Malcolm X Believed in the Radicalism of Color-Blindness
Towards the end of his life, Malcolm X swore off the ideology of separatism and argued instead for the transcendence of racial categories.
If asked to nominate a single person to stand as a symbol for black militancy in the United States, many would come up with the name Malcolm X. It is indeed hard to think of anyone who has fought with a similar palette of intelligence, rhetorical power and unflinching hostility against the system of racial discrimination that so profoundly tainted America in the middle of the previous century. For the better part of his public life, Malcolm X espoused the ideology of the Nation of Islam, a Muslim sect that rejected the integration of black people into the “white devil’s” society and instead demanded the foundation of a separate nation for the descendants of the only people that did not enter the United States of their own free will. However, towards the end of his life (which was cut short when fanatical members of the Nation fired 21 bullets into his body), Malcolm X publicly reversed his philosophy towards a more humanist anti-racism with the ultimate goal of integrating all of humanity regardless of color and creed.
This profound shift in thinking was inspired while Malcolm X was traveling overseas, fulfilling his religious duty as a Muslim by visiting the holy sites of Islam in Mecca. Seeing Muslims of every stripe mingling peacefully together must have made an immense impression on someone who had been brought up on a diet of racial animosity in the United States and was — until then — imprisoned by its poisonous logic. In a letter from Saudi Arabia, Malcolm X recounts his amazement at what he termed the “color-blindness” of Muslim society: “There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the non-white.”
As if not to be mistaken about whom he still considered to be the original sinner, he added a few paragraphs later: “The American Negro can never be blamed for his racial animosities — he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experiences that I had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth — the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.” From then on, Malcolm X also altered his position on interracial marriage, which he had previously condemned.
On his voyage through Arabia and Africa, Malcolm X was treated like a celebrity in every country he visited. Likewise, the American press was all over him as the news broke that he had returned to the United States. His biographer Alex Haley recounts the following exchange between the activist and a news reporter: “Do we correctly understand that you now do not think that all whites are evil?”, asked the reporter. “True sir! My trip to Mecca has opened my eyes. I no longer subscribe to racism. I have adjusted my thinking to the point where I believe that whites are human beings” — and adding, after a long pause — “as long as this is borne out by their humane attitude towards Negroes.”
The change in Malcolm X’s thinking should not be downplayed as a mere “adjustment”, as he himself puts it in the quote above — it was instead quite extreme. Changing his position from wanting to separate people based on skin color towards striving for the abolition of skin color as a meaningful category is a shift as radical as one can imagine. At the same time, Malcolm X made sure that his indictment of America’s legacy of racism would lose nothing of its fervor and commitment. Americans white and black could rest assured that “the angriest black man in America” (as the press called him) was still as angry as ever.
As Malcolm X shifted his thinking on skin-color, he also moved away from the teachings of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam and instead embraced a more traditional version of Islam. Imbibed with renewed religiosity he told Muslims in the Middle East that he would take up the mission to convert America to Islam as the way to obtain racial equality. Perhaps he himself saw that introducing another sectarian dimension into his struggle might not be a particular good idea as he would regularly downplay or disregard the issue of religion in his later speeches back home. In addition, true to his humanist spirit, Malcolm X went on to emphasise proudly in his autobiography that among his friends he counted Jews, Christians and Atheists.
This humanistic bend towards the end of Malcolm X’s life might come as a surprise to some on the identitarian left, for whom the term “color-blindness” has become a red rag. In their eyes, insisting on not seeing color implies blindness in the face of actually existing racism. There is no doubt that the wrongs of a racist past and a racist present must sometimes be corrected for by tweaking the odds in favour of the hitherto disadvantaged. But for all the fight against current injustice, the ideal of a “color-blind” society should not be lost out of sight.
If pressed whether they would agree with Malcolm X’s vision, many woke types would probably agree. Yet they seem to spend very little time imagining a post-racial society as they are engaged in obsessive racial micro-management of everyday interactions. There is also another worrying trend which is seeping into broader culture and which seems to directly contradict the notion that “race” could ever be abolished as a meaningful category. In a recent text, the British-Nigerian writer Ralph Leonard provided a poignant critique of how the identitarian left seems to forsake all hopes of overcoming the concept of “race” by essentialising it:
The growing influence of identity politics and racial essentialism in the media, academia and other mainstream institutions is all in the name of equality and diversity. Nevertheless, it is a way of thinking that permanently categorises human beings, putting them into rigid racial, ethnic and cultural boxes. Race isn’t regarded as a social construct that can be explained and analysed historically, but as an omnipresent state of being which we must ‘come to terms with’.
He is right to point out that racial categories are fundamentally anti-scientific, anti-humanistic and must be transcended entirely. Those on the left who are instead trying to reinvigorate the stiff categories of racial difference deserve to know that they are engaged in a reactionary project. In the last instance, a person’s shade of pigmentation should only be — like the skin concerned — of superficial importance. Malcolm X’s embrace of humanism may teach us how the ideal of “color-blindness” is bolder and more daring than the ideologies of separation and segregation. When he realised this in the sands of Arabia, he became no less angry, no less militant, but all the more radical.
