Malcolm X and "Human Rights Day"

It irritated me the first time I realized "MLK Day" was now being changed in many states to "Human Rights Day." MLK was more than a man, he was a symbol of the civil rights movement, I argued; whiting-out his name (I use the term white-out deliberately) neutralizes and sanitizes the day, moving attention away from our nation's racist past and burying our continued racial strife beneath vague, abstract wording. Even "Civil Rights Day" has more teeth than the anemic "Human Rights" label. The fact that a mostly-white state like Idaho, home of the Aryan nations, was changing it to "Human Rights Day" also didn't increase my opinion of it.

I still feel that way. But after teaching Malcolm X's "The Ballot or the Bullet" to my students this week, I derive much more pleasure from "Human Rights Day;" for Malcolm X didn't like the term "Civil Rights," preferring instead the term "Human Rights." For as a human rights issue, he could bring the United States before the Human Rights Tribunal of the United Nations, recruiting new allies in Africa, Asia, Latin-America, China, etc. Malcolm didn't want non-violent demonstrations like MLK, he didn't want to "turn the other cheek"--no, he wanted black people to get mad, to get "reciprocal," to get violent; he wanted other countries to get involved, he wanted the third world to rise up against the U.S., and he wanted to do that by calling it a "human rights" movement.

So, now when I hear Idahoans and Utahans defend the sanitized "Human Rights Day" that ignores MLK as much as possible, I want to say back, "Preach it brother! Malcolm X all the way! Let's go beat us some crackers!" All these white "Human Rights Day" defenders would probably prefer MLK a million times over to the radicalism of Malcolm X. But it's too late for that now, suckas! Don't like MLK ? We got some much angrier black people if you'd prefer! Let's fix us some Molotov Cocktails, and go throw us a Human Rights Day!