Happy Birthday Malcolm

by Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Princeton University

I am part of the generation — the post civil-rights generation, post-black power generation — that turned Malcolm X into a T-shirt and cap. He was our symbol of racial discontent and political angst. Though we did not live through the brutal repression of Jim Crow, we knew for ourselves, in our own way, the effects of racial inequality. We saw the systematic destruction of urban communities, the incarceration of our peers, the violence and drugs that ravaged our neighborhoods. We knew that even the new opportunities and unprecedented accomplishments that previous generations made possible for us were often marked by racial isolation and insults.

We met Malcolm through the prism of popular culture, and we embraced him as a commodity, to signal our own disbelief in the American dream.

On Malcolm X’s birthday, those of us who embraced him as a pop icon need to encounter him again. We need to revisit Malcolm, because he has resisted all of our attempts to craft a single, well-packaged, vision of him. We need to unpack the things about him that remain elusive, difficult, messy and challenging.

We need to pause to think about him, because he left, for us, important social and political lessons.

Though Malcolm’s life was short, it was marked by dramatic change. He was born into poverty, madness and racial violence. His youthful arrogance, crime and indulgence led him to jail. But prison was no end for him; through a religious and political awakening, he found freedom in the context of imprisonment. He became an organization man, an orator, a world citizen and a free thinker with a cosmopolitan vision of the world.

Malcolm displayed the capacity to learn, to grow, to discern and to change direction. It takes courage to admit that society’s approach to old subjects has grown rigid and needs to evolve and change. It is hard for leaders to admit that they have been wrong in the past. His life is a reminder that greatness is not found in arrogant self-righteousness or intellectual hubris, but in the willingness to be open to our own limitations.

Malcolm also reminds us that the movement is more important than the man. He was fiercely loyal to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who was the conduit of his political awakening, the author of his adult manhood, the embodiment of his idea of the sacred, and his dear and beloved friend. But when Malcolm came to believe that his mentor was abusing power in a way that threatened to destroy the very principles that he embraced, he made the difficult choice to walk away from the Nation of Islam.

Many in the post-civil rights generation have yearned for their own history-defining, charismatic leader. But Malcolm’s struggle to make his own authentic, political contribution reminds us that ideals are more important than personalities. Progressive political movements that engender lasting change are always bigger than the flawed human beings who lead them. The goal is to invest our energies and efforts in the movement itself rather than in blind loyalty to any single figure. Malcolm reminds us that we must always lead, even as we follow.