21 Amazing Quotes from Booker T. Washington's 'Up From Slavery' (1901)

Wise words from one of America's greatest thinkers we'd all be wise to heed - black, white and everything in between.

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo___X

I don't care what color you are, there are three nonfiction books penned by black American writers everybody ought to read. We've already covered two of them - The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. Du Bois - and to kick off Black History Month 2017, I reckoned it was worth all of our respective times to take a nice, long gander at book no. 3 - Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. 

Booker T. Washington, for those of you not in the know, is the guy who's pretty much responsible for the Tuskegee Institute existing. Probably his biggest claim to fame as his legendary 1909 "Atlanta Compromise" speech, where he said black success in America wouldn't come about through civil rights legislation, but through education and entrepreneurialism. This, naturally, made him public enemy no. 1 to Du Bois and the founders of the N.A.A.C.P., who instead sought to bring about racial parity through legal challenges and public policy reform.

After re-reading Up From Slavery last year, it suddenly dawned on me why schools don't talk about any black American academics or civil rights crusaders before 1963. Simply put, you could yank any of Washington's arguments posited in his classic 1901 autobiography outlining the root causes of black economic failure and without changing a damn word, make it applicable to plight of contemporary African-Americans. If kids today had to read Up From Slavery in class, they might walk away from it with this crazy-ass idea that Booker T. WAS right - that simply changing the laws all willy-nilly to integrate blacks into "mainstream" U.S. society may not have been the best approach to curb racism or put African-Americans in better financial positions to succeed, or at the very least, remain self-sustaining. Egads, some of them may even develop the verboten idea that the Civil Rights Movement actually did very little to stomp out bigotry or make lives for African-Americans better, and had we gone the Washingtonian route and focused on black economic nationalism and supporting family structures instead of building a gargantuan welfare state and telling white kids to feel ashamed of being white from the time they enter preschool, blacks in America might be much better off, financially AND civically.

It's doubly - maybe even triply - damning because, as the title hints, this Booker T. Washington fellow literally began life as a slave. Forget microaggressions and white feminism and not being able to get a cab, this dude was literally considered chattel up until he was a teenager. So here's a guy that experienced the ULTIMATE form of white oppression coming out and telling us that government forced integration won't do much of nothing 60 years before anybody knew who Martin Luther King, Jr., was - and to top it all off, his success as academic and statesman PROVES that investments in real education ( i.e., the kind where you actually learn worthwhile, marketable job skills and not 250,000 different ways to blame Whitey for everything) and economy building is the actual cure-all for African-American plight. Shit, if that approach helped an honest to goodness ex-slave become one of the wealthiest and most respected men in the country, what excuse do middle and working class African-American teens today - who haven't experienced one tenth of one percent of the racial persecution Washington faced when he was their age - possibly have to justify their own financial failures?

In that, I consider not only Up From Slavery to be one of the most important nonfiction works of the 20th century, it's one of the few books I'd consider mandatory reading for anybody who dares consider themselves "American." Since it's in the public domain (I think), it shouldn't be too hard to find a copy of the book somewhere on the Internets. Frankly, you need to read the whole thing if you haven't, but for those of you who need a little appetizer plate to grasp why it's so fucking crucial you read it, I've clipped out 21 quotes from Washington's tome that succinctly sum up why Washington's way of thinking was so profound ... and is so utterly terrifying to critical theory proponents to this very day.

Quote One

“One may get the idea, from what I have said, that there was bitter feeling toward the white people on the part of my race, because of the fact that most of the white population was away fighting in a war which would result in keeping the Negro in slavery if the South was successful. In the case of the slaves on our place this was not true, and it was not true of any large portion of the slave population in the South where the Negro was treated with anything like decency. During the Civil War one of my young masters was killed, and two were severely wounded. I recall the feeling of sorrow which existed among the slaves when they heard of the death of 'Mars' Billy." It was no sham sorrow, but real. Some of the slaves had nursed 'Mars' Billy; others had played with him when he was a child. 'Mars' Billy had begged for mercy in the case of others when the overseer or master was thrashing them. The sorrow in the slave quarter was only second to that in the 'big house.'”

Quote Two

“I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction, and, besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the General Government. Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.”

Quote Three

“The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority. Hence labour was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape. The slave system on our place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people. My old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as I know, ever mastered a single trade or special line of productive industry."

Quote Four

“The very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if he fails in life, he will disgrace the whole family record, extending back through many generations, is of tremendous value in helping him to resist temptations. The fact that the individual has behind and surrounding him proud family history and connection serves as a stimulus to help him to overcome obstacles when striving for success.”

Quote Five

“In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Looked at from this standpoint, I almost reached the conclusion that often the Negro boy's birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.”

Quote Six

“I have referred to this unpleasant part of the history of the South simply for the purpose of calling attention to the great change that has taken place since the days of the 'Ku Klux.' To-day there are no such organizations in the South, and the fact that such ever existed is almost forgotten by both races. There are few places in the South now where public sentiment would permit such organizations to exist.”

Quote Seven

“I felt that the Reconstruction policy, so far as it related to my race, was in a large measure on a false foundation, was artificial and forced. In many cases it seemed to me that the ignorance of my race was being used as a tool with which to help white men into office, and that there was an element in the North which wanted to punish the Southern white men by forcing the Negro into positions over the heads of the Southern whites. I felt that the Negro would be the one to suffer for this in the end. Besides, the general political agitation drew the attention of our people away from the more fundamental matters of perfecting themselves in the industries at their doors and in securing property.”

Quote Eight

“More and more I am convinced that the final solution of the political end of our race problem will be for each state that finds it necessary to change the law bearing upon the franchise to make the law apply with absolute honesty, and without opportunity for double dealing or evasion, to both races alike. Any other course my daily observation in the South convinces me, will be unjust to the Negro, unjust to the white man, and unfair to the rest of the state in the Union, and will be, like slavery, a sin that at some time we shall have to pay for."

Quote Nine

“I saw other young men who received seventy-five or one hundred dollars per month from the Government, who were in debt at the end of every month. I saw men who but a few months previous were members of Congress, then without employment and in poverty. Among a large class there seemed to be a dependence upon the Government for every conceivable thing. The members of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the Federal officials to create one for them. How many times I wished then, and have often wished since, that by some power of magic I might remove the great bulk of these people into the county districts and plant them upon the soil, upon the solid and never deceptive foundation of Mother Nature, where all nations and races that have ever succeeded have gotten their start,—a start that at first may be slow and toilsome, but one that nevertheless is real."

Quote Ten

“My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own. This is illustrated in no better way than by observing the conduct of the old-school type of Southern gentleman when he is in contact with his former slaves or their descendants. An example of what I mean is shown in a story told of George Washington, who, meeting a coloured man in the road once, who politely lifted his hat, lifted his own in return. Some of his white friends who saw the incident criticised Washington for his action. In reply to their criticism George Washington said: "Do you suppose that I am going to permit a poor, ignorant, coloured man to be more polite than I am?”

Quote Eleven

“At night, during Christmas week, they usually had what they called a "frolic," in some cabin on the plantation. That meant a kind of rough dance, where there was likely to be a good deal of whiskey used, and where there might be some shooting or cutting with razors. While I was making this Christmas visit I met an old coloured man who was one of the numerous local preachers, who tried to convince me, from the experience Adam had in the Garden of Eden, that God had cursed all labour, and that, therefore, it was a sin for any man to work. For that reason this man sought to do as little work as possible. He seemed at that time to be supremely happy, because he was living, as he expressed it, through one week that was free from sin.”

Quote Twelve

“The making of these bricks taught me an important lesson in regard to the relations of the two races in the South. Many white people who had had no contact with the school, and perhaps no sympathy with it, came to us to buy bricks because they found out that ours were good bricks. They discovered that we were supplying a real want in the community. The making of these bricks caused many of the white residents of the neighbourhood to begin to feel that the education of the Negro was not making him worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding something to the wealth and comfort of the community. As the people of the neighbourhood came to us to buy bricks, we got acquainted with them; they traded with us and we with them. Our business interests became intermingled. We had something which they wanted; they had something which we wanted. This, in a large measure, helped to lay the foundation for the pleasant 'relations' that have continued to exist between us and the white people in that section, and which now extend throughout the South.

Wherever one of our brickmakers has gone in the South, we find that he has something to contribute to the well-being of the community into which he has gone; something that has made the community feel that, in a degree, it is indebted to him, and perhaps, to a certain extent, dependent upon him. In this way pleasant relations between the races have been simulated.

My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what colour of skin merit is found. I have found, too, that it is the visible, the tangible, that goes a long ways in softening prejudices. The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.”

Quote Thirteen

“The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of race. One man may go into a community prepared to supply the people there with an analysis of Greek sentences. The community may not at the time be prepared for, or feel the need of, Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and houses and wagons. If the man can supply the need for those, then, it will lead eventually to a demand for the first product, and with the demand will come the ability to appreciate it and to profit by it."

Quote Fourteen

“With God's help, I believe that I have completely rid myself of any ill feeling toward the Southern white man for any wrong that he may have inflicted upon my race. I am made to feel just as happy now when I am rendering service to Southern white men as when the service is rendered to a member of my own race. I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice.

The more I consider the subject, the more strongly I am convinced that the most harmful effect of the practice to which the people in certain sections of the South have felt themselves compelled to resort, in order to get rid of the force of the Negroes' ballot, is not wholly in the wrong done to the Negro, but in the permanent injury to the morals of the white man. The wrong to the Negro is temporary, but to the morals of the white man the injury is permanent. I have noted time and time again that when an individual perjures himself in order to break the force of the black man's ballot, he soon learns to practise dishonesty in other relations of life, not only where the Negro is concerned, but equally so where a white man is concerned. The white man who begins by cheating a Negro usually ends by cheating a white man. The white man who begins to break the law by lynching a Negro soon yields to the temptation to lynch a white man. All this, it seems to me, makes it important that the whole Nation lend a hand in trying to lift the burden of ignorance from the South.”

Quote Fifteen

“When I went into the smoking-room I was never more surprised in my life than when each man, nearly every one of them a citizen of Georgia, came up and introduced himself to me and thanked me earnestly for the work that I was trying to do for the whole South. This was not flattery, because each one of these individuals knew that he had nothing to gain by trying to flatter me.”

Quote Sixteen

“My experience in getting money for Tuskegee has taught me to have no patience with those people who are always condemning the rich because they are rich, and because they do not give more to objects of charity. In the first place, those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much suffering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises.”

Quote Seventeen

“The effort to secure help from the Slater and Peabody Funds brought me into contact with two rare men—men who have had much to do in shaping the policy for the education of the Negro. I refer to the Hon. J.L.M. Curry, of Washington, who is the general agent for these two funds, and Mr. Morris K. Jessup, of New York. Dr. Curry is a native of the South, an ex-Confederate soldier, yet I do not believe there is any man in the country who is more deeply interested in the highest welfare of the Negro than Dr. Curry, or one who is more free from race prejudice.”

Quote Eighteen

“And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the sub-substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.”

Quote Nineteen

“I am constantly trying to impress upon our students at Tuskegee—and on our people throughout the country, as far as I can reach them with my voice—that any man, regardless of colour, will be recognized and rewarded just in proportion as he learns to do something well—learns to do it better than someone else—however humble the thing may be. As I have said, I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value.”

Quote Twenty

“In this library I found a life of Frederick Douglass, which I began reading. I became especially interested in Mr. Douglass's description of the way he was treated on shipboard during his first or second visit to England. In this description he told how he was not permitted to enter the cabin, but had to confine himself to the deck of the ship. A few minutes after I had finished reading this description I was waited on by a committee of ladies and gentlemen with the request that I deliver an address at a concert which was to begin the following evening. And yet there are people who are bold enough to say that race feeling in America is not growing less intense!"

Quote Twenty-One

“Time and time again he said to me, during this visit, that it was not only the duty of the country to assist in elevating the Negro of the South, but the poor white man as well. At the end of his visit I resolved anew to devote myself more earnestly than ever to the cause which was so near his heart. I said that if a man in his condition was willing to think, work, and act, I should not be wanting in furthering in every possible way the wish of his heart.”

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Malcolm X: Hero of American Conservatism?

Forget the works of Richard Weaver or Whittaker Chambers: “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” may very well be the touchstone of modern conservative politics in the United States

“Yes, I will pull off that liberal’s halo that he spends such efforts cultivating! The North’s liberals have been for so long pointing accusing fingers at the South and getting away with it that they have fits when they are exposed as the world’s worst hypocrites.”

-- Malcolm X,

“The Autobiography of Malcolm X” (1965)

P. 276

For the longest time, I refused to watch “Do the Right Thing,” the critically-revered 1989 film that put Spike Lee on the proverbial Hollywood map. For the most part, I postponed viewing it, because in my mind, I had an idea of what I thought the film would be like -- in essence, just a bunch of whitey-blaming while one-dimensional honky stereotypes do racist things to innocent, 100 percent conscientious black folks for two hours straight.

Eventually, I ended up watching the film, in its entirety, one particularly uninspiring afternoon. And when I finally gave it a shot, it absolutely blow me -- and my preconceived notions -- away. Instead of being a reverse racist film that violently condemned those rascally white devils, the film was a shockingly unbiased glimpse into just how uneasy we still are as a nation about race relations. Perhaps the film’s most iconic scene -- a montage of people, of various ethnic groups, saying various insensitive things about other ethnic groups -- demonstrates this best.

The undeniable beauty of “Do the Right Thing,” to me, was the fact that Spike Lee didn’t even attempt to tell us what the titular “right thing” was supposed to be. The film concludes with an incinerated pizza parlor and young black man choked to death by the police, and the only commentary the film feels necessary to send us home with are two completely contradictory quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. In a world desperate for easy answers, I had to applaud Mr. Lee for having the testicular fortitude to come right out and say that there aren’t any real answers -- it’s that unashamed, and shockingly unemotional, honesty that quickly catapulted “Do the Right Thing” into my pantheon of all-time favorite movies.

I believe it was for those very same reasons listed above that I was so reluctant to pick up “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” the 1965 book penned by “Roots” author Alex Haley. For years, I had heard about the book, and although I hadn’t seen the 1992 film adaptation (coincidentally, directed by Spike Lee himself, and perhaps just a bit ironically, spun-off from a screenplay penned by Jewish playwright Arnold Perl), I certainly recall the controversy surrounding the film when it was originally released -- by the way, I was just six-years-old at the time, and proud to say that much of my worldview had been shaped by that great 1990s institution, “In Living Color.”

As an elementary schooler, I remember spending half of February each year listening to my teachers drone on and on about MLK and Rosa Parks -- almost always giving us the sanitized, fit-for-mainstream consumption version of their respective life stories, of course; meanwhile, Malcolm X’s name was mentioned only in passing, if it all. In middle school, “Letters from Birmingham Jail” was required reading, but I’m not even sure my library even had X’s autobiography on the shelves. By the time I was in high school, the narrative passed down to me was that Malcolm X was basically the Magneto to MLK’s Charles Xavier, and the former’s autobiography was nothing more than hate-filled, antagonizing anti-white propaganda for the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Even in college, the multicultural, inclusiveness uber alles experience it was, not once did I hear a lecture on Malcolm X, or even faint words of praise for his works, from even my most liberal of professors.

I was oblivious to the fact that so many people didn’t seem to want me to read the damn book (almost always a sign that the contents therein are generally worth reading) until I was almost 30, and when I finally decided to pick up a copy and read it for myself, I had yet another “Do the Right Thing”-like reaction. Not only was the book not what I expected it to be, it was almost the complete night-and-day opposite.

I always wondered why white folks -- in particular, the super-liberal and super-guilty types -- championed Martin Luther King Jr. and always seemed to pretend that Malcolm X never existed. I always kind of assumed it was because of that whole “By Any Means Necessary” stuff, but as it turns out, their peculiar aversion to Malcolm X most likely stems from altogether different political reasons. Simply put, modern liberals don’t shun X because he “encouraged violence,” but simply because he called them out on their bullshit and backed political remedies to urban black plight that sound dangerously close to conservative talking points.

The not-quite-socialistic-but-definitely-not-capitalistic perspective of Martin Luther King, Jr. seems a perfect ideological foil to Malcolm X’s socioeconomic doctrine, which at times, seems to both condemn government entitlements and vaunt private sector wealth generation. Indeed, the entire civil rights discussion seems to ignore the reality that Martin Luther King Jr. was born into an already-wealthy family, an individual who, in every sense of the word, was about 100 times more “privileged” socioeconomically than a majority of white folks in the southeast. While King lived a relatively pampered existence -- hardly fraught with any of the adversities most regional blacks had to face at the time -- Malcolm Little was clearly a man of the soil, a poor kid from Michigan who grew up eating dandelion weeds while King cosplayed as a migrant worker in Connecticut and was told he was too good to marry a white lunch lady. By all traditional liberal measurements, it seems as if the school-of-hard-knocks trained, self-made X would be the progressive poster boy of the Civil Rights era, but wouldn’t you know it, lefties for half a century have instead been championing a man who refused to leave a will to his own family [*].

[*] To be far, neither did Malcolm X, but considering all of the money MLK made/inherited during his lifetime, X’s “oath of poverty” excuse, I surmise, is just a tad more defensible than King’s. 

The story of Malcolm X is really a permutation of two time-tested tales; the ascension of the unlikely and the classical Greek tragedy. The tragedy part is quite evident, even to X himself, who many times throughout his own autobiography, predicts his own imminent, violent early death; that he saw this coming from a mile away only heightens the inherent tragicomedy -- with the ultimate swerve, of course, being that his death came not at the hands of the vile “white devils” he spent literally his entire life railing against, but the very Nation of Islam “brothers” that he once said he would die for himself.

Malcolm Little has inconspicuous roots. He grew up in abject poverty, with a mentally ill mother, whom more than likely, was driven insane by her husband’s grisly murder at the hands of racist whites. From a young age, Little was aware of “white oppression,” but he saw it as something a little more abstract than obvious displays, such as cross burning vigils and lynchings. You see, in Little’s eyes -- and remember, these are the thoughts of a relatively young child -- white oppression wasn’t just a tangible social edict, it was a psychological state. The society itself, he thought, was responsible for fostering in the American Black a sense of inferiority, which the black community itself mindlessly propagated through criminal enterprise shortcuts, drug running, vapid materialism (then it was conks and zoot suits, today its iPhones and hair extensions) and playing the “numbers” game. Whitey had imposed his superiority upon the blacks, and the blacks responded by immersing themselves in a culture that -- inadvertently -- proved the points of racist whites. When confronted with prejudiced allegations of laziness, shiftlessness and moral impieties, Little saw a black society that responded with greater investments in drinking, gambling and other vices; ever the astute youngster, Little also observed how Christianity was being used as a literal deus ex machina for blacks to self pardon themselves for their excesses and general aimlessness.

And so, Malcolm Little lived the life he was expected to live: he became a porter in New York and Boston, spending his weekends at clubs in Harlem and buddying up with numbers runners and cat burglars. Funnily, Little’s escapades in home invasions is manifested in a sardonic safety tip; if you want to keep would-be robbers out of your house, try leaving the bathroom light on all day and night.

And so, Little continues to smoke reefers and drink heavily and run afoul of some particularly nefarious crime folks. All the while, his hatred for the white devil increases, especially after he comes into contact with New York’s underground sex trade; bet you didn’t think diaper fetishism would be a prominent plot point in his autobiography, did you? And then, Little’s luck runs out, and he’s sent to the slammer for about a decade; according to himself, the extra time was tacked on because of his “unofficial” crime of hanging out with white women.

In prison, Malcolm Little makes a statement fairly similar to Mike Tyson in his autobiography, saying that his time in the clink was more or less his equivalent of attending college. After converting to Elijah Muhammad’s super racist version of Islam, Little starts reading like a motherfucker, and begins having scholarly debates with his cellmates. Given time to think, Malcolm Little more or less read his way to intellectual -- and eventually, physical -- freedom.

The communiqué between X and Muhammad reminded me a lot of the camaraderie between Philip Seymour Hoffman and River Phoenix’s brother in “The Master” -- albeit, with Malcolm X serving as a much more lucid and cognizant protégé than Joaquin's character. In hindsight, you kind of have to wonder how X was unable to see just how full of shit Muhammad was, but then again, X’s story is a tragic ascension; he needed Muhammad’s eventual betrayal to goad him into realizing the abject racism -- not to mention the batshit madness -- of the Nation of Islam, and why it wouldn’t be until he rejected the Man-God he formulated for himself that he would be able to truly grasp the “reality” he had sought since elementary school.

Oh, there’s some irony to be found here, of course. For one, Malcolm X himself acknowledges that if it hadn’t been for the white devil produced “The Hate that Hate Produced,” he never would have taken off as a national spokesman. Similarly, it was the financial contribution of the white devils in academia and the press that eventually allowed X to travel to Mecca, and keep him from becoming insolvent after being blacklisted from the Nation. Still, that didn’t prevent X from criticizing MLK for his own collusion with liberal whites, at one point referring to the March on Washington as an orchestration of the white devils themselves. Alas, many today seem to overlook the veracity of X’s “by any means necessary” call-to-arms; while the peaceful demonstration and integration policies praised by King worked, we tend to overlook the fact that those policies worked only because the maestros behind them were a.) wealthy as fuck, and b.) already had backing from the political elites. What X promoted, then, was a policy for the truly downtrodden black American: that, in the absence of socioeconomic political power, the only just response to externalized force until that socioeconomic political power was obtained was to physically defend oneself. In that, X’s highly-criticized “By Any Means” platform was actually a ways to a means, and not the intended destination point at all.

Throughout the book, it’s quite obvious that Malcolm’s disdain of the white man stemmed from perpetual cultural indoctrination. Daddy Little was a faithful adherent of segregationist pioneer Marcus Garvey -- so profound an influence on Malcolm’s upbringing, Garvey’s name is mentioned literally on the first page of his autobiography. That ideology ultimately led to Malcolm developing an intense hatred of all whites, which was effectively sublimated into the unabashedly racist teachings of Elijah Muhammad -- and thus, kick-starting X’s own career as a political firebrand. Of course, Muhammad’s jealousy would lead to X being ousted from his own social movement, and later on, be the catalyst for his own death; peculiarly, it wasn’t until X traveled to Mecca that, like a ton of proverbial bricks, the error of his whitey-hating ways bopped him on the head:

“I believed in [Muhammad] not only as a leader in the ordinary human sense, but also I believed in him as a divine leader. I believed he had no human weaknesses or faults, and that, therefore, he could make no mistakes, and that he could do no wrong. There on a Holy World hilltop, I realized how very dangerous it is for people to hold any human being in such esteem, especially to consider anyone some sort of “divinely guided” and “protected” person.” (P. 327)

Funny how today, on both sides of the political spectrum, hardly anyone at all has taken X’s advice against blindly following personalities and other social movements to heart, no?

One of the thing that X keys in on in his autobiography, and its something Ossie Davis somewhat rephrases in the paperback’s epilogue, is that the most insidious form of racism imaginable isn’t blatant prejudice, clearly visible in social policies and folkways, but rather, institutionalized paternalism, in which the whites reiterate their “superiority” over the black man by preventing them from becoming self-sufficient. Indeed, X’s own cries for voluntary segregation was less an attempt to escape racial hostilities than it was an attempt to allow the black man to build his own society, create his own industries and businesses to generate his own income, and become a self-made man without the constant oversight of white bureaucrats. Segregation, per X (at one point in time, anyway), was the only viable alternative to permanent dependency upon “the man.” Indeed, X called the efforts of Northern Freedom Riders to “rescue” imperiled blacks in the south a “ridiculous” endeavor:

“…their own Northern ghettos, right at home, had enough rats and roaches to kill to keep all of the Freedom Riders busy. I said that ultra-liberal New York had more integration problems than Mississippi. If the Northern Freedom Riders wanted more to do, they could work on the roots of such ghetto evils as the little children out in the streets at midnight, with apartment keys on strings around their necks to let themselves in, and their mothers and fathers drunk, drug addicts, thieves, prostitutes. Or the Northern Freedom Riders could light some fires under Northern city halls, unions  and major industries to give more jobs to Negroes to remove so many of them from the relief and welfare rolls, which created laziness, and which deteriorated the ghettos into steadily worse places for humans to live.” (P. 276)

If all of this sounds eerily similar to the perpetual anti-welfare tirades from the right, it’s because, fundamentally, X is espousing the exact same ideological premise. Indeed, he even touches upon Goldwater-era conservatism as a far superior alternative to LBJ’s sprawling social services reform:

“‘Conservatism’ in America’s politics means ‘Let’s keep the niggers in their place.’ And ‘liberalism’ means ‘Let’s keep the knee-grows in their place -- but tell them we’ll treat them a little better, let’s fool them more, with more promises.”  (P. 380-381)

Granted, it’s not exactly great praise heaped upon contemporary conservatives, but just a few sentences later, X drops this little atom bomb on us…

“Goldwater as a man, I respected for speaking out his true convictions -- something rarely done in politics today. He wasn’t whispering to racists and smiling at integrationists. I felt Goldwater wouldn’t have risked his unpopular stand without conviction. He flatly told black men he wasn’t for them -- and there is this to consider: always, the black people have advanced further when they seen they had to rise up against a system that they clearly saw was outright against them. Under the steady lullabies sung by foxy liberals, the Northern Negro became a beggar. But the Southern Negro, facing the honestly snarling white man, rose up to battle that white man for his freedom -- long before it happened in the North.” (P. 381) 

In the eyes of X, even the most brutal forms of southern-conservative racism was less oppressive than the liberal policies imposed upon the black community; indeed, whereas the empty promises and token gestures of northern liberals merely cemented African-Americans into poverty, the unabashedly aggressive policies of the southern conservative forced the black community into taking action and seeking self-sufficiency. At the end of the day, Malcolm X’s big call to political arms within his autobiography is really no different than the central thesis of the work of someone as far right as Charles Murray: it’s not until the black man is economically independent and capable of living his life without the assistance of the government and other paternalistic whites that he can call himself truly free.

Of course, it’s a hard sell to most arguing Malcolm X as a modern conservative pioneer -- especially to Tea Party contemporaries, who would almost certainly blackball him on grounds of being a “moose-limb” alone -- but even then, it seems as if X has more in common with modern neo-cons than today’s leftists. Even as a Muslim, X’s religion mandates a vaunting of asceticism, the traditional family construct and considerably conservative-sounding fiscal principles, which are all near anathema to the Democratic Party’s current platform. And hell, X is a clear cut ally of the NRA if there ever was one, and as an appeal to the conspiratorial libertarian crowd, he also seemed to have a thing against Jews and the Freemasons, too.

While “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” may not exactly be “Atlas Shrugged” or “Road to Serfdom,” there’s no denying the unexpected similarities between X’s sociopolitical values and those of Red State America. Of course, X himself would probably hate the ever-loving shit of today’s hardcore conservatives, but odds are? He would probably hate today’s hardcore liberals even more…which, to some degree, probably explains why his autobiography remains one of the nation’s most celebrated -- yet seemingly unread -- nonfiction works to this very day.

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The Problem with Modern Atheism

How Irreligion is Slowly Turning into What it Detests

I assure you...we'll get back to this one a little later on.

Last month, Penn Jillette, world-famous skeptic/libertarian/magician/one-time video game character unveiled what he called the “Ten Commandments of Atheism” to demonstrate how “modern culture” has drifted away from the archaic, draconian Mosaic law.

The only problem is, half of his Commandments were pretty much taken directly from the Old Testament, and the other five are just variations replacing a trust in the Abrahamic god with trust in several abstract concepts, like “love” and “knowledge.” Apparently, as much as we’ve moved away from the superstitions of the post-Babylonian era, we really haven’t advanced that much as far as core scruples of humanity go.

Unbeknownst to themselves, modern atheists have some real problems working against them these days, the least of which is the fact that washed-up comedians that look like Batman villains are making asinine statements on behalf of their entire population.

As a non-practicing atheist, I can’t help but look at Jillette’s attempt to iron out a doctrine for secular humanism as indicative of pretty much EVERYTHING that is wrong with modern atheism. As annoying as evangelical Christians can be - and trust me, they can be pretty damned annoying - I think the hardcore non-theists of the modern era are every bit as aggravating and irritating as their hyper-religious counterparts, if not more so.

So, what exactly are the atheistic activists doing wrong, you may ask? In short, pretty much everything, but to be just a tad more specific, five major faux pas that, seemingly, nobody in their ranks has picked up upon yet.

Attention, all ye of little faith: for I give thee wisdom.

PROBLEM NUMBER ONE:

Atheism has pretty much become a religion

According to the dictionary thingy on my word processor software, “religion” is defined as “people’s beliefs and opinions concerning the existence, nature, and worship of a deity or deities” AND “an institutionalized or personal system of beliefs and practices relating to the divine.” The keyword there is “institutionalized,” because atheism, at the current, has gone from being a personal state of disbelief to being a systematized, cultural experience.

At one point in time, being an atheist simply meant that you didn’t believe in a divine being. As such, you didn’t have to buy a membership to an atheism club, or take up social causes pertaining to so-called “secular humanism,” or basically wear your non-religion on your sleeve like some sort of smarmy armband. Basically, you just didn’t believe or support any established religious causes, and that was it.

But today? Amigo, there’s an entire atheist culture out there you have to buy into if you want to be considered ‘one of the elite.’ This means hanging out with other atheists at events that peculiarly resemblechurch services, and canonizing certain figures prominent to the atheist cause, which is not at all like anything the Catholic Church does. And much like religious folk, they ALWAYS feel as if their system of belief is under attack, and they ALWAYS seem to be on the defensive when it comes to discussing their convictions in a public forum.

The odd, cruel irony is that for a lot of modern atheists, their lack of religion is just as important to their personal identity as actual religion is to the holier-than-thou folks. If you attend a skeptics meeting, don’t be surprised if you hear two attendees bickering about whether Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett is more right when it comes to interpreting Darwinian theory, the same way you might hear two fundamentalist Christians arguing over whose interpretation of the scripture is more accurate. The modern atheist response to the industrialization of religion has been the industrialization of irreligion - nowadays, you’ll encounter people that proudly display “Flying Spaghetti Monster” decals on their car as if the mass produced, industrial reduction of their entire beliefs system ISN’T any less pitiable than those guys that have Jesus Fish and Bible verses on the back of their vans.

Long story short, atheism, alike the religions it supposedly detests, has become a social institution, with preachers, sacred texts, official canons, denominational organizations and yes, its own cultural niches the EXACT same way Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and even Paganism has. Modern atheists may say they ain’t religious folks, but they sure as hell seem to act that way about the things they believe nowadays.

PROBLEM NUMBER TWO:

Despite being anti-religion, they still partake of rituals and traditions DERIVED AND SUPPORTED by religious institutions

Let’s say somebody told you they were in support of animal rights. You ask them if they’re vegetarian, and they say no. You ask them if they boycott animal furs, and you notice that they’re wearing leather boots. You ask them what their favorite hobby is, and they say “hunting, fishing, and taxidermy.” As a last ditch effort, you ask them if they’re in support of baby seal clubbing, and they tell you they’re planning a vacation to Alaska next winter, with shellacking sticks definitely going on the carry-on. Although this hypothetical individual tells you that he or she is against something, that same person is pretty much supporting the very industries that are propped up by that thing he or she supposedly detests. Thusly, this conjectural person’s entire belief system is inherently self-defeating.

Now, let’s flip the script. Are you in favor (meaning that you, as an individual, are likely to support or personally do) any of the following?

• Get married

•  Participate in the political process

• Celebrate or attend a publicly funded parade

• Attend, support or promote a private college

Well, if you said yes to any, you’re basically supporting a religious cause of some kind. Marriage, as a social construct, is propped up entirely by religious precepts, the same way just about ALL of our modern funerary customs are. Never mind all of the political rhetoric spouted by so many active campaigners, a ton of our democratic “traditions” were culled directly from church doctrine and religious decrees. Every damn holiday you can think of has some sort of religious background - even the really crappy ones, like Columbus Day. Traditionally, the whole idea of private colleges was to instill and promote certain dogmatic policies, when that pesky Constitution sort of makes such attempts at public colleges just mildly illegal. Even so, you’ll encounter scores of atheists that are married, deeply invested in politics, celebrators of holidays or alumni of religiously-founded colleges.

Now, empirical wisdom would say that if you are opposed to a certain ideology, odds are, you’d be opposed to the institutions promoted by that ideology as well. Now, I’m not saying that atheists SHOULD abstain from marriage, or remain politically unaffiliated, or refuse to celebrate Christmas, or not spend money on educational institutes founded by religious nutzoids (and there’s a LOT more of these out there than you would initially think), but if they really wanted to make a point - and not one of those horribly misguided ones they’re known for - it might actually help if they kind of preached what they practiced.

PROBLEM NUMBER THREE:

They’re using techniques and policies pulled straight out of religious playbooks

Academy Award winning Shakespearean thespian Charles Norris once said that he thought “YouTube” was a recruitment tool for atheism. If that’s really the case, then it means the atheist agenda is just now realizing what mainstream Christianity has thoroughly understood since the 1940s - media is one hell of a format for proselytizing.

If you heard Christian music, or watched a Christian movie, or a Christian TV show or even played a Christian video game, you probably recognized it, because the product kept telling you that it was Christian-oriented over and over. Well, atheist activists have decided that this format - the pop-propaganda model pioneered by Eisenstein, really - is pretty conducive for getting out their message, too. Take a look at this YouTube video here. . . 

. . .now, compare it to THIS video, recorded in the early, early ‘90s…

Notice any similarities? Not only are the formats similar, they’re pretty much the SAME damn thing. And that’s not the only media gimmick the atheist-activists are “borrowing” from the religious folk, either.

Youth-centric activity programs? Check.

School seminars? Check.

Really, really spooky and age-inappropriate reading material for the wee ones? CHECK.

Granted, the atheists probably didn’t INTENTIONALLY set out to rip-off Jack Chick or public access programming from 20 years ago, but if that ISN’T the case, it’s probably all the more damning in the long haul. After all, it’s one thing to copy the template pioneered by the people you detest…and it’s a whole other ball game when you do such a horrible job of aping them in the process.

PROBLEM NUMBER FOUR:

They haven’t realized that snootiness is every bit as annoying as self-righteousness

Atheists have a public image of being smarmy, self-absorbed pricks that you want to punch in the face for simply existing. A lot of times, it seems as if there’s so much smugness emanating from them that your first response is to ball up your fist and start serving some hand burgers. Case in point: try looking at this photo of Bill Maher for more than ten seconds without feeling the urge to discuss punch your computer:

Props to some guy named David Shankbone for the photo

When you look at most religions, the communication approach taken by their respective members is almost always open and cheery or closed and vindictive. Whether or not the ambassador is the world’s jolliest Hare Krishna or apparent Buffalo Bills fan Fred Phelps, they’re at least attempting to play up the significance of whatever they believe, which is a sharp contrast to how most atheist activists present themselves and their convictions. As condemnatory as a lecture from Kirk Cameron may be, I would much rather get told I was going to hell by an 80s sitcom star than sit through a wooden Christopher Hitchens lecture or any Amazing Atheist video. Why? Because elitism as a channel to salvation (even if that salvation is completely unfounded) is way more palatable than elitism simply for the sake of elitism. If a religious person preaches to you, it’s generally because they want to convert you to their side of the fence (or embezzle funds from you, whichever seems more appropriate at the time). Conversely, if an atheist lectures you, what’s the point, other than demonstrating just how much better they are than the faithful?

The currency may be different, but the payment plan is the exact same. The religious have “holiness” and corner the market on “faith” and “virtue”, while the atheistic claim “reason,” “logic” and “knowledge” as their own intellectual property. One side says you can’t be A unless your with them, and the other side says you can’t be B unless your on their side. Clearly, one side is completely annoying and egotistical…and what do you know, so is the other one, too!

PROBLEM NUMBER FIVE:

…THEY’RE HYPOCRITES. 

...told you we'd get back to it.

Atheist-activists accuse religious folk of doing all sorts of dumb, illogical, offensive and dangerous things all the time. They criticize the religious for promoting their convictions as part of their civil personas, and they chastise them for bringing their spiritual beliefs into political affairs. They yammer on and on about how religion stifles free expression, and leads to the repression of both knowledge and liberty, and how it forces individuals into herd mentalities. And then, there’s all of the death, mayhem and destruction that organized religion has caused.

All of these accusations, I agree, are completely and absolutely valid assertions. The only problem? You can say that atheism, as a cultural practice, has done “all of the above,” too.

If Mel Gibson and Tim Tebow are ass-hats for emphasizing their religion in regards to their public image, then how is it that Seth MacFarlane and Joe Rogan aren’t equivalent ass-hats for promoting their irreligion as central aspects of their public image? If Michelle Bachmann is a dingbat for bringing her admiration of the apolitical gospels into political discourse, then isn’t Ron Paul also a dingbat for bringing his admiration of the apolitical Ayn Rand novels into political discourse?

Never mind the fact that both Christianity and Islam played major roles in the expansion of literacy throughout Europe and the Mideast during the Middle Ages, and that religious institutions supported and even bankrolled numerous scientific and technological projects that expedited human knowledge across the globe throughout history. Nor should we note that just about EVERY revolutionary figure in the 20^th century - from Gandhi to MLK to Malcolm X to Cesar Chavez - were all people firmly rooted in specific religious movements. Oh, and about that whole religion equating death and misery thing?

The Soviet Union, China, Germany and Cambodia - combined - killed damn near a quarter of a billion people last century. And all four of those regimes implemented national policies that made religion - all religion -verboten within their respective boundaries. So if you hear something rumbling in the background, it’s only a blackened pot saying something to a charred kettle right about now. 

Which is EXACTLY what John Lennon wanted, right?

So with all of that out of the way, what’s my final bit of advice for the godless in the 21^st century? My advice, I suppose, would be to stop caring so damn much about what you don’t believe in. If the religious are a bunch of kooks and mongoloids for placing so much emphasis on what they believe, what does that make a person that places just as much emphasis on what they DON’T believe? Atheism is just a perspective, and that’s it. It’s not some cultural obligation, and it sure as hell isn’t the primary qualifier regarding one’s merits of a human being. I don’t believe in any god, nor do I think that any religion is promoting anything that even remotely resembles a true vision of reality. But at the same time, I genuinely do not give half a poop if someone does believe in a god or supports some religion, because I - gasp - don’t place a weighted emphasis on religion in regards to how I perceive the world and human beings in general.

You know, just like atheists used to.

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