“ … [T]his type of so-called Negro, … intoxicated over the white man, he never sees beyond the white man. He never sees beyond America. He never looks at himself or where he fits into things on the world stage. He only can see himself here in America, on the American stage or the white stage, where the white man is in the majority, where the white man is the boss. So this type of Negro always feels like he’s outnumbered or he’s the underdog or he’s the minority. And it puts him in the role of a beggar — a cowardly, humble, Uncle Tomming beggar on anything that he says is — that should be his by right. … he wants to be an American rather than to be Black. He wants to be something other than what he is. And knowing that America is a white country, he knows he can’t be Black and be an American too. So he never calls himself Black. He calls himself an American Negro — a Negro in America. And usually he’ll deny his own race, his own color, just to be a second-class American. He’ll deny his own history, his own culture. He’ll deny all of his brothers and sisters in Africa, in Asia, in the East, just to be a second-class American. He denies everything that he represents or everything that was in his past, just to be accepted into a country and into a government that has rejected him ever since he was brought here. For this Negro is sick. He has to be sick to try and force himself amongst some people who don’t want him, or to be accepted into a government that has used its entire political system and educational system to keep him relegated to the role of a second-class citizen. Therefore he spends a lifetime begging for acceptance into the same government that made slaves of his people. He gives his life for a country that made his people slaves and still confines them to the role of second-class citizens. And we feel that he wastes his time begging white politicians, political hypocrites, for civil rights or for some kind of first-class citizenship. He is like a watchdog or a hound dog. You may run into a dog — no matter how vicious a dog is, you find him out in the street, he won’t bite you. But when you get him up on the porch, he will growl, he’ll take your leg. Now that dog, when he’s out in the street, only his own life is threatened, and he’s never been trained to protect himself. He’s only been trained by his master to think in terms of what’s good for his master. So when you catch him in the street and you threaten him, he’ll go around you. But when you come up on through the gate when he’s sitting on the master’s porch, then he’ll bare his fangs and get ready to bite you. Not because you’re threatening him, but because you threaten his master who has trained him not to protect himself but to protect the property of the master. And this type of twentieth century Uncle Tom is the same way. He’ll never attack you, but he’ll attack me. I can run into him out on the street and blast him; he won’t say a word. But if I look like I’m about to blast you in here, he’ll open up his mouth and put up a better defense for you than you can put up for yourself. Because he hasn’t been trained to defend himself. He has only been trained to open up his mouth in defense of his master. He hasn’t been educated, he’s been trained. When a man is educated, he can think for himself and defend himself and speak for himself. But this twentieth century Uncle Tom Negro never opens up his mouth in defense of a Black man. He opens up his mouth in defense of the white man, in defense of America, in defense of the American government. He doesn’t even know where his government is, because he doesn’t know that he ever had one. He doesn’t know where his country is, because he doesn’t know that he ever had one. He believes in exactly what he was taught in school. That when he was kidnapped by the white man, he was a savage in the jungle someplace eating people and throwing spears and with a bone in his nose. And the average American Negro has that concept of the African continent. It is not his fault. This is what has been given to him by the American educational system. He doesn’t realize that there were civilizations and cultures on the African continent at a time when the people in Europe were crawling around in the caves, going naked. He doesn’t realize that the Black man in Africa was wearing silk, was wearing slippers — that he was able to spin himself, make himself at a time when the people up in Europe were going naked. He doesn’t realize that he was living in palaces on the African continent when the people in Europe were living in caves. He doesn’t realize that he was living in a civilization in Africa where science had been so far advanced, especially even the astronomical sciences, to a point where Africans could plot the course of the stars in the universe when the people up in Europe still thought the earth was[n’t] round, the planet was[n’t] round — or flat (emphasis added). He doesn’t realize the advancement and the high state of his own culture that he was living in before he was kidnapped and brought to this country by the white man, he knows nothing about that. He knows nothing about the ancient Egyptian civilization on the African continent. Or the ancient Carthaginian civilization on the African continent. Or the ancient civilizations of Mali on the African continent. Civilizations that were highly developed and produced scientists. Timbuktu, the center of the Mali Empire, was the center of learning at a time when the people up in Europe didn’t even know what a book was. He doesn’t know this, because he hasn’t been taught. And because he doesn’t know this, when you mention Africa to him, [is] why he thinks you’re talking about a jungle. And I went to Africa in 1959 and didn’t see any jungle. And I didn’t see any mud huts until I got back to Harlem in New York City. So you’re familiar with that type of Negro. And the Black man that you’re not familiar with is the one that we would like to point out now.” — Twenty Million Black People in a Political, Economic, and Mental Prison (January 23, 1963), Malcolm X
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 19:34:31 +0000
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