Tuesday, February 3, 2009

I'm reading Malcolm X's autobiography

Half the time you just want to stand up and applaud.

"One particular university's 'token-integrated' black Phd associate professor I never will forget; he got me so mad I couldn't think straight. As badly as our 22 millions of educationally deprived black people need the help of any brains he has, he was looking like some fly in the buttermilk among his white 'colleagues' - and he was trying to eat me up! He was ranting about what a 'divisive demagogue' and what a 'reverse racist' I was. I was racking my head, to spear that fool; finally I held up my hand, and he stopped. 'Do you know what what white racists call black Phds? He said something like, 'I believe that I happen not to be aware of that' - you know one of these ultra-proper-talking negroes. And I laid the word down on him, loud: Nigger!"*

Awesome.

*p. 391/2 Malcom X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Penguin: 1968, London)

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