Malcolm X on Wealth of Africa
Excerpt from a speech given by Malcolm X at the University of Ghana, 13 May 1964
I intend for my talk to be very informal, because our position in America is an informal position, [Laughter] and I find that it is very difficult to use formal terms to describe a very informal position. No condition of any people on earth is more deplorable than the condition, or plight, of the twenty-two million Black people in America. And our condition is so deplorable because we are in a country that professes to be a democracy and professes to be striving to give justice and freedom and equality to everyone who is born under its constitution. If we were born in South Africa or in Angola or some part of this earth where they don’t profess to be for freedom,1 that would be another thing; but when we are born in a country that stands up and represents itself as the leader of the Free World, and you still have to beg and crawl just to get a chance to drink a cup of coffee, then the condition is very deplorable indeed.‘A victim of Americanism’
So tonight, so that you will understand me and why I speak as I do, it should probably be pointed out at the outset that I am not a politician. I don’t know anything about politics. I’m from America but I’m not an American. I didn’t go there of my own free choice. [Applause] If I were an American there would be no problem, there’d be no need for legislation or civil rights or anything else. So I just try to face the fact as it actually is and come to this meeting as one of the victims of America, one of the victims of Americanism, one of the victims of democracy, one of the victims of a very hypocritical system that is going all over this earth today representing itself as being qualified to tell other people how to run their country when they can’t get the dirty things that are going on in their own country straightened out. [Applause]So if someone else from America comes to you to speak, they’re probably speaking as Americans, and they speak as people who see America through the eyes of an American. And usually those types of persons refer to America, or that which exists in America, as the American Dream. But for the twenty million of us in America who are of African descent, it is not an American dream; it’s an American nightmare. [Laughter]
I don’t feel that I am a visitor in Ghana or in any part of Africa. I feel that I am at home. I’ve been away for four hundred years, [Laughter] but not of my own volition, not of my own will. Our people didn’t go to America on the Queen Mary, we didn’t go by Pan American, and we didn’t go to America on the Mayflower. We went in slave ships, we went in chains. We weren’t immigrants to America, we were cargo for purposes of a system that was bent upon making a profit. So this is the category or level of which I speak. I may not speak it in the language many of you would use, but I think you will understand the meaning of my terms.
When I was in Ibadan [in Nigeria] at the University of Ibadan last Friday night, the students there gave me a new name, which I go for—meaning I like it. [Laughter]
Omowale,which they say means in Yoruba—if I am pronouncing that correctly, and if I am not pronouncing it correctly it’s because I haven’t had a chance to pronounce it for four hundred years [Laughter]—which means in that dialect,
The child has returned.It was an honor for me to be referred to as a child who had sense enough to return to the land of his forefathers—to his fatherland and to his motherland. Not sent back here by the State Department, [Laughter] but come back here of my own free will. [Applause]
I am happy and I imagine, since it is the policy that whenever a Black man leaves America and travels in any part of Africa, or Asia, or Latin America and says things contrary to what the American propaganda machine turns out, usually he finds upon his return home that his passport is lifted.2 Well, if they had not wanted me to say the things I am saying, they should never have given me a passport in the first place. The policy usually is the lifting of the passport. Now I am not here to condemn America, I am not here to make America look bad, but I am here to tell you the truth about the situation that Black people in America find themselves confronted with. And if truth condemns America, then she stands condemned. [Applause]
This is the most beautiful continent that I’ve ever seen; it’s the richest continent I’ve ever seen, and strange as it may seem, I find many white Americans here smiling in the faces of our African brothers like they have been loving them all of the time. [Laughter and applause] The fact is, these same whites who in America spit in our faces, the same whites who in America club us brutally, the same whites who in America sic their dogs upon us, just because we want to be free human beings, the same whites who turn their water hoses upon our women and our babies because we want to integrate with them, are over here in Africa smiling in your face trying to integrate with you. [Laughter] I had to write a letter back home yesterday and tell some of my friends that if American Negroes want integration, they should come to Africa, because more white people over here—white Americans, that is—look like they are for integration than there is in the entire American country. [Laughter] But actually what it is, they want to integrate with the wealth that they know is here—the untapped natural resources which exceed the wealth of any continent on this earth today.
When I was coming from Lagos to Accra Sunday, I was riding on an airplane with a white man who represented some of the interests, you know, that are interested in Africa. And he admitted—at least it was his impression—that our people in Africa didn’t know how to measure wealth, that they worship wealth in terms of gold and silver, not in terms of the natural resources that are in the earth, and that as long as the Americans or other imperialists or twentieth-century colonialists could continue to make the Africans measure wealth in terms of gold and silver, they never would have an opportunity to really measure the value of the wealth that is in the soil, and would continue to think that it is they who need the Western powers instead of thinking that it is the Western powers who need the people and the continent that is known as Africa.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Malcolm X:
Brothers and sisters, I am here to tell you that I charge the white man.
I charge the white man with being the greatest murderer on earth. I
charge the white man with being the greatest kidnapper on earth. There
is no place in this world that this man can go and say he created peace
and harmony. Everywhere he's gone he's created havoc. Everywhere he's
gone he's created destruction. So I charge him. I charge him with being
the greates kidnapper on this earth! I charge him with being the
greatest murderer on this earth! I charge him with being the greatest
robber and enslaver on this earth! I charge the white man with being the
greatest swine-eater on this earth. The greatest drunkard on this
earth! He can't deny the charges! You can't deny the charges! We're the
living proof *of* those charges! You and I are the proof. You're not an
American, you are the victim of America. You didn't have a choice coming
over here. He didn't say, "Black man, black woman, come on over and
help me build America". He said, "Nigger, get down in the bottom of that
boat and I'm taking you over there to help me build America". Being
born here does not make you an American. I am not an American, you are
not an American. You are one of the 22 million black people who are the
*victims* of America. You and I, we've never see nany democracy. We
didn't see any... democracy on the-the cotton fields of Georgia, wasn't
no democracy down there. We didn't see any democracy. We didn't see any
democracy on the streets of Harlem or on the streets of Brooklyn or on
the streets of Detroit or Chicago. Ain't no democracy down there. No,
we've never seem democracy! All we've seen is hypocrisy! We don't see
any American Dream. We've experienced only the American Nightmare!
Crowd: [shouting] Malcolm! Malcolm! We want Malcolm! We want Malcolm!
Crowd: [shouting] Malcolm! Malcolm! We want Malcolm! We want Malcolm!
666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
http://youtu.be/znQe9nUKzvQ
Malcolm X
"There was two kind of slaves. There was the house negro and the field
negro. The house negro, they lived in the house, with master. They
dressed pretty good. They ate good, cause they ate his food, what he left.
They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near their
master, and they loved their master, more than their master loved
himself. They would give their life to save their masters house quicker
than their master would. The house negro, if the master said "we got a
good house here" the house negro say "yeah, we got a good house here".
Whenever the master would said we, he'd say we. That's how you can
tell a house negro. If the master's house caught on fire, the house negro
would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the
master got sick, the house negro would say "What's the matter, boss, we
sick?" We sick! He identified himself with his master, more than the
master identified with himself. And if you came to the house negro and
said "Let's run away, Let's escape, Let's separate" the house negro would
look at you and say "Man, you crazy. What you mean separate? Where
is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than
this? Where can I eat better food than this?" There was that house
negro. In those days, he was called a house nigger. And that's what we
call him today, because we still got some house niggers runnin around
here. This modern house negro loves his master. He wants to live near
him. He'll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near
his master, and then brag about "I'm the only negro out here. I'm the
only one on my job. I'm the only one in this school." "You're nothing but
a house negro. And if someone come to you right now and say "Let's
separate.", you say the same thing that the house negro said on the
plantation. "What you mean separate? From America? This good white
land? Where you gonna get a better job than you get here? I mean, this
is what you say! "I di-I ain't left nothing in Africa" That's what you say.
"Why, you left your mind in Africa". On that same plantation, there was
the field negro. The field negro, those were the masses. There was
always more negros in the field as there were negros in the house. There
negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house, they ate
high up on the hog. The negro in the field didn't get nothing but what
was left in the insides of the hog. They call them chit'lins nowaday. In
those days, they called them what they were, guts! That's what you
were, a guteater. And some of you are still guteaters. The field negro
was beaten, from morning til night. He lived in a shack, in a hut. He
Related News
field negro prayed for a wind. For a breeze. When the master got sick, the field negro prayed that he died. If someone come to the field negro and said "Let's separate, let's run." He didn't say "Where we going?" he
said "Any place is better than here". We got field negros in America
today. I'm a field negro.
Malcolm X
"There was two kind of slaves. There was the house negro and the field
negro. The house negro, they lived in the house, with master. They dressed pretty good. They ate good, cause they ate his food, what he left.
They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near their
master, and they loved their master, more than their master loved
himself. They would give their life to save their masters house quicker
than their master would. The house negro, if the master said "we got a
good house here" the house negro say "yeah, we got a good house here".
Whenever the master would said we, he'd say we. That's how you can
tell a house negro. If the master's house caught on fire, the house negro
would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the
master got sick, the house negro would say "What's the matter, boss, we
sick?" We sick! He identified himself with his master, more than the
master identified with himself. And if you came to the house negro and
said "Let's run away, Let's escape, Let's separate" the house negro would
look at you and say "Man, you crazy. What you mean separate? Where
is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than
this? Where can I eat better food than this?" There was that house
negro. In those days, he was called a house nigger. And that's what we
call him today, because we still got some house niggers runnin around
here. This modern house negro loves his master. He wants to live near
him. He'll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near
his master, and then brag about "I'm the only negro out here. I'm the
only one on my job. I'm the only one in this school." "You're nothing but
a house negro. And if someone come to you right now and say "Let's
separate.", you say the same thing that the house negro said on the
plantation. "What you mean separate? From America? This good white
land? Where you gonna get a better job than you get here? I mean, this
is what you say! "I di-I ain't left nothing in Africa" That's what you say.
"Why, you left your mind in Africa". On that same plantation, there was
the field negro. The field negro, those were the masses. There was
always more negros in the field as there were negros in the house. There
negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house, they ate
high up on the hog. The negro in the field didn't get nothing but what
was left in the insides of the hog. They call them chit'lins nowaday. In
those days, they called them what they were, guts! That's what you
were, a guteater. And some of you are still guteaters. The field negro
was beaten, from morning til night. He lived in a shack, in a hut. He
Related News
- Malcolm X: Make It Plain / Full Documentary
- Malcolm X's daughters unhappy with new book
- Analytical Review of Malcolm X Movie
field negro prayed for a wind. For a breeze. When the master got sick, the field negro prayed that he died. If someone come to the field negro and said "Let's separate, let's run." He didn't say "Where we going?" he
said "Any place is better than here". We got field negros in America
today. I'm a field negro.
No comments:
Post a Comment