Black religion-22020172

Black religion

This blog will attempt to engage with and further analyze the use of religion in Malcolm X’s ‘God’s Judgment of White America’. For years religion was used as an excuse and method justifying slavery citing the story of Ham. This is my belief had 2 impacts relevant to this blog. First, it provided an additional voice telling the oppressed that their conditions are because of divine action and commandment. Second, it surely must have taken away an important aspect of life from the African American community. There must have naturally been some discontentment or loss of hope from Christianity if the narrative was that it preaches the inferiority of African Americans. I will talk about how Malcolm’s speech deals with both impacts.

Where Malcolm says “America’s judgment and destruction will also be brought about by divine will and divine power” it is the same use of that power to preach that God is on our side. As the white race had used to create a feeling of the situation being God-willed and inevitable Malcolm does the exact same. This, on one hand, provides hope of inevitable justice given that god is on their side and further motivation of it being a holy cause to pursue their goals. On the other hand, it fights the notion that this community has been forsaken or abandoned by God and is meant to be in the situation it is. Malcolm is preaching freedom from everything white including white religion. He literally goes on to say that “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is your only means of escape.” This goes in line with his methods of dismissing all that is white in the lives of the African American community. That within the white world and white spaces and the white dinner table there is no space for the black man. That the only means of freedom and salvation is establishing your own identity and living by it. He even goes on to say “When you cut yourself off from him, you cut yourself off from your only way out of the divine disaster that is fast approaching White America.” This for me is a clear indication of Malcolm saying that there is no way to keep up with white traditions and simultaneously be able to escape white domination. Moreover, I believe it also says that if you do follow the white way and preach black freedom then you too will be a casualty of the black movement (divine disaster) coming towards white America. This could, in my opinion, be a message to the Uncle Tom he frequently mentions.

Secondly the use of Islam and the frequent mention of how it “has restored our cultural roots, our racial identity, our racial pride and our racial confidence” is not only taking back of the identity but in a lot of ways, it is providing an identity to counter those of the white. Islam here is being used as a black religion to claim space within an important aspect of life. This is a religion that preaches “principles of truth, freedom, justice, equality, righteousness, and peace” or in other words preaches black liberation and freedom. This claim makes more sense when you think of why Malcolm never preached a black version of Christianity or attempted to fix the issues with it or call out its blatant misuse. My belief is that centuries of it being the white man’s religion had antagonized Christianity itself so much that it was seen synonymous to white domination. That the white Jesus with blue eyes was too much of a white figure to ever convert back to black and that a new religion was needed for the black man. A religion that falls in line with the message of the African American liberation. A religion that would provide them with hope, that they could proudly claim as their own and one that did not betray them.

Religion was used for ages to aid the destruction and domination of the African Americans, naturally, it was also needed to aid their salvation.