Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Malcolm X was a Muslim minister and human rights activist. Born in 1925, he met his death at the hands of an assassin in 1965. Malcolm X was a courageous advocate for black civil rights, but unlike Martin Luther King, he was not that forgiving of whites for their crimes against black Americans. He did not eschew violence as a tool to achieve civil and human rights. His black and white detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. Despite the controversy, he has been called one of the greatest and most influential black Americans.
Many black Americans have great respect for Malcolm X. Many schools bear his name, and many streets have been renamed in honor of him, both at home and abroad. But while black Americans honor Malcolm X, one of his basic teachings goes largely ignored. I think it’s an important lesson, so I will quote a large part of it.
Malcolm X said: “The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have. If the Negro wasn’t taken, tricked or deceived by the white liberal, then Negros would get together and solve our own problems. I only cite these things to show you that in America, the history of the white liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negros think that the white liberal was going to solve our problems. Our problems will never be solved by the white man.”
There’s a historical tidbit that those much younger than I (almost 83 years old) are ignorant of. In black history, we have been called — and called ourselves — several different names. Among the more respectable have been “colored,” “Negro,” “black,” “Afro-American” and “African-American.” I recall when Mrs. Viola Meekins, when I was a student at Stoddart-Fleisher Junior High School in the late 1940s, had our class go page by page through a textbook and correct each instance in which Negro was printed with a lowercase “n.” In Malcolm X’s day, and mine, Negro was a proud name and not used derisively by blacks as it is today.
Malcolm X was absolutely right about our finding solutions to our own problems. The most devastating problems that black people face today have absolutely nothing to do with our history of slavery and discrimination. Chief among them is the breakdown of the black family, wherein 75 percent of blacks are born to single, often young, mothers. In some cities and neighborhoods, the percentage of out-of-wedlock births is over 80. Actually, “breakdown” is the wrong term; the black family doesn’t form in the first place. This is entirely new among blacks.
According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, that year only 11 percent of black children were born to unwed mothers. As late as 1950, female-headed households constituted only 18 percent of the black population. Today it’s close to 70 percent. In much earlier times, during the late 1800s, there were only slight differences between the black family structure and those of other ethnic groups. In New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households were two-parent households. Welfare has encouraged young women to have children out of wedlock. The social stigma once associated with unwed pregnancy is all but gone. Plus, “shotgun” weddings are a thing of the past. That was when male members of a girl’s family made the boy who got her pregnant live up to his responsibilities.
The high crime rates in so many black communities impose huge personal costs and have turned once-thriving communities into economic wastelands. The Ku Klux Klan couldn’t sabotage chances for black academic excellence more effectively than the public school system in most cities. Politics and white liberals will not solve these and other problems. As Malcolm X said, “our problems will never be solved by the white man.”
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Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
The views expressed in opinion articles are solely those of the author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by Black Community News.
BLACK ON BLACK COMMUNITY CRIME TOUR 2019 What’s been said is very true and we must must make that change if we are to succeed and better life for young people’s.
Hear hear! Dr. Williams. The right words for the right time.
Today the liberal progressive (that I define as communist) no matter what their complexion swarm into minority communities to promise anything and everything – whatever you want to hear – just to entice you to give them your vote. Once your vote has been seized they disappear for two, four , six years until they need your vote once more for their reelection.
Throughout the years politicians have always mad false promises to prospective voters. We must remember that these political buffoons want only to be elected to a position where they can wield power and amass as much wealth as possible.
Through the Democrats “great society” progressives have enslaved a multitude of people whose very existence relies on the government to support them. This has destroyed the concept of a child having both a mother and father at home raising, teaching and nurturing them. Killing conventional marriage all in the name of political control.
Mr. Williams
What you state is true however when will our black political members start teaching these issues to their communities. My community has 90% of crime committed by black on black persons and it getting bad now as children are being wounded or killed. I always think that one of those killed could be the one that would change the black communittes.
I personally have been physically and hatefully and racially assaulted by black people. Believe me,
they had the power to do so. It is human nature to want to ” get even” when an offense is perceived. Black people are no better than white people. Women are no better than men.