Saturday, April 30, 2011

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Peeling Away Multiple Masks - Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention’ by Manning Marable - Review

Brother Tracy K. Flemming, yours is a most welcome new presence on
this Pan-African list-serve. For too long, especially since the time
when there was Obama bashing by some of the recalcitrant toms, I've
lamented the absence of more telling African-American inputs in our
USA-Africa Dialogue Series, which spells Africa with a C. In the late
counter-culture sixties and early seventies spelling America with a K
always implied fascism, a fascist America, and that's an America which
has never existed in or outside of my mind and so I have always
resisted the standard German and Swedish spelling of Africa with a K.
(Perhaps it should be spelled in hieroglyphics, when we get that far
in recovering the past with our more advanced linguistics studies??)
Just a short item here: Of course biographies, autobiographies could
be as fulsome as possible;too many gaps in the story leave too much
space to be filled in or interpreted by the fertile imagination of
either truth-seeking & well-wishing friends or the still hate-filled
enemies.
"He also suggests that Malcolm exaggerated his criminal youth in his
"Autobiography" to
create "an allegory documenting the destructive consequences of racism
within the U.S. criminal justice and penal system". Not only that, in
like manner the first hour or so of the Hollywood version "Malcolm X"
starring Denzel Washington (why not Larry Fisburne?) is almost a waste
of time, even granting that it wants to emphasise the humble origins
of greatness and Malcolm's evolution from a very low zero to one of
our great leaders of Africa-America and ultimately to Pan-African
leadership which is one of his great legacies – and of course at that
point to some people he was much more dangerous than being a mere
separatist.

The documentaries of Malcolm's life tell the story in a powerful
direct way. The audio & visual and written documentary materials in
sum total are more powerful than that Hollywood version.

Of course I would also like to make my own Hollywood film version
perhaps after reading Michiko Kakutani and Manning Marable and Rev.
Irene Monroe on the great man it should be time to do so without
causing any more unnecessary riots in Chicago.....

Right now this is the big hit in Sweden: "The Black Power Mixtape
1967-1975"

http://www.google.com/search?q=The+Black+Power+Mixtape+1967-1975

And the Edward Wilmot Blyden movie, is that also in the works, yet?
His "Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race" is still a very topical
issue.....

http://books.google.com/books?id=uBrjPOrkFZMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Christianity,+Islam+and+the+Negro+Race&hl=en&src=bmrr&ei=nyS8TaTtCY7BtAb4v7n1BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false


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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