I just ran across Malcolm X saying the answer to this query of What To Do, articulated so clearly with conviction, I knew he had done a far better job explaining the real history of America in a more dense fashion than I or any white ever could. We are just more deaf to the injustice of the unheard than he was.
In short, he was asked in the interview by a white reporter, You don’t think it’s even a [forward] step then [the new Civil Rights Bill]? Brother Malcolm then answered as no white man could have and still no white politician can today on any side of the aisle:
“No, I don’t think it’s any step. The Constitution of the United States automatically is supposed to be sufficient to protect anyone who is born here a citizen. And if the Constitution includes any of those who are born here I don’t see why additional legislation is needed when it comes to the rights of the negro. If the Hungarians, the Polish, the Russians who come here as refugees don’t need Civil Rights legislation in order to be recognized as citizens…What makes the negro think it is needed to get us recognized as citizens.”
He added,
“You can’t do anything by legislation. It take education. The white man in this country needs to be re-educated so his behavior patterns toward non-whites will change.”
Malcolm did the work toward democracy. These cops did not. They walked away from it. The country belongs to him more than any who repress others. The government is owned by the people, and in the democracy of America, only those fighting the rights of all are its true citizens.
The belief what white supremacists are more American some how than you or Malcolm or MLK or Ida Wells or Fredrick Douglas or any number of civil rights leaders is flat out wrong. Woodrow Wilson, Ted Cruz, Senator Eastland who actually owned slave in 1960, Trump signaling to white supremacists to “Stand down and stand by.” They should go back to Europe. They have not earned the right to be in a country they fight against, in their attempts to impose autocracy. Those who March peacefully for George Floyd, all 3.3 million, they March toward America, toward the mountaintop.
The violent supremacist Insurrectionists on January 6th marched away from it, to the repressive monarchies, to the fascist governments the Puritans and other repressed immigrants escaped from. American was founded by anti-Europeans, not pro-Europeans. Don’t believe the voice of the violent cops is the voice of America. It is not. You are. All are the millions who marched are. Tell them to go back to where they came from. You stay here. You speak for it, you struggle and fight for it, and in your thoughts and words embrace it’s struggle more than they can or ever will.
