On Minister Malcolm, Dr. Dean, & White Folks

In a 1965 meeting of the OAAU in Harlem, after Malcolm X gave a speech on black nationalism that touched on "brotherhood" with people of all colors, a Black Nationalist stood up, rocked back on his heels, and said slowly, "We heard you changed, Malcolm. Why don't you tell us where you're at with them white folks?"The audience became silent. It was at a time when Malcolm was going through some changes: he had endured an attempt to silence him by the vultures in the Nation of Islam, who wanted him out before Elijah died. And he had taken two extended trips to Africa and the Middle East, where he moved beyond the ignorance that had handcuffed him to a racist, hateful ideology. And that made many, like the man confronting him, very uncomfortable.Malcolm didn't miss a beat. "I haven't changed," he said. "I just see things on a broader scale. We nationalists used to think we were militant. We were just dogmatic. It didn't bring us anything."Now I know it's smarter to say you're going to shoot a man for what he is doing than because he is white. If you attack him because he is white, you give him no out. He can't stop being white. We've got to give the man a chance. He probably won't take it, the snake. But we've got to give him a chance."We've got to be more flexible. ... I'm not going to be in anybody's straitjacket. I don't care what a person looks like or where they come from. My mind is wide open to anybody who will help get the ape off our backs." (Village Voice; 2-25-65)When Dr. Dean points out that the republican party is almost exclusively white christians, it is a good thing. But it is important that we do not stop there. The truth is that the democratic party's largest group is also white and christian. We need to attack the republican party because of what their "exclusive" ideology actually translates to in their actions.The Southern Poverty Law Center's spring 2005 Intelligence Report includes extensive information that exposes the republican parties' growing linkages with racist hate groups. One that we should focus on is the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). This group is actually the Ku Klux Klan wearing business suits in the daytime; their members put on their white sheets at night. I am not joking.In 1998, (now former-)US Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott "got into political hot water .... over his cozy relationship" with the CCC, the SPLC reports. (Spring '05 Intelligence Report; page 12) Both the RNC and the Conservative Political Action Committee called the CCC "racist," and urged republicans to avoid any association with it.What do the CCC leaders say publicly about non-white peoples? One leader, Edgar Steele, calls blacks "a retrograde species of humanity." James Hart, a Tennessee republican running for congress, campaigned on a platform calling for the elimination of welfare and immigration, before the USA looks "like one big Detroit." He advocates a forced sterilization program that is a "war on poverty genes" to reduce the threats posed by the "lesser races" and "bums from the slum."In Georgia, the republican candidate for district attorney in a largely black district was Craig Fraser, former assistant to J.B. Stoner. Fraser has described Hitler as a "genius" who fought the good fight to "get rid of the Jewish poison."MS Governor Haley Barbour is a long-time CCC supporter. He has refused to distance himself from the CCC on principle: "Once you start down the slippery slope of saying, 'That person can't be for me,' then where do you stop? Old segregationists? Former Ku Klux Klan?" Good heavens, we don't want Haley sliding down a slippery slope that separates him from his KKK friends and relatives!These are the things that democrats need to be hitting the republicans with. We need to make the Roy Moore and Tom Parker-types the poster boys of republican prejudice. The fact that a person is white and christian is not the issue -- the fact that they are racist snakes is the issue.