Both C. L. R. James and Malcolm were revolutionaries of their time and in many ways similar in their goals. Before them, historical narrative was taken over by the white man. They began the practice of writing histories very different from what was the norm. They rewrote the singular, linear idea that the white man discovered the world and instead talked about how that world already existed and was inhabited by people of its own. The goal was to revise history, to mark different events as important and change where history begins from.

Both their writings analyse the intricacies of revolution and provide a very new take to them. C. L. R. James rejecting to view the Haitian revolution as a mere footnote of the French revolution was beyond revolutionary in his time. It challenges the widely accepted colonial notions. Rejecting the Western view and white supremacy was a remarkable feat. He wanted to allow the Africans to see themselves in a different light for once and to have the ability to create their own identity.

Whenever Malcolm X spoke his speeches also served as an alternative way to look at the world, a new take on history, much like James, through the experiences of the black people. He takes on a very assertive and reactionary approach pointing out political figures and criticising everything he believed to be wrong. He never held back. His speeches had a sense of urgency to invoke resistance within the African American community. He openly recognises the experiences of black people within America as separate from the widespread whitewashed narrative. He wants the Africans to form an identity of their own, separate from the American identity as their experiences diverge from those of the white Americans.

But both writers similarly talk about the creation of “Uncle Toms” who were complacent and never complained. These types of people were made the figureheads of the African community leading to a stagnation o their condition. Both of them wanted desperately to change this situation. They wanted to help the Africans realise their potential and to own up to their glorious pasts, the ones which were not written in the language of the West. They wanted to change who wrote history, how it was written and who deemed what events were of significance.

“My work requires me to think about how free I can be as an African-American woman writer in my genderized, sexualized, wholly racialized world. to think about (and wrestle with) the full implications of my situation leads me to consider what happens when other writers work in a highly and historically racialized society.”

Toni Morrison eradicates, with one concise sentence, the notion that literature (and presumably all forms of knowledge) exist independently of context. To think about, and more importantly, to write about humanity in some vain attempt at objectivity is not only unethical, it is quite simply impossible.

To deny an entire faction of humanity their rightful place in history, their right of culturally, historically situated expression, under the pretense of “universalism” is not just unethical, not just impossible but entirely tyrannical in the effective denial of humanity that it proliferates. 

For Toni Morrison to state, clearly, the different facets of her identity that contribute to her construction of the world, threatens the monopoly that the white male has over the propagation of a singular construction of the world, a singular “knowledge”; a knowledge that has been celebrated for its supposed objectivity because the writers of that literature have been afforded the privilege of objectivity. For Toni Morrison to do the same as a “woman”, a “writer” and an “African-American’ would quite simply be a denial of her own truth. For in America, where her presence as a non-white non-male being is unaccounted for, it is her duty to represent herself in a world that refuses to do so.

Morrison makes it clear when she implores the reader to think as a writer, through the lens of their own personal experience, in creating a world that others like them can recognize. A world that goes beyond Uncle Toms and Bens and Joes; a world that recognizes the diversity that flourishes in a post colonial America, because to write is to create a world, potentially from the ground up. A world that the reader, being a non-male, non-white and even non-American should be able to situate themselves within, not one that is inherently exclusionist through the erasure of differences. 

This “work” that Morrison talks about is the burden that plagues the writer; the burden to “think” truly, unfettered by the expectations of the kind of knowledge one is expected to produce; the burden of accountability. To write is to be held accountable for what you put out into the world, for the language you use, the characters you portray, the things you include and the things you omit.

The “implications” of writing certain things and not others must then be at the forefront of the author’s mind when they write, because this is no inconsequential task; it informs the reader whether or not there is space for someone like them outside their own homes, in the greater scheme of things

 “Instead of airing our differences in public, we have to realize we’re all the same family.”

I loved reading Malcolm X’s autobiography. His words carry an insistency. Its almost as if he needs to be believed, and upon reading Alex Haley’s foreword it is clear that this is the case. It is Haley who finds himself in the position of coercing details regarding the events of Malcolm’s life out of him. They do not flow on their own. This is the Malcolm I was first exposed to. I understood him, I admired him, but I didn’t realize quite how magnetic his personality was.

Then I heard him speak. I felt an urgency throbbing like an undercurrent beneath his words. It didn’t seem like an impromptu speech, but it is precisely this quality of being an “off-the-cuff chat” that makes what Malcolm has to say so appealing. He speaks to the people not at them, and this can be heard through the laughter and shouts of approval when he says something that has an especial resonance. When he talks about the field negro and the house negro he does not separate himself from his argument. In fact, his words form an embrace into which his listeners are gathered. He is the “same man” as those in front of him are— he is under no pretense as to who he really is. He is “man enough to tell” it as he thinks it is and this attitude is carried forward into his narration of his own life.

Yet, Malcolm X is also more than just a man. He is an idea. While reading his speeches I couldn’t help but remember one of my favorite stories growing up, The Velveteen Rabbit. I won’t go into the particulars of the plot, but one particular sentence kept replaying in my head as I listened to Malcolm X speak:

“Once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

Whether he imagined himself into being or not, Malcolm X was real. And that is a quality that makes him “last for always”.

“Who are you? You don’t know? Don’t tell me ‘negro’, that’s nothing. What were you before the white man named you a negro? And where were you? What did you have? What was yours?”

Malcolm X

“The difference between the civil rights movement of 1954-68 and the Black Power movement, was that the civil rights movement sought equality with whites- and was a middle class movement. The Black Power movement assumed equality, of person, and merely sought the opportunity to express that equality by saying, ‘We are a proud people. We don’t need you to tell us that. Our kinky hair is glorious, our black skin is something we’re proud of, and we are who we are.’”

Disillusioned by the Civil Rights movement’s inability to instigate real social change and inspired by the ideas of Malcolm X, the early 1960s witnessed the birth of The Black Power Movement, a political and social movement that advocated racial pride, self-sufficiency and equality for all people of Black and African descent. The movement, which gave rise to its own associated Black militant group, the Black Panthers, represented the demanding voice of a younger generation that had given up on Martin Luther King’s nonviolence rhetoric, in a refusal to remain complacent in their own oppression. It was no longer integration into the existing white-centered social structure that Afro-Americans wanted; it was self-determination and self-fulfillment on the grounds of racial pride, with the creation of political and cultural institutions run by Afro-Americans for­ Afro-Americans being the first and foremost goal in the agenda.

This goal, as the first demand in the Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program is expressed as follows: ‘We want the power to determine the destiny of our black community. We believe that Black People will not be free until we are able to determine our own destiny.’ At the time this manifesto was drafted, there were only 50 Black elected officials in the country, which included local seats like school boards. This first point was the Panthers’ attempt to increase Black representation and the inclusion of Black politicians in the country’s political affairs. On the political philosophy of Black nationalism, a philosophy that largely influenced the Black Power movement, Malcolm X had this to say:

“We must control the politics and the politicians of our community. They must no longer take orders from outside forces. We will organize, and sweep out of office all Negro politicians who are puppets for the outside forces.”

From ‘A Declaration of Independence’

The agenda also accounted for independence with regard to the economy, stating ‘We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black and oppressed communities.’ According to a study by the U.S. Census Bureau, unemployment and poverty rates for Blacks, in 1966, were double those of whites, with 42% of Blacks living below the poverty line, unable to secure even basic necessities. The Panthers’ sought to eliminate the income gaps between Blacks and whites, and to allow Black store-owners, struggling from a lack of capital, the right to operate in their own communities without the threat of competition from white-owned multi-million dollar companies.

“Why should white people be running all the stores in our community? Why should white people be running the banks of our community! Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the white man? Why? If a black man can’t move his store into a white community, you tell me why a white man should move his store into a black community.”

From ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’

The fifth point in the manifesto, regarding education, states, ‘We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society. We believe in an educational system that will give our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.’ To link this back to CLR James’ The Black Jacobins, a re-evaluation of the standard way of teaching history was in order; moving away from the general trend of writing about Black history as always in relation to whites, instead of in relation to their own history, to their own personhood. This placed an emphasis on the importance of racial pride- something which was instilled through teachings in Black Americans from a young age, where children as young as five were taught to refuse the label of ‘American negro’ and embrace the title of ‘African American’.

“We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”

From ‘A Declaration of Independence’

Point six in the manifesto dealt with the issue of the military drafts. ‘We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.’ The Black Power movement resisted, by whatever means necessary, the force and violence of the racist military; refusing to defend a racist government that did not protect them, against other people of color in the world who, like Blacks, were victimized by white forces. This refusal by groups such as the Panthers to participate in the Vietnam war is credited as being one of the reasons why the draft was abolished in 1973.

“Not only did we give of our free labor, we gave of our blood. Every time he had a call to arms, we were the first ones in uniform.”

From ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’

By 1980, the Black Panther Party had largely dissolved due to COINTELPRO, an FBI program designed to prevent the unification and success of various black power coalitions. Several hundred Panthers were imprisoned or jailed in each year that the party remained active, and many of the leaders in the party had been executed by local and federal law enforcement, including Fred Hampton, who was killed in an FBI raid of his home during his sleep. The Black Power movement, emerging in the early 1960s and the consequent Black Panther Party, founded in 1966, were both greatly influenced by the speeches and ideas of Malcolm X, whose assassination in 1965 was said to have ‘ignited’ the Black Power Movement. They were a response, one could say, to Malcolm’s message to the grass roots- the call for revolution.

Malcolm X and CLR James are inventors-inventor of a world that is a safe haven for Black folks. It is the world where the black man can walk with dignity and claim his place proudly. It s a place where he is not reduced to the colour of his skin- to unchanging essences. It is a place where curly hair, full lips, wide nose, dark complexion is not equated with “cruel, barborous, halfhuman, treacherous, deceitful, thieves, drunkards…cowards.” The black face is not the face of the untouchable .He is as human and deserving of respect as the white man. Malcolm X and James then continue to reinvent and imagine a future where the Black people have dignity and place.

Malcom X emerges from the streets, leaves his prison life, connects with Muhammad Elijah, disconnects with him, perceives the white man to be “blond-haired, blue-eyed devils,” fixes his perception of the white men after Hajj to his potential allies in his struggle for black liberation, refuses to beg for civil rights dished out by Uncle Toms, internationalizes the black question, and aspires towards human rights which are inalienable rights. His life was constantly a life of reinvention. If there is anything constant in his life that is his ultimate purpose: to see Black people as dignified individual living their lives on their own terms not on the terms of the white man. He thus specialized in “de-niggerizing Negroes.” These Negroes “scratched when it doesn’t itched; they laugh when it aint funny.” By de-niggerizing them, he stripped them of the shame, intimidation and submissiveness that they felt towards the white man. He took them out of the life of indignity into the life of dignity and pride.

James is also seen resuscitating this same dignity and pride for his black people from history. From being just a footnote to French revolution, The Haiti revolution is presented by him as a true revolution which is not just a slave rebellion but one that marks the inauguration of the history of revolutions. This time, however, history is not originated from Europe but from the Caribbean. This revolution is understood not from the perspective of the French but from Haiti itself. James overturns the idea from where history is originated and in doing so he ingeniously reimagines the entire past.

And in doing so, James turn our attention to the Malcolm X’s claim that the black man is not indebted to the white man. He is a dignified man in himself. He doesn’t need to beg Uncle toms to have his rights granted.  He doesn’t need to be at the mercy of white men to have their share of history. The black man, then, doesn’t need the white man.

This is only done through an astounding display of language. James makes use of his imagination and describes the minutest of details of the happenings of the Black individuals. He paints vivid pictures of the black slaves at the ship, which otherwise could not have been imagined with such precision. Malcolm words have a sonic quality to them. Transmittive in nature, his speeches ring so loudly in our ears primarily because he has once lived the life of a common black man, living in streets. His words appear more visceral and immediate which resonates with black folks. He has played the role of both the trickster and the minister. While he has defied the norm of decency, he has redeemed souls from the abyss of the white torture.

Hence it can be said that in the end , both Malcolm X and James look for dignity and place, as the latter stated,  “one could trap them like animals, transport them in pens, work them alongside an ass and a horse and beat both with the same stick…they remained, despite their black skins and curly hair quite invincibly human beings.” And these humans very much deserved their place and dignity in this world. Through their prophetic gaze, they saw what is otherwise not seeable. They were able to tear apart the veil of ignorance and envision a world where the white man sits with the black man but this time with both their plates filled.

In the preface for Toni Morrison’s book Playing in the Dark, Morrison uncovers a certain ethic or as she calls it an “imagination” in writing that produces works which “invite rereadings”. Her formula requires one to don the hat of a reader and the writer, an imagination that is painfully aware of what it can contain and what it is unable to contain. Once the reader and the writer acknowledge these restrictions and freedoms, the act of understanding or creating that work opens up more possibilities.

Morrison places this responsibility mostly on the reader of such works as she teases out the secondary black characters from white washed literary texts such as Henry James’ What Maisie Knew and points out their significance in the texts despite the writer’s ignorance towards them and their presence in the story. But if one were to glance at the speeches crafted by Malcolm X, Malcolm’s status as a writer and a reader or, to be more specific, as a listener and a speaker is constantly in flux. Malcolm’s imagination as a speaker is accompanied with his imagination as a listener which enables his speeches to have a vitality that has kept them reverberating across history. Much can be said about the tiny nuts and bolts that piece together his speeches. The anaphora, the tone of urgency, the camaraderie, the pauses, the imagery, and the analogies are all parts of the journey that Malcolm experienced along with the listeners of his speeches. His words descending towards the audience invited them or nestled amongst them and made listening a collective activity for example when he said: “Three hundred and ten years we worked in this country without a dime in return – I mean without a dime in return. You let the white man walk around here talking about how rich this country is, but you never stop to think how it got rich so quick. It got rich because you made it rich” he speaks of a collective memory that cuts across time and reminds himself and the listeners of the centuries of hard work that has gone unnoticed.

However, there is one aspect in his speeches where his imagination as a speaker or as a writer reigns over the imagination of the reader. And those are the instances where he dares to say something despite it going against the larger narrative. It is where he breaks away from the comfortable and crippling illusion and speaks his truth. In his speech titled “Message to the Grassroots” he even admits “I know you don’t like what I’m saying, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Because I can prove what I’m saying”. It is also important to note how at times Malcolm X rebelled against his own imagination to put forth the cold hard truths to the people as his wavering support towards Elijah Muhammad or his other ideological changes would denote. All of this shows how powerful and cognizant Malcolm X was in his capacity as a listener and a speaker

Toni Morrison’s purpose in “Black Matters” is to highlight the lack of presence of African American characters in the American literary canon. She suggests that this absence occurs either because “silence” over matters of race imply an inclusion of black people in the collective or because racism is defined asymmetrically by looking at the black person as a victim. Morrison argues that this exclusion of black characters and black literature signifies an erasure of black history. It either does not represent black people at all or it shows them as minor characters that are stereotyped as victims. Black people thus fail to recognize themselves in the stories they read. In her preface to Playing in the Dark, she praises Marie Cardinal’s work because her language helps the black reader recognize himself. Morrison advocates for inclusion of such literature into the canon in order to prevent the black reader from feeling like the other. She also adds later in the book that the little representation of black people is based on binaries between them (uncivilized) and the white American (civilized), and explorations of the white self in comparison to the black self. This can also be read through the lens of Oriental discourse.

Examples of stereotyping are plenty in the Oriental discourse. In the Arabian Nights, the base tale presents prince Sheheryar as a selfish and insecure despot who is too involved in his personal matters to care for the nation. This stereotype of a despot is associated with the orient. The notion of antinationalism is also oriental and created in comparison to the nationalist Europeans. The promiscuous women, Sheheryar and his brother’s wives, are also presented in opposition to the European ladies. Murad, an Orient slave with whom the prince’s wife has an affair, is supposed to look ape-like and yet is described to have animalistic sexual appeal which adds to the animalistic character of the orient. These particular descriptions show up in other literary works as well.

Their purpose is to build stereotypes that reduce the orient to his baser instincts so he is built in comparison to the civilized European. Even the oriental translations of Eastern works reorient the way they were meant to be read. Thus in oriental discourse, there is selective representation which is political and has a great impact on those that read these texts. The fact that these texts became extremely popular and were replicated time and again shows how the orient was turned into an exotic character, existing purely for the Europeans’’ entertainment.

When Oriental discourse was brought to India with the East India Company, Warren Hastings began a bigger project of translations and writings. This led some local Indian writers to write in the same way and they too began to use the oriental stereotypes. Again, the purpose of these characters was to create complacence. If the literature too attested to the notion that the white man wanted to impose, it became easier for the colonized to internalize these ideas. This shows how literature works to build identity as well.

Morrison seems to be diagnosing a problem similar to that of Oriental discourses. It is a problem of representation which has previously made the orient into the other that is seen as a binary of the European and is attributed negative characteristics which are stereotyped and popularized. The similar can happen if black history is eroded and black identity is either not represented at all or is represented selectively. It is essential to make efficient use of literature in order to highlight the history of black struggle as well as to give black people characters that they can recognize and identify with.

A central theme to decolonization is the reclamation of a humanity denied. This is what every thinker strives for – in outlining a humanity specific and special that is the sole prerogative of the colonized; in envisioning the world race-less and truly decolonized; in reclaiming the existence of a history – and not just a history but a great history.

On the last note, CLR James is not so different than, say, the envisioners of a great African past. He too makes a claim for the importance of a certain people based on primacy of history. In placing the center of the narrative squarely on Haiti as an agent, a definer of change and revolution in the world he inverts an accepted trope – that no revolution is not white somewhere, that all revolutionary ideas stem from Europe.

The trope is not unimportant – in some sense its the underlying theory of colonization: that the world is merely a stage for the European to act out his great destiny and all other people, cultures and history are but two dimensional props and faceless scenery -people that only become animated as the Europeans, the protagonists of their own histories, start to interact with them.

Thus CLR James takes the story and upturns it. The props are no longer window dressing, they’re the stage. The background actors are the stars. The previous protagonists – the ones that went through a crisis arc and gained a better understanding of humanity over the tragedy of millions – are mere villains – their character arc is no longer about redemption.

And in doing it he owns the stage.

The world is reformed. He claims the narrative as his – and claims in doing so, a history not of the fumbles and indulgences of the colonizers, but a history of revolution. For a moment the world is Haiti – and Haiti claims the right to be the entire world in that instance. It claims pride of place and all of history is rendered in relation to it.

This capacity of – owning oneself, not as incidental but as human, as protagonists of their own story, perhaps, is the element that Malcolm X, in all his incarnations seems to never compromise on. Its the reason he’s talking, really – he isn’t really a preacher of Islam, however that may be defined.

Malcolm X talks of the ‘house negro’ and the ‘field negro’ – and the difference between them is the amount they adopt another’s narrative as more important than their own. The house slave is a prop in the story of his master and has thrown himself into that role wholeheartedly. His story becomes his master’s. The field slave has never had that privilege, if privilege it is. He owns his own existence out of pure stubbornness, impossibly harsh as it is. This story isn’t about celebrating the field slave, though. No, that would be in very different vein.

Malcolm’s story is about the house slave. It’s about the person who has lost his person-hood in favor of his subjugators’ – and it is about redeeming this person. He reclaims his own humanity. Preserve your life, he insists, because it is worth something. Fight back – be people in your own right. Don’t be second rate people in your own home, among your own people. His anger is emancipatory, his speeches revolutionary: ‘When our people are being bitten by dogs, they are within their rights to kill those dogs.’ There. He has inverted the narrative – his people are those marching determinedly towards a bright future, and are hounded by basic dogs.

This, then, is the hope – the need. To be people of the same level as all others. History doesn’t begin and end with the white man – humanity doesn’t begin and end with the white man.