I only recently started reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, although I couldn’t tell you who authored it, when the spirit of Malcolm X entered me. When I say this, I don’t mean as if I was conducting a séance and had some suckers around a table desperate to hear words of assurance from their dead loved ones and with voice changing a dramatic falsetto I said, “I’ll always love you, George—and don’t forget to tip the séance-ier handsomely.” Nor is it just a deep empathy, where you cerebrally, “understand his pain” and then the mind translates this to the body senses to emote what it thinks “a good little body” should do.
What I mean is that there was no separation between his shem in Hebrew—his spirit, his essence—and mine and suddenly my world was seen through shared eyes, his taking the reigns and mine sitting in the carriage like a passive passenger. And what I felt was shame.
I felt the shame of trying to make oneself more “white” by conking one’s hair straight with a lye combination that burned like hell, or taking pride in being a lighter-skinned black, sitting in their white school like a mascot, listening to teachers and students both joke about “niggers” and justifying it with, “They don’t mean anything by it, it’s just the way everybody talks.” It wasn’t until certain seemingly small events cleared the eyes to see beyond the veil of ignorance and cleared the head to demand more, that joking about “niggers” was no longer acceptable.
The other day I had written an un-blog entry containing racist remarks about Mexicans. I write mockingly against every group or individual that identifies himself as part of a group and the racism, sexism, homophobia and necrophilia are all just written to satire the stupidity of anyone who really holds these beliefs. Well, not the necrophilia but the other stuff. But reflecting now on this last piece, I saw it not as some brilliant satire inspired by the ghost of Eric Cartman, but as cheap humor, insulting not only to Mexicans but to myself.
The carriage turned to the “gangsta” watch and big medallion recently accumulated as part of my latest costume and found them ridiculous, feeling completely distant from items that only a week ago I had mused girlish over as fun accoutrements to my persona. Through the clear vision of Malcolm’s eyes, I saw them as degrading and an insult to Who I Am and an insult to anyone who has ever covered up his naked beauty because he didn’t think it was enough in its bare essence.
When Malcolm’s shem left me, in its wake was left a determination not to be a cartoon character but to, like Malcolm, never compromise the need to express myself authentically. I asserted that I would not cheapen my writing and in turn cheapen myself with uninspired insults. I was disgusted at this sophomoric expression of a man I saw as my alter-ego, pathetically fighting the oppression of conformity as a rebel surrounded by a self-constructed barbed-wire fence of lies.
It took me a couple of days before I could use words like “nigger,” “spick,” “chink,” “kike,” “wop,” “pussy” and “prostitute” again. But, like my brother in X, even bullets could not kill the uncompromising message that while one may seek liberation “by any means necessary,” there is no price worth exchanging for your honor and authenticity.
“People…think personality is individuality. It is not–in fact it is the barrier. You will never attain individuality if you are not ready to drop your personality.”
-Osho, The Book Of Understanding (page 160)
Yes, perfect length for a quick read. Please don’t let your tolerance stop you from inciting arguments with strange people for my reading pleasure though.