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I wonder if Malcolm X ever considered that alienating white liberals decreased their ability to help his cause.

I’m not white, and I am left leaning, but I don’t know what the current technical definition of liberal is, so I don’t know if I’m a liberal or not.

But if I was listening to Malcolm X as a white liberal and liking what he has to say and believing in his cause and then he hit me with that line, that would cause me to feel powerless to do anything to help him because apparently now I’m dangerous and I don’t know how or why.

Does anyone know if he ever prescribed a course of action to remediate the danger of the white liberal?

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stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

I wonder if Malcolm X ever considered that alienating white liberals decreased their ability to help his cause.

Did you look up the context of this quote? Because here, read the whole thing:

The White liberal is the worst enemy to America and the worst enemy to the Black man.

Let me first explain what I mean by this White liberal. In America there’s no such thing as Democrats and Republicans anymore. That’s antiquated. In America you have liberals and conservatives. This is what the American political structure boils down to among Whites. The only people who are still living in the past and thinks in terms of “I’m a Democrat” or “I’m a Republican” is the American Negro. He’s the one who runs around bragging about party affiliation and he’s the one who sticks to the Democrat or sticks to the Republican, but White people in America are divided into two groups, liberals and Republicans…or rather, liberals and conservatives.

And when you find White people vote in the political picture, they’re not divided in terms of Democrats and Republicans, they’re divided consistently as conservatives and as liberal. The Democrats who are conservative vote with Republicans who are conservative. Democrats who are liberals vote with Republicans who are liberals. You find this in Washington, DC.

Now the White liberals aren’t White people who are for independence, who are liberal, who are moral, who are ethical in their thinking, they are just a faction of White people who are jockeying for power the same as the White conservatives are a faction of White people who are jockeying for power. Now they are fighting each other for booty, for power, for prestige and the one who is the football in the game is the Negro. Twenty million Black people in this country are a political football, a political pawn an economic football, an economic pawn, a social football, a social pawn…

Politics have changed a lot since then, of course, but I think his message is pretty clear, and still valid. If you’re the kind of “white liberal” who doesn’t give a shit about Black rights except when you need Black votes to get your candidates elected, then you are an enemy of the Black man and America as a whole.

And I hope anybody calling themselves liberal these days would agree.

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- bizarroland@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  holy shit
  
  Okay, in its full context, that changes everything and completely invalidates my reply.
  
  I’ve only seen this quote or some variation of it on its own.
  
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  - zqps@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Yeah basically the term Liberal in this context is the conservative propaganda team that describes everyone they loathe. What it doesn’t describe is any specific agenda or worldview because they utterly lack political education and are highly suspicious of anyone that does.
    
    There are of course white progressives with good politics who truly care for civil rights, in particular those of minorities when their rights are being threatened. This is not the kind of person Malcolm X is talking about. Unfortunately there’s no real political representation for that. The only effort put forward by the Democratic party is saying: “At least we’re not as bad as the Republicans, so shut up and vote for us or we’ll reconsider that position.” Those are the liberals he’s rightfully calling out in that quote.
    
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Carmakazi@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
His message to the white liberal was something to the effect of “Go home. This isn’t your fight.” I doubt he cared about how they felt about that.

He was a black separatist that wanted as little to do with whites as possible.

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- zqps@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  That’s just not true. He was calling out whites who merely pay lip service to civil rights while putting all their political capital into maintaining a discriminatory status quo.
  
  That is unfortunately the majority, and the frustration at this fact does come through in many of his quotes, and it is well-placed.
  
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- bizarroland@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Okay, yeah, I can definitely do that, and I’ll still be an ally if I have the opportunity.
  
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finalarbiter@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
If an insult is all it takes to change one’s position on human rights and equality, they likely only held those beliefs because they were politically expedient rather than actually believing in those principles. That’s not a true ally.

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