On race, culture, and general stupidity (Part I) (November '06)

I was listening to NPR on my way home from church today, and the topic of the audio magazine show was the "Black Power Movement" and the cultural change that it wrought.

The show was interesting, if perhaps a bit irritating at times. There were several audio excerpts from speeches by Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and Huey P. Newton.

Few of you know that I am a big fan of Malcolm X. I've read everything that I could get a hold of by or about him, I've heard most if not all of his recorded speeches, and I've read his autobiography no less than 17 times.

I was therefore quite pleased to get the chance to listen to some of his speeches on my radio as I drove home. Malcolm X was not only a firey orator, but an excellent thinker and a bold proponent of what were at the time very new and different ideas. Ideas that quite frankly made a hell of a lot of sense.

Some of you may question this last assertion. By way of example, I'll use the reaction of my wife to these audio clips. Several of the speakers advocated the acquisition of arms and the use of defensive force if forcefully attacked. Not once did any of the speakers advocate offensive force in any of the sound clips we heard. Nevertheless, when my wife heard some righteously angry men adovcate that black people acquire weapons and meet force with force, she looked at me over her glasses and whispered "That's scary."

It shouldn't have been scary. Not then and not now. The men giving the speeches were advocating nothing more than the preservation of their constitutionally guaranteed rights using means available to every citizen of the United States, regardless of race, beliefs, or ethnic background.

Still, to many, it was scary. Which is exactly why I have a problem with the program I heard and programs like it. You only hear the "radical" black leaders when someone in the media wants to trot out a "scary" image and get the people all riled up. Furthermore, you only hear the most incendiary and controversial of their speeches--often from very early in their public careers. It's a sad mockery of these men, and especially Malcolm X, who spoke upon a wide variety of issues with very well thought-out and carefully reasoned logical arguments. These men stood for so much more than "black anger," but that is the only picture we are allowed to see these days.

Education is a beautiful thing, and education about the less savory elements of our past is a fine way to avoid repeating them.

Sensationalism emphasizing the conflicts will have quite the opposite effect.

I have more to say about this topic, but I think that will be best saved for Part II