Monday

[nightdog_barks]

Still only one tomato seedling! This is disappointing, but we shall see what happens. Maybe the others are just ... slow. *g*

Sunny and warm. Dark clouds and much thunder yesterday but only a sprinkle of rain. Finally finished Manning Marable's Malcolm X, and it was ... a lot to take in.



This isn't a hagiography, at all, and this isn't the Malcolm from Spike Lee's film. Well, some of it is, but it's also the Malcolm who pretty much deserted his wife every time she had a baby. Who met with Klan leaders to forge a common ground against the civil rights movement. Who watched the Nation of Islam take money from the American Nazi Party. So like I said, not a hagiography and not Spike's Malcolm, although, as Marable says, in all fairness to Lee, not all of this was known in 1992 when the film was made, and Malcolm did move beyond these NOI stances (except the part for going on foreign trips at baby time). Marable does a great job of steering the reader through these times; at points it does get a little confusing, but then he guides you back out into clearer waters.

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is absolutely worth reading -- this is a stark portrait of an amazing man. Malcolm comes to life in these pages, fully human, with all his courage and all his flaws.

I wish he had lived. :(



Trying to write, moving slowly. Sigh. Also watched the BBC1 stream and the NBC presentation of the closing ceremonies of the Olympics yesterday and last night. It was mad fun. :D

Comments

[blackmare]

... wow. He was fighting the civil rights movement? I didn't know that. Why?

Very slow-moving myself, today, and I may go talk a walk in a moment before the sun sets, just to ... reboot my brain a little, I guess.

[nightdog_barks]

Because Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam organization, preached that the white man was the devil, and black people could never reach any kind of accommodation with the white devil. Ergo, MLK and all those who spearheaded and participated in the civil rights movement were deluded at best and seriously evil at the worst. Elijah Muhammad preached complete separation and ordered his followers not to vote or even register to vote, and since Elijah Muhammad was a genuine Prophet of God (in the eyes of his flock), what he said was the law.

Elijah Muhammad, meanwhile, was his own piece of work.

[blackmare]

I have heard something of this but didn't quite connect it all with Malcolm X. I'm glad he moved away from that ideology.

Many years back, I was at the ex-boyfiend's house and he stopped channel-flipping when he found Farrakhan giving a speech. Farrakhan was, in the brief bit I saw, playing a nice game of Blame the Jews.

Ex-guy insisted I needed to listen to this because "98% of black people agree with him, they just won't tell you that."

Prior to that I hadn't had much reason to believe he was a bigot.

[nightdog_barks]

Heh. Malcolm also made anti-Semitic statements, even after he left the NOI. It's hard to tell if he truly believed these things, or, if he did, if he ever would've not believed them. I mean, on the one hand he had begun to say "All men are my brothers -- Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, etc.", but at the same time he was also still saying "The Jews control everything." So. Did he sincerely believe one statement and was "playing to the audience" with the other? If so, which one? Or did he sincerely believe both? One can't tell.

[blackmare]

So I did go walking, and discovered that my new neighborhood is more beautiful than I'd realized.

And that I am SO SO SO out of shape after months of persistent kinda-sickness and falling out of the habit of walking. And that it really isn't that far to the places I like to draw and paint, even on foot.

[taiga13]

Hello! The chipmunks have been eating all of TaigaMom's tomatoes, even before they're green. She keeps threatening to shoot them but with the drought what else will they eat?
We had mad hail here last night, at my house it was the size of golfballs. It sounded like someone was shooting at the building.

[nightdog_barks]

I WISH WE HAD CHIPMUNKS THEY ARE SO CUTE. :D

Hello, Taiga! Yikes, hail. We had some serious hail this spring -- I was afraid we'd have broken windows but luckily we didn't.

[damigella]

You mean real life version of Cip e Ciop Chip 'n Dale? I never saw those, not even in zoos. I'm envious.

[damigella]

I didn't even see the movie, but the book seems very interesting. I don't find it partisularly appalling that he would have anti-semitic and don't-trust-the-whites attitudes; not trusting the oppressing race seems sane, and for someone who wasn't particularly educated it cannot have been easy to avoid all the anti-Jewish propaganda (not all of which had Islamic origins, I'm afraid). I rather find it wonderful that he got over it in later life.

As for inopportune traveling, I wonder whether it could be related to his believing there should be sex during pregnancy. It makes no sense (in fact, ahem...) but who knows what the medical/religious viewpoint was at the time.

PS You probably have one more tomato plant than I would have had in your place.

[nightdog_barks]

Oh, I know -- a lot of "Early Malcolm" was very much a product of his time. A lot of the U.S. was an absolute hellhole for people of color (one could argue that parts of it still are). It's just that up until now, the historical Malcolm X has quite often been presented as "Saint Malcolm," and as far as I know, this is the first major work to show the "human Malcolm." To take it a bit further, it would be kind of like discovering that George Washington actually conspired with the British.

... but who knows what the medical/religious viewpoint was at the time.

To be honest, from Marables' viewpoint it sounds like Malcolm got married because a minister of the Nation of Islam was supposed to be married. Once he'd done that, he really didn't want to spend much time with her (his wife, Betty Shabazz).

And still just one tomato seedling. I don't get it. :D