In the field of Biography one sometimes comes across glorified idealised hagiographies , like Spikes Lees overlong droning Film.At other times you come across crass lurid hatchet jobs laden with spite.Bruce Perry is a solid candidate for the later.Underplaying the tragedies of the life of the younger Malcolm , making out the death of his father was a possible death by misadventure rather than a brutal racist murder which the Little Family believed it to be , to overplaying the the undoubted criminal record of the young Malcolm that went into prison on a raft of petty and more serious crimes.
In Chapter 25 we see a Malcolm , who in his youth aspired to be a lawyer until he was put down by his teacher in a perfunctory dismissive manner and told to have ambition more to the station of his race , developing a " prison philosophy" with the reactivated pursuit of education , resulting in "excellent" poems.By the time we get to page 176 we have Perry using his psychological musings to get to the nub of Malcolms interest in "Roman orator Cicero , emphasised that it is best to sway people by appealing to their emotions , not their intellect.", seventy pages later we find Malcolm has outgrown the parameters Bruce has encased him in by developing a mature " you gotta think to fight...".
On page 248 we discover that in his finest hour that jettisoned a legendary career the young World Champion to be Boxer " Ali couldn't see for all of round 5 during the Liston fight and asked his trainer to stop it.".
It takes until chapter 46 and page 281 to find the only complimentary chapter Perry can furnish on the character of Malcolm.A maturing and wiser Malcolm is developing the leadership skills that would make him the influential Marshall of his generation on page 321 " the best way to encourage people is to make suggestions instead of giving orders.".
Finally on page 348 we have the tacit admission of the role of violence in the civil rights struggle " acknowledged that the civil rights movement had been "sustained" more or less" by the white violence the movements activities had provoked.".Hence the role of Blacks being prepared to answer the violence of repression with the violence of defence of inalienable rights provides a sharper focus on the pincer counterpoint nature of the successful conclusion to the civil rights struggle.
You can get an indication of the type of People and interests that would welcome and lap up the type of treatment Bruce Perry gives in this almost pathological egregious pejorative sustained litany.
What is important is not the criminal who went into prison , but the Person who came out.Bruce Perry uses an array of psychological profiles , of which blatant projection seems to be a prominent thrust , in a manner that gives a grave disservice to the science based foundations which give psychology any form of credibility.The net obscurely weighted result is that if there is any conduct in Malcolm able to be portrayed in a negative light then the assumption is the true self nature is shining brightly , but if there is anything is his post-prison actions that comes across as sincere integrity then Malcolm is being a Charismatic devious charmer that only the best opportunist criminals can allegedly master.Bruce lays the groundwork in which Malcolm is damned in he does not match up to the faux pseudo psychological parameters or is damned if he is apparently mendaciously able to surmount them.
But the real wonder and true victory for Malcolm is despite all this spite , his commitment and integrity rises like a colossal monument to the heritage and empowerment he give to minority rights in his age and ours.The more dirt Perry lays on him the greater the estimation of the struggle and character is marked in the eyes of the reader.
One other factor worth recalling is Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were not mutually exclusive in their fight for equality.Martin achieved because he had the counterweight of Malcolm as the other side of the coin for the majority population to weight and consider , if they wont listen to Martin then they will have to ultimately deal with the Malcolms of this world.The rights won in the late 60s were less to do with the pacifism of Martin and more to do with several hundred thousand Blacks who had served in Vietnam and come back home with many disgruntlement's allied with US Army military training ,as well as proficiency in using guns and armaments, endowed with a radicalism and activism more in sympathy with the ways of Malcolm than the passivised route.
Sometimes it is best to let Malcolm explain himself , as he does in this famous appearance in the Oxford Union debate in 1964:
And in this televised Round table discussion his analysis putting a little kick into pacifism is shown to be spot on.With the "explode" element being the riots that happened in the late 60s.
Ultimately the last word should go to the creator of this excellent website
To Black nationalists, he is a Black nationalist. To the Nation of Islam, he is a great leader (in public), and a dangerous hell-bound hypocrite (in private). To Muslims, he is a Muslim par excellence, a martyr in the cause of Allah. To socialists, he was a socialist with a piercing critique of international capitalism and imperialism. To liberals who want to appropriate him, he was an integrationist and thus appears on a postage stamp. To other liberals (or conservatives) and certain extremists, he was a segregationist, a separatist. To misogynists, he was a misogynist, and to feminists, he was a borderline misogynist. To some psychoanalysts, he was just a troubled child with an unfulfilled oedipal complex.
After reading Perry im tempted to dig out and read the auto-biography written in collaboration with Alex Haley ( the writer of Roots) which was cited by Time Magazine as being one of the best Books of the 20th century.
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