"What's the matter, boss, we sick?"

In his scathing classification of black activism in America, Malcolm X drew an analogy with the categories of slaves he defined as the "house Negro" and the "field Negro". The former, he said 

“ lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food what he left.
They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved the master
more than the master loved himself”. This was posed as a blatant attack on black activists who
denounced black nationalism, the foremost of which was Martin Luther King with his advocacy of
non-violence and his calls for integrative reform. The "field Negro", in contrast, was much more likely
to be radicalized and to demand separation (in the form of escape) because he was regularly beaten,
ate poorer and was made to work much more under unforgiving conditions. Malcolm X identified with the
anger of the latter, and the readiness for revolution that this category represented.While I will not explore
in detail the contrasts between MLK and X, as this is both a reductive and a somewhat redundant
exercise at this point, what I do want to evaluate is Malcolm X’s diagnosis of the house negro in the
following lines,

 ‘If the master got sick, the house Negro would say, "What's the matter, boss, we sick?" We sick! He
identified himself with his master, more than his master identified with himself’. For me, this immediately hearkens back to Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic, multiple interpretations of which abound but for my purposes I will be working with the popular understanding that, as a matter of identification, the master derived his self-consciousness from being recognized as a master by his slave. The slave, on the other hand, derived his sense of self from the labor he performs, a sense of self independent from the master. If an undifferentiated whole is the thesis, and the separation into two separate selves the antithesis, then synthesis occurs when mutual recognition occurs, the master must recognize the slave..In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon himself discusses the struggle for mutual recognition in Hegelian terms. However, in X’s analysis, there is no room for a differentiated self in the case of the "house Negro" because, in an unanticipated twist, he has identified himself with the master to the extent that separation is precluded. If we are to analyze MLK through this lens, then his emphasis on the belief in American Christian ideals and his insistence on blaming systems and actions rather than the “evil dooers” themselves (a conscious decision on his part) is perversely reminiscent of the "house negro" exclamation “we sick?”, whereby MLK espouses and champions the American spirit, and instead of seeing racism and bigotry, even genocide as essential to the establishment of his beloved country, sees it as an illness that all must unite to battle.

One can wonder then, if perhaps this separation was essential to the formation of a coherent cause to oppose the racism entrenched in the fabric of American life. In a Hegelian sense, would it have been more conducive towards his ultimate cause of equality to disavow identification with American/Christian values? Would the synthesis of mutual recognition only be achieved after the affirmation of separation? What would MLK even be, what would his activism look like in the absence of a deeply Christian commitment to absolute morality, on the basis of which he critiques the injustice of certain laws in America (as in his letter from Birmingham jail). Of course, MLK’s views and experiences were far more nuanced than a devotion to “American” values. He suffered and learned, and sacrificed and became much more disillusioned towards the end of his life, which was cut short by assassination. Malcolm X suffered a similar fate, so I am in no way declaring what essentially was the better or more sensible path towards freedom.

Instead, what I have tried to do is explore the applicability of Hegel’s ideas to the question of
emancipation in America, which wouldn’t altogether agree with the complete separation advocated by
Malcolm X (even if it could be seen as a viable antithesis to MLK’s affirmation of unity) but would
definitely reject MLK’s stance as not identifying the culprit clearly enough, enmeshing with what is
supposed to be his opposite, precluding the possibility of a synthesis. Racism in America is far from
over, and we can still see the ideas of these past heroes resonating with those who advocate freedom
from injustice. In some sense, the notions of conceptual (if not the physical sense of Malcolm X’s ideas)
separation and integration still compete for viability in today’s fight for equality, and I wonder if there
really is one proper “fix” to the situation. And if so, how much would Hegel’s and subsequently, Fanon’s
ideas of risking life for liberation, for ultimately gaining the self recognition that constitutes individuality,
bear upon this African-America journey from “nobody” to “somebody” (MLK)?