Martin vs. Malcolm: The Olive Branch and The Arrow

The Arrow

Malcolm X, formerly known as “Detroit Red”, formerly known as Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm El-Hajj Malik Shabazz grew up with an existential understanding of injustice. Stigmatized by poverty and haunted by the pervasive demonic vestige of racial violence perpetrated against his family, for their UNIA activities, Malcolm X’s indignation was quite righteous. His father’s horrendous death followed by his mother’s loss of sanity and committal must have deeply affected him. He was primed to be a revolutionary.

The picture painted of Malcolm is a dark one. The colors are black and burgundy. The tone of his speech and the message of the nation he was mislead into seem to prove this, especially to those who don’t care to disprove it. Yes, Malcolm was angry. His anger was shared by millions of African Americans. Anger clouds the mind but it is a secondary emotion brought on by the primary emotion of fear. “Anger is the natural emotion created in a fight-or-flight situation by the physiology of your mind and body. When you sense a threat your mind generates fear and anger. The fear you generate is part of a flight response from your physiology. Anger is the emotional energy you generate for the fight against that perceived threat. What can be confusing is that your mind creates fear and anger even when the threat is just imagined.”

The threat that Malcolm was reacting to was all too real. African Americans, especially African American males, were being lynched, imprisoned, and sentenced to lives of poverty. Many African Americans chose to flea from racism by standing still but, much like King, Malcolm made a decision to fight. Unlike King, he was not mentored in the school of non-violence. As Louis Farrakhan related, “Brother Malcolm had a gangsterlike past.”(Marable) In the streets of places like Harlem and Detroit fear is illegal. Men die because they don’t desire to be thought a “punk”. Malcolm was no punk.

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