A Separate Homeland

Towards the end of God’s Judgement of White America, Malcolm X talks of how the only way for America to atone for its sins is to listen to what the black people want, and give it to them. He highlights these demands to be, “the only lasting and permanent solution is complete separation on some land we can call our own” and “sending these twenty two million ex-slaves back to our homeland where we can live in peace and harmony with our own kind.”

On reading this part of the text, my immediate reaction to it was that this is impossible and preposterous, followed by that this does not work as a solution to racism or segregation; rather it creates even more division. However on reflecting more on Malcolm’s solution and my own reaction to it, made me realize a couple of things about Malcolm’s approach to activism and the burden we place on oppressed groups to make their freedoms more palatable for us.

Malcolm is unapologetic and fierce in his fight for the rights of black people, he propagates the idea that they should take their rights by ‘any means necessary’; he completely rejects the policing of his message by white people as well as moderates within his own community. And my question is why should he act any differently? Why should he tone himself down to make his demand to be treated as a human being more palatable for those who oppress him and his people? The more I think about it, the more the ridiculous the critique of Malcolm seems to me.

The fact is that these people were wrenched from their homes, enslaved for years, treated even worse than animals and even after emancipation left to rot in abject, inter-generational poverty. Yet, somehow still, they are expected to depend on the benevolence of their former masters to give them the right to exist in the same space as them, they are supposed to politely ask their oppressors to allow them to be able to get jobs that provide them with some level of upward mobility. And somehow in all of this, it is Malcolm X’s demand for a separate nation which are too extreme?

I don’t think a separate homeland for black people is a viable solution, but that isn’t the argument I am making. All I am trying to say is that considering everything that black people in America have suffered through and continue to suffer through, is it really that ridiculous they ask for separate homeland where they aren’t constantly reminded of being unwanted, lesser citizens? Or that they advocate for using ‘any means necessary’ to get their rights from a people who used ‘any means necessary’ from torture, rape, murder to keep them enslaved.

No doubt Martin Luther King was a brilliant leader and his activism led to great gains for the civil rights movement, but I can understand Malcolm’s opposition to his methods. It seems like a great indignity to me that after having suffered for so long, the oppressed still need to bend over backwards to placate their former white masters in an attempt to gain basic rights. Even more so that the more ridiculous thing seems to be the desire for a separate homeland and not that a black man can’t eat in the same place as a white man. 

I think even now in our context, this approach is adopted towards any form of activism that somehow the women at aurat march need to make their demands more palatable for society and that the more awful thing is the posters women hold up at the march and not the crimes committed against them.