownership of material goods, if any passing wretch has the power to arbitrarily deprive you of your property and your life, with impunity?