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Subject: Malcolm X as Teacher; Students Seek Guidance, Strength in Message<By Lynne
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 04:44:31 EST
Message-ID: <25.1992Nov19.044432@AmeriCast.com>

Malcolm X as Teacher; Students Seek Guidance, Strength in
Message<By Lynne Duke=Washington Post Staff Writer=

On predominantly white college campuses, where slurs and slights
are not unusual, black students need racial armor, said Latricia
Henry, 18, a sophomore. She has found hers in the teachings of
Malcolm X.

Defying those who urged patience, Henry and others in the Black
Student Movement at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill this fall protested, rallied and threatened further action
if the school did not approve the construction of a long-promised
black cultural center. "The struggle," as Henry calls it, was not
only about a building. It symbolized "the refusal of the
African-American students on campus to assimilate," Henry said.

"We consider ourselves the sons and daughters of Malcolm X . . .
because we believe in his ideology that you have to do what's
necessary to get what you need."

The commercial imagery of Malcolm X - the fierce critic of Ameri-
can race relations and onetime Nation of Islam leader - is now on
everything from T-shirts to potato chip bags, heralding the open-
ing yesterday of "Malcolm X," the movie. But a deeper phenomenon
has been unfolding for the last few years as blacks, especially
those on college campuses, have turned to Malcolm X's life and
teachings for inspiration and guidance on how to confront a so-
ciety still divided by race. His voice, said several contem-
poraries of Malcolm X, gives expression to America's continuing
racial angst.

Although he does not agree with all of Malcolm X's teachings,
Bernard Miller, 21, a Princeton University architecture student
and leader of the campus's Organization of Black Unity, said Mal-
colm X's overall analysis of race relations was justified and
needed to be articulated so that people remember just how the
American racial landscape came to be. In particular, he cited
"the way he talked about (how) we weren't brought here of our own
will and we haven't been free since we were brought here. Those
are things that you need to be conscious of, especially today,
because there's a lot more covert racism."

Iman Ross, 19, a Howard University psychology student, said he
derives strength from understanding that Malcolm X, who was as-
sassinated in 1965, pulled himself out of his hatred of white
people. The publicly fierce but privately gentle black leader
espoused hatred of whites during his years with the Nation of
Islam.  Ross views Malcolm X during this period as a "suffering"
man whose hate was "consuming."

"The strongest thing he's done for me was his transformation out
of that hatred," said Ross. "It takes a big person to accept the
fact that they hate someone, sort through it, and turn it into
something positive as opposed to something negative."

A onetime street hustler and convict who changed his ways, Mal-
colm X became an adherent of Elijah Muhammad's separatist black
Muslim group. He  believed it made no sense for blacks oppressed
by overt racism to seek entry into a white society that did not
want them. He denigrated the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the
civil rights movement for espousing integration. While King as-
sumed that America was fundamentally moral and would, with pres-
sure, recognize the error of its racial ways, Malcolm X's view
was far less charitable. He called whites "devils," and contrary
to the nonviolent protest waged by King, urged blacks to fight
back when attacked - "by any means necessary."

Following his 1964 break with Muhammad and a trip that year to
Mecca, during which he worshiped alongside people of all kinds,
Malcolm X transformed himself again, and stopped preaching racial
antagonism.  He stopped calling white people "devils" and no
longer advocated total black separation. He remained a staunch
advocate of black self-determination.

He was shot down in February 1965, just weeks before a scheduled
meeting with King. The Nation of Islam was implicated in the
slaying because three of its members were convicted, but no con-
nection to Muhammad was ever proven.

Much of America got its first exposure to Malcolm X in Mike
Wallace's 1959 broadcast, "The Hate That Hate Produced." A black
man, the late Louis Lomax, conducted the interviews for the show;
Malcolm X would not talk to a white man. But over time, he and
Wallace established a personal dialogue. In his autobiography,
Malcolm X described his relationship with Wallace as one of mutu-
al respect.

"He was constantly in the process of evolving," the CBS newsman
said of Malcolm X. "He had an extraordinary intelligence. He was
a workaholic. He was a fascinating man to be with because of his
mind. He was a fine-looking man, of course. There was obviously
something burning inside him, but as I got to know him I didn't
find him a fanatic."

"Malcolm is in the eye of the beholder or the soul of the behold-
er or in the need of the beholder," Wallace said. "He is being
used - in the best sense used - by various people to understand
themselves and their relationships, black and white."

Malcolm X, in 1992, provides "a mind-set for these times," said
James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality and
another who witnessed Malcolm X's life firsthand. Farmer now is a
visiting professor of history at Mary Washington College in
Fredericksburg, Va.

In discussions with black students around the country, Farmer
said he hears their anguish about race. "It was a whole syndrome,
not just politics, but racism that's every place: the graffiti in
college campuses, the dormitories, the fights, the Howard
Beaches, the Bensonhursts, the skinheads and the resurgence of
the Klan, the Aryan Nation."

Their feeling, Farmer said, is that "they cannot integrate in
this country, that it is not their country, that the federal
government is not an ally but an adversary, and since they cannot
integrate then they must separate somehow, and who is the chief
advocate of separation?  Malcolm. And they return to the Malcolm
X speeches, the tapes, and sit on the edges of their dormitory
seats listening to those tapes and reading the collected
speeches."

Malcolm X's words help young blacks understand why racial tension
persists, said Celena Gates, a Georgetown University psychology
major who believes that the civil rights movement should have
solved the problem.

"Right after the '60s people sort of thought that everything was
okay and race relations have been taken care of, but I know my
generation is sort of despondent that really not much has
changed," said Gates, a junior who is president of the Black Stu-
dent Alliance at Georgetown. "Black people still aren't equal in
this country and in my cynical opinion probably never will be."

Since the civil rights movement, when King and Malcolm X chose
different paths to the same goal - justice - blacks have lost
their "collective vocation," said Maulana Karenga, founder of the
1960s grass-roots group Us and now chair of black studies at Cal-
ifornia State University at Long Beach.

"What Malcolm does by reappearing is renew that debate about
which way we should go," said Karenga, who knew Malcolm X. Karen-
ga defined two opposing paths, much the same as the separate
roads traveled by Malcolm X and King: One is integration; the
other is self-determination.

But what some call self-determination, others call separatism.
That became the debate at the University of North Carolina, where
some white students felt that black student demands for a cultur-
al center smacked of racial exclusion. Earlier this fall, film-
maker Spike Lee and representatives of the Nation of Islam at-
tended a rally where speakers invoked Malcolm X's name and used
heated racial rhetoric to press their demands for the center.

School officials, who had promised years ago to erect  a black
cultural center, have assembled a board to oversee the design
selection. The final plan is to be approved by the school's
trustees. The center, which would be open to all students, is to
be built with private funds.

The forceful rhetoric of Malcolm X and of those who adhere to his
teachings today is unsettling to some white students at the
school.

"There's a definite negative view of Malcolm X and consequently
of the people who align themselves with him," said student body
president John Moody, 21, who is white. "People see Martin Luther
King as the type of person who went about everything in the right
way and stood for change but in the right way, whereas Malcolm X
stood for change but in a more destructive way." Latricia Henry,
of the campus's Black Student Movement, said suggestions of
separatism miss the point. "Separatism, in the non-black mind, is
equated with if you aren't a part of the norm, then you're
separating yourself," she said.  Her response to white students
worried about separatism is Malcolmesque: "My culture is just as
important as yours, and because I'm on a white campus then you
all ought to learn about my culture as well."<02:18 11-19C9999--
---

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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