Making Malcolm The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X

Because we have gotten better, old radicals often seem less radical over time. The pragmatic hedonism and secular calm of Epicurus was once fanatically detested, but is now a standard worldview (it's roughly that of the happy scientist); at one time Spinoza’s Ethics (determinism, Nature as deity, religious and political tolerance) was the wildest thing ever said in the history of the Christian world; Montesquieu’s disgust at aristocratic brutality, gross luxury and torture are commonplaces; Paine’s raging insistence on human rights and total secularism are very successful (in Europe at least); and anyone who disagrees with duBois’ or MLK’s aims is foolish or virulent. Malcolm X has not yet been incorporated in this way - but, reading his less ranty stuff (not the early “TOO BLACK, TOO STRONG” variety) you wonder why. Might have been his influential homophobia, but that’s hardly stopped other thinkers. (This suggests it's because we have a false, caricature of him in mind, one that believes in whites-as-devils and Fanonian purifying violence.) Dyson does not skimp on his downsides, and tackles the thorniest idea in identity politics: that experience is absolute, and so understanding a group’s ideas and values requires group membership – that ideas have colour as people do.