for pay" - my last word on it:
Yes,Laurence Fishburne's a great actor, and talking about gender
choice and all that, now that every despised minority is trying to
claim Malcolm, it was a soul sister Scotti Preston who told me ( in an
art gallery at Slussen, Stockholm) that she would have preferred the
manly and charismatic Larry playing Malcolm X, that role of honour &
representing black masculinity, black sexuality, courage and defiance
etc. Later on he was OK as Othello. Her choice does not in any way
diminish DW's talents, although the kind of baggage that actors come
with on and off screen can sometimes - some of their earlier roles -
can add to the predicament; certainly no one would like to have seen
Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy or latterly Chris Rock, playing
Malcolm, since Malcolm was not a comedian.
The whole of the Stockholm African Diaspora was at the première
( both curly hair and the straight blow outs) and we were talking
about the movie for weeks after that, both those who had read the
autobiography and those who had not.
A good opening question here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DmLbb5eqno
About the most improbable and most malicious "Malcolm X was "gay-for-
pay" bit , obviously the man is bigger than life in so many spheres,
is all things to all people and here to add to super black man
Malcolm's political & sexual hagiography it could dismay you to read
this kind of nutty question: " Is Obama the secret son of Malcolm X?"
On Apr 29, 11:08 pm, Tracy Flemming <cafenegrit...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And yet another that first appeared in gbmnews.com by Rev. Irene
> Monroe:http://gbmnews.com/wp/?p=7550
>
> Malcolm X was "gay-for-pay"
>
> Before any of us in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
> communities laud Malcolm X as our new gay icon or castigate him for
> being a black heterosexist nationalist on the "down low," we might
> need to closely examine the recent revelation that for a period in his
> life Malcolm X engaged in same-sex relationships.
>
> Also, before any of us in the African American community flatly
> dismiss these assertions as part and parcel of a racist conspiratorial
> propaganda machine that is out to discredit our brother Malcolm, we
> need, at least, to hear these nagging claims.
>
> And this time hear them coming from one of our own — Manning Marable,
> a renowned and respected African American historian and social critic
> from Columbia University.
>
> Sadly, Marable died April 1, just days before the release of his
> magnum opus, an exhaustive and new 594-page biography Malcolm X: A
> Life of Reinvention, on April 4th, which also marks the anniversary of
> Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968.
>
> His assertions in the book — deriving from meticulously combing
> through 6,000 pages of F.B.I. files obtained through the Freedom of
> Information Act, records from the Central Intelligence Agency, State
> Department and New York district attorney's office, as well as his
> interviews with members of Malcolm X's inner circle and security team
> — leaves the reader in shock and awe.
>
> For those of us who always thought Malcolm X's assassination, as with
> King's, had everything to do with J. Edgar Hoover's F.B.I, we are
> correct. Marable emphatically states that both the F.B.I and NYPD had
> advance knowledge of Malcolm X's assassination plot, and did nothing
> to abort it.
>
> But what will come as a shock is Marable's assertions that the Malcolm
> X the world has come to know through Alex Haley's 1965 New York
> Timesbestseller The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Spike Lee's 1992
> filmMalcolm X based largely on Haley's book is fictive. And the spin
> we have, in part, is due to Malcolm himself.
>
> In creating an autobiographical narrative that would have his book fly
> off of bookshelves as well as elevate his status to a national — if
> not world — stage, Malcolm X intentionally fabricated, exaggerated,
> glossed over, and omitted vital facts about his life. One such fact
> omitted was his same-sex relationship with a white businessman.
>
> The claim, no doubt, will become a hotly contested topic in sectors of
> the African American community. With an iconography of racist images
> of black masculinity ranging from back in the day as Sambos, Uncle
> Toms, coons, and bucks to now gangsta hip-hoppers, Malcolm represented
> the negation of them.
>
> As a pop-culture hero to young black males of this generation and as
> the quintessential representation of black manhood of both America's
> Black Civil Rights and Black Power eras, a gay Malcolm X will be a
> hard, if not impossible, sell to the African American community.
>
> And here's why:
>
> At Malcolm X's funeral, held at the Faith Temple Church Of God in
> February 27, 1965, Ossie Davis, renowned African American actor and
> civil rights activist, delivered the eulogy stating the following:
>
> Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes. …
> Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood! This was his
> meaning to his people. …And we will know him then for what he was and
> is. A prince. Our own black shining prince who didn't hesitate to die
> because he loved us so.
>
> For a gangsta hip-hop generation Malcolm Little — before his
> conversation to the Nation of Islam and name change — represents for
> them a lauded hypermasculinity. And their male-dominated musical genre
> is aesthetically built on the most misogynistic and homophobic strains
> of Black Nationalism and afrocentricism.
>
> But this claim by Marable, however, of Malcolm's same-sex relationship
> is not new. Reports of Malcolm X's queerness was first revealed in
> Bruce Perry's 1991 biography, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed
> Black America.
>
> According to Perry, Malcolm's same-sex dalliances date back to
> childhood where he enjoyed being masturbated or fellated. In his 20s,
> Perry informs us, Malcolm had a sustained sexual relationship with a
> transvestite named Willie Mae, and also he had sex with gay men for
> money, boasting he serviced "queers."
>
> I am not heterosexist apologist, but if we, as LGBTQ, use this era of
> Malcolm's life to claim him as gay, we misunderstand the art and
> survival of street hustling culture.
>
> Similarly, if we, as African Americans, use this era of Malcolm's life
> to dismiss that he engaged in same-sex relationships, many will miss
> the opportunity to purge ourselves of homophobic attitudes.
>
> When Malcolm came to Boston to live with his older half-sister,
> Roxbury's Ella Little Collins, he was 16, having dropped out of school
> at 15. With no job skills and looking for the most expedient route to
> acquire money, Malcolm peddled cocaine, broke into homes of Boston's
> well-to-do, gambled big at poker games, and unabashedly serviced gay
> men for pay.
>
> While it can be argued that Malcolm's same-sex encounters were not
> solely financially motivated, let us also not dismiss that the only
> evidence we do have is the context in which he was.
>
> Short URL:http://gbmnews.com/wp/?p=7550
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