Attempted ivory tower
assassination of Malcolm X:
an interview wit’ Jared Ball,
editor of ‘A Lie of Re-Invention’
October 21, 2012by People’s Minister of Information JR
El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, aka Malcolm XEl Hajj Malik El Shabazz, aka Malcolm X, is one of the most internationally well known figures of the human rights struggle from the United States, which also makes him one of the most attacked by the institutions that serve the interests of the elite. Recently the late Professor Manning Marable released a book on Malcolm – “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” – that was lauded as the “definitive” biography by progressives all over, including Democracy Now.
Interestingly, a lot of the critics of Marable’s work came from the Black community, who felt as if the book was void of scholarly research and that it made some unsubstantiated claims of Malcolm being a homosexual prostitute as well as supposedly cheating on numerous occasions on his wife, Betty.
I am happy to present the fact that Black Classic Press has just published a new book – “A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X” – edited in part by Jared Ball, who I interviewed to tell about his new literary classic that defends the legacy of Malcolm X against an attempted ivory tower assassination. Check him out.
M.O.I. JR: Can you talk about the inspiration behind this new book that you edited?
Jared: I see Malcolm X as our inspiration and the fact that what we had initially hoped would be a very different book became yet another attempt at diminishing this great man and the politics, the ideas with which he worked, which he developed and which he passed on. What has come from Marable and Viking Press is a corporate product, a simple commodity to be traded, but for more than money; it is a carefully constructed ideological assault on history, on radical politics, on historical and cultural memory, on the very idea of revolution.
It really is a product meant to serve the need, as Fanon once said was necessary to a colonizer, to destroy even the idea of liberation among the colonized. So our inspiration is to offer up some kind of defense, not just of Malcolm himself, but the very idea of freedom that he still represents.
M.O.I. JR: What are some of the main issues that you and others have with Manning Marable’s book on Malcolm X?
Jared: A) Poor scholarship: Marable fails to properly cite or offer evidence to support his many wild claims, which range from accusations of infidelity, to entirely unsubstantiated claims of homosexuality or a supposed inability of Malcolm to trust all women. Marable also interviewed a scandalously low number of people, dismisses nearly all previous scholarship on Malcolm, all the while borrowing heavily from them as he builds his history of Malcolm X and recounts the assassination.
Betty Shabazz and Malcolm XB) Ideology: What evidence Marable does cite is then distilled through his social democratic lens so that with artful semi-quotation and emphasis, all woven confusingly through 600 pages of text, he leaves the reader with a Malcolm X that would likely be a member of Barack Obama’s cabinet as opposed to having fomented a global revolution that would make even the existence of an Obama a political impossibility. That is, Marable reduces Malcolm’s anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, revolutionary nationalist/internationalist armed struggle revolutionary politics to a “race-neutral” Democrat whose worldview is manifest in our “post-racial” Obama moment. Marable actually reinterprets Malcolm X by the book’s end in a way that places Obama within the political trajectory of a Malcolm X rather than, as we argue, in direct and antithetical opposition.
C) Political: Many of our contributors note the ways in which Marable, as an elite academic from an elite Ivy League university, working closely with an elite publisher, have crafted a version of Malcolm X that serves their political interests. At a time when new generations are coming to terms with an unjust world, there is a need to cut them off from potentially radicalizing influences. Malcolm X has long been associated with revolutionizing people’s consciousness, so to offer him up in his real brilliance, complexity, foresight and militancy would be to ignite existing embers when these elite forces can only conspire to dampen them. As our contributors note, the consciousness of what produces a work must be investigated, particularly when the subject is Malcolm X. And so several of our contributors do take this question on, in a variety of ways, to challenge the perspective Marable and his colleagues applied to Malcolm.
At a time when new generations are coming to terms with an unjust world, there is a need to cut them off from potentially radicalizing influences. Malcolm X has long been associated with revolutionizing people’s consciousness.
M.O.I. JR: Why was Manning Marable’s book held up as a definitive work on Malcolm X by “progressives” like Democracy Now?
Jared: Because it is a version of Malcolm X and of world history that makes them more comfortable. It makes the scary Malcolm X palatable to affluent White audiences and petit bourgeois, wishing-they-were-affluent Black ones. Marable disrespects Black nationalism, Kwame Nkrumah, the Garvey movement, the Nation of Islam, Marxism-Leninism, armed struggle – all while making repeated and unsubstantiated claims against Malcolm’s own views of himself, against the legitimacy of Alex Haley’s “Autobiography” and that question Malcolm’s sexuality, fidelity and even ability to resist barely-legal heterosexual encounters with junior colleagues.
Dr. Manning MarableThe mainstream called it a “masterpiece” and gave it a Pulitzer. Many “progressives” continue to measure themselves by the standards they claim to critique. So once the mainstream offers its stamp of approval and then brings in the very influential Black signatories of West, Dyson and Gates, the rest follow suit. It is also part of a persistent problem of there being tremendous gaps between Black radical thought and thinkers and White liberals and progressives, so for many West, Dyson and Gates represent the extent of Black thought, and entire radical traditions are ignored, leaving only these spokesmen to speak for all.
A full discussion of Malcolm X will inevitably lead people to very uncomfortable conversations about today and their place in the world and part of our argument is that distorting Malcolm’s history is a political tool in maintaining inequality today. If the idea of revolution can be reduced to an acceptance of the world as it currently exists or an acceptance that “progress” is being made, then the very forces that produced this reinvention of Malcolm are further protected. So few media outlets can afford to engage figures like Malcolm X in any serious manner for any prolonged period of time.
If the idea of revolution can be reduced to an acceptance of the world as it currently exists or an acceptance that “progress” is being made, then the very forces that produced this reinvention of Malcolm are further protected.
M.O.I. JR: How did you pick the writers who contributed to this excellent piece of literature? What was the process like?
Jared: We sent calls out and targeted some folks we knew had a history with Malcolm and who had actually read Marable’s book. That was key, ours was intended – overtly so – to be a hostile response to Marable but one based in sound scholarship and a close read of his book. We did not want mere reflections of Malcolm and we did not want any apologies for Marable. This criterion narrowed our field considerably but we think in a good way. We then took our time, vetted the pieces, edited, researched, extended deadlines and took our time to make sure that we reduced as best we could any errors, omissions etc. We did not want to repeat any of the mistakes we demonstrate were made by Marable despite having far less time and far fewer resources. We think we have done very well.
M.O.I. JR: Over 45 years after his assassination, why are well funded people in power, such as professors and publishing houses, still trying to smear this revolutionary’s legacy?
Jared: As I said, this is as much about managing the moment as it is the past. History impacts consciousness, which in turn impacts behavior. What we think of the past influences our future actions. Distorting Malcolm X does as much to distort today and what we might do in the future. Monuments, anthems, flags, histories all conspire to manage our behavior. Killing Malcolm physically was really only step one.
What we think of the past influences our future actions. Distorting Malcolm X does as much to distort today and what we might do in the future.
M.O.I. JR: Can you talk about the significance of Manning Marable being affiliated with Columbia University? Can you also talk about Columbia’s affiliation with Malcolm X?
Jared: Several of our contributors take this up in detail. Columbia is part of an elite apparatus whose goal is defense of the state and of the established order. In other words, as an institution, it has an ideology and an ideological function as does Viking Press, a subsidiary of Penguin Publishing, one of the world’s six largest publishers, and they looked to fund and produce a version of Malcolm X that was consistent with their taking over the preservation of the Audubon Ballroom, which impacts, among other things, even the kinds of commemorative events that can take place there. It, again, is maintenance of history for the management of today.
M.O.I. JR: How have progressives responded? How have academics responded?
Jared: The book hasn’t been out long, so it’s hard to say at the moment. However, we do expect a certain level of marginalization. For reasons already stated, we don’t expect that our book will get the attention perhaps it should. Marable was a fairly large figure in academia; we are not. Penguin Press is enormous; Black Classic Press is, unfortunately, not. We take up a defense of a man who represented and represents so much of a threat to so many established institutions, ideas, inequalities. So we are clear.
But we are also attempting to take this beyond a simple academic squabble to a level that we think best reflects Malcolm’s own work, his own point, that is, to an understanding that we still need to be engaged in struggle and looking to apply as best we can the ideas of the great women and men we claim almost daily to honor. This is not simply about responding to Marable or Columbia or Viking. I, at least, think it is about returning – to the extent that it is not already – militancy, radical theory and organization to discussions of “what are we all going to do now?” And where better to start than with Malcolm X?
M.O.I. JR: What is the importance of Malcolm X’s message and legacy to the modern-day psychology of Blacks in Amerikkka?
Jared: For me, Malcolm X continues to represent the best analysis and prescriptive response to the current conditions we still all face. His image still symbolizes defiance and strength and a genuinely radical break from what is. None of the conditions he sought to eradicate went away or even weakened since his assassination. In fact, much of what he tried to get us to deal with is worse now than when he was here. So as we variously ask in our book, how in the world is anything Malcolm said out-dated? What in his analysis of the world in 1965 would be out of place today? I think very little to none at all. This is again why I see the act committed by Marable and Viking as quite a contemporary one; it is not simply a matter of history.
His image still symbolizes defiance and strength and a genuinely radical break from what is. None of the conditions he sought to eradicate went away or even weakened since his assassination. In fact, much of what he tried to get us to deal with is worse now than when he was here.
M.O.I. JR: What do you hope people get after they read this new book?
Dr. Jared BallJared: I hope people get mad, really, really, mad. I hope they get so mad that they, as Dr. Clarke used to say, also “get smart.” And then I hope they get more organized. Malcolm used to say that all Black people were angry and that he was the “angriest of them all.” Anger is underrated. So I hope they get real mad and then get real organized. If our book has anything to do with that I will be slightly less angry. Slightly.
M.O.I. JR: How can people keep up with you online?
Jared: IMixWhatILike.org. Thanks.
The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’” and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe” and “Block Reportin’ 101,” available, along with many more interviews, at www.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com.
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Jared Ball & Other Scholars Confront the Lies About Malcolm X in Manning Marable’s Book
Author, activist, scholar and former Green Party presidential candidate, professor Jared Ball is one of the driving forces behind a new book that challenges the late Manning Marable and some of his conclusions he lays out in what many consider a ground breaking book onMalcolm X. ‘Malcolm a Life Reinvention’ set off a sea of controversy when it dropped shortly after Marable’s passing. Many were shocked and disturbed about allegations of Malcolm being in a marriage fraught with infidelity. Many were upset with the assertion that Malcolm was involved in same-sex relationship with a white benefactor..
Others like Dr Jared Ball were disturbed by the book because it moves Malcolm X away from his radical, power challenging politics to something that is more compromised and arguable very mainstream. Ball explains this conflation of Malcolm X making a pilgrimage to Mecca, coming back and suddenly loving white people and seeking to assimilate his politics and worldview into American society is absurdly false.
We sat down w/ Jared Ball who explained the painstaking process of research and editing he and co-author Todd Burroughs undertook to counter many of Marable’s arguments in their book A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X. He explains why it was important to bring an array of scholars together to contribute to this book and what subjects they covered..he also explains the title they chose for the book. They don’t think Marable is a liar, but they feel there is a ‘contradictory political reshaping and distortion’ of Malcolm X’s legacy that needs to be strongly challenged. Peep the interview below..
GO HERE TO HEAR AUDIO INTERVIEW
In the following video Wendy Wolf, Viking Press editor and one intimately involved the publication of Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, offers us further justification for our A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X. I have only just seen for the first time the video uploaded in February of 2012 – unfortunately well after we had submitted our manuscript – and list below just a few reasons why I think Wolf goes so far in making our point.
1. Wolf begins by explaining her lack of expertise as a scholar and that her view of Malcolm X, up until the moment Marable “walked into [her] office,” was one driven by her experience growing up in the segregated south with her “liberal integrationist family” where reading Malcolm’s Autobiography frightened her, “he was a scary dude.” It is this distance that allows her to later refer to Malcolm’s “native intelligence” and explains her simple ignorance around the political trajectories of Malcolm X and Dr. King (to name but two). I’ll come back to that point, but this is why our volume’s contributors seek to dislodge Wolf, Viking, Columbia University and Marable as being capable, certainly not solely capable, of interpreting the life and politics of Malcolm X. Their approach is inherently hostile to and fearful of the revolution Malcolm represented/represents.
2. Wolf assumes authority over Alex Haley, Spike Lee and Malcolm himself by dismissing each as best able to tell and interpret Malcolm’s life and politics. Wolf says Lee’s film was nice but was just “Betty’s story” which cleaned up the realities of their love life. Wolf also goes on to joke that “… and no, Betty didn’t look like Angela Basset.” Is that relevant? No more than my sincere belief that Betty Shabazz was indeed more physically attractive than Angela Basset. But authority is authority. Again, we wanted to make some attempt, or to join those making similar attempts, to directly challenge their claim to being definitive and all-supplanting when it comes to life of Malcolm X or to the ways in which his ideas are to be distilled.
3. Wolf uses “we” in describing the writing process, the style, and their book’s approach almost as much as Marable used “maybe, probably, could have, might have” to describe what they call “evidence.” Wolf even says that she merely went to Marable for his “approval” of either her severe editing or outright writing of the book. She says, for instance, “We set out to rebuild an era” in which to describe Marcus Garvey and the ideas and world that would influence Malcolm X and then says that to do that she referred back to her experience talking with White students who, like Freedom Riders, went down south to register voters. She says nothing of what Marable brought to bear when interpreting the era she was rebuilding but shares with us a lot about the worldview that influenced her own.
4. Wolf then is apparently reluctant to bring up the infamous “page 66″ and the claim of Malcolm’s homosexuality. She says this as if to say that she cannot avoid doing so because so much has been made of it but says nothing of the coincidence of this – and other salacious and unsupported claims – helping to promote her book or situate it politically. And once again, there is absolutely no evidence to support these claims or even an attempt to define the alleged acts as “homosexual.” In fact, on that very page they simply say – and with no footnote or citation – that Malcolm “was probably describing his own homosexual encounters with Paul Lennon” (emphasis mine). To say that pouring talcum powder on a man for money is gay is to deny the existence of a continuum that might include this as a business transaction on one end and on another, for example, full blown (pun intended) homosexual intercourse between consenting adults. Or is this just the sexuality version of not being a little pregnant? Wolf proceeds to perform just that denial and then says that though the initial claim by Malcolm was that this was the act of a friend “we” now know that he confided to his brother and sister that it indeed was him. Wolf is also misleading in that these claims are repeated, beyond her “page 66,” where later “homosexual” is simply listed with several other applied labels as a now-established-taken-for-granted-fact, “Detroit Red… pimp, drug addict… homosexual…” (p. 78). But, much like Marable’s book, she offers no proof of this and says nothing of the fact that their book too has not one citation supporting this allegation. More importantly, Wolf says nothing of how this falsely-dropped titillating morsel allows for mass distraction and the necessary – plus beneficial – opposing claim by Wolf and Marable that they are “humanizing” Malcolm. Now critics can be dismissed as childishly incapable of handling the reality of a man for whom they have too much unbridled respect.
5. Wolf then lays down the trump card and the ultimate ideological-defining purpose of their book. She explains, by quoting Marable, how Malcolm would have condemned the “terrorist attacks of 9/11″ and had “his social vision expanded to include people of divergent nationalities and racial identities, his gentle humanism and antiracism could have become a platform for a new kind of radical, global ethnic politics. Instead of the fiery symbol of ethnic violence and religious hatred, as al-Qaeda might project him, Malcolm X should become a representative for hope and human dignity.” Wolf seems to practically take credit for writing those lines, she certainly endorses them and they are definitely designed to juxtapose enemies of the state against one another rather than in equal opposition to the same and truly leading source of global terrorism.
6. And lastly, please note in the 53rd minute the very lone sister who quietly, succinctly and quite specifically points out the research flaws in the Marable book and who is then summarily ignored with a mere “thank you” and a turn of the head. After speaking for nearly an hour about the meticulously researched and comprehensive biography Wolf has no words, none at all, for the sound and reasonably asked question about the nature of that comprehensive research. Her only option is avoidance, dismissal and redirect. It was shameful and yet so fruitful in demonstrating the soundness of our own project and those like it. We do not have to eschew our politics to be sound in our research. One need not cancel out the other. Wolf was simply not up to the task of soundly defending what is clearly her very ideological reading and interpretation of Malcolm X.
The editors and several contributors to A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X will be discussing all of this and more Monday November 26, 2012 at Bus Boys and Poets in Washington, DC (5th/K St).
5 Responses to “Wendy Wolf, Viking Press Editor and Establishment Spokesperson, Explains the “Lie of Reinvention””
My first impression of this ‘lecture’ is- Why have a ‘liberal’ white woman publisher, Ms Wolf, who admits she wasn’t even an expert on Malcolm [nor even an admirer], address a Black Student Union event? [sounding like a school marm lecturing some white school kids]? IMO semi-bourgeois IE: Spike Lee & Alex Haley would have more credibility to lecture on Malcolm to a Black student union than this woman. Her view is obviously ‘liberal’- not even progressive let alone radical.
She said her [IE: Marable’s] book humanized Malcolm [IE: de-sainted him]. Yet she claimed, by presenting a ‘theory’- which is NOT backed up w proof, that the ‘Autobiography’ exaggerated his tenure as mean street-hustler- Detroit Red. I guess Malcolm as Detroit Red of the ‘Autobiography’ was a little too rawly human- for her
Then she [&/or Marable] extrapolates based on innuendo & pseudo psycho-analysis, that Malcolm is actually Rudy in the ‘Autobiography’- to rehash Bruce Perry’s dubious claim RE Malcolm as Detroit Red, homo-sexual past. She claims that Malcolm’s own brother & sister [un-named] backed this, yet the claim is that there’s good ‘circumstantial’ evidence that Rudy is actually Malcolm [aka Detroit Red]. IMO a man’s own brother & sister saying they heard him say it- is not merely ‘circumstantial’ evidence. And Dr Ball’s correct- The Sister challenged that claim as thin & unsupported & Ms Wolf’s response was dismissive.
Ms Wolf also glossed over the even more insidious attack [than Detroit Red’s alleged but unproven homo-sexuality] that her & Marable’s Book makes RE: Malcolm & Betty’s marriage- as not just as she described ‘bumpy’- but as adulterous. In fact the Book’s claims that both Malcolm & Betty were cheating on each other, & in fact that Malcolm maybe / possibly / could have engaged in an adulterous rendezvous on the eve of his assassination.
Mrs Wolf critiques Oliver Stone concerning JFK ‘We don’t know what JFK would have done RE: Vietnam’ – Yet IMO Oliver Stone [& Jim Douglass in ‘JFK & the Unspeakable’] makes a better fact based case that JFK was intending to disentangle himself from Vietnam, than she does concerning Malcolm’s view on the post 9-11 World. This Woman does NOT have a clue what Malcolm’s view on Al-Qaeda would have been. Maybe he would have renounced them as AL-CIAeda type Intel assets. I’m certain that Malcolm would have had a BIG Problem w the role that Al-Qaeda affiliates in Libya & the NTC racist lynch-mob rebel-rousers, & Al-Jazeera [& O-Bomber & Sue Rice, & DN!] played in devastating Libya last yr, but Ms Wolf would probably challenge that view as based on conjecture & my own political view-point. I say ‘What’s good for the Goose is good for the Gander’. All of Ms Wolf’s conjecture RE this matter is based on a white US ‘Liberal’s’ post 9-11 in the age of Obama view-point- nothing more.
To emphasize the point note how see responds to the question RE: Malcolm relationship w Fidel. Her fist response was that Fidel took control on Cuba but Malcolm never took control of ANY-THING! Her response was NOT even analytical, even though its known that both men respected each other, challenged the system [particularly w RE to the US] & counted each other as friends & comrades in struggle. If Ms Wolf can’t even give an analytical fact-based view on the importance of the relationship between Malcolm & Fidel, how the HELL can she give any meaningful insight on what Malcolm’s view would have been on post 9-11 Al-Qaeda & Obama- none of which even existed [or was even fore-seen] when he was assassinated in 1963!!!
I left this out – it shows that Malcolm’s ‘Autobiography’ was NO ‘white-wash’ [tried to make him 'saintly']: As a white woman liberal Ms Wolf latches on to Malcolm’s big regret being he’s blunt dismissal of a white female student at a college lecture when she asked what she could do to help ['Nothing']. Yet the ‘humanly flawed’ Malcolm wrote an Entire Chapter of Regret in his ‘Autobiography’ called ‘Laura’, explaining how he dumped Laura, who was a nice & smart Black girl’- for an older more ‘wordly’ white ritzy-ditzy woman [Sophia] who liked slummin- looking for a Black Stud on the side [IE: Malcolm- he literally left Laura on the dance-floor for Sophia]. In ‘Laura’ Malcolm says when he sees her again she’s become a drug addicted prostitute & assumes part of the blame for destroying her life.
IMO the story of how he mistreated Laura was far more significant for Malcolm than his dismissal of that white ‘liberal’ college student’s help.
More on Point 2: IMO Ms Wolf shows disrespect for Black women in several different ways during her 40 – 45 min presentation. Not only did she fail to bring up the significance of Malcolm’s ‘Autobigraphy’s’ chapter on ‘Laura’, & her dismissive non-response to the sister’s pertinent question & observation RE: the Book’s choice of title & spurious accusations [Note that Ms Wolf answered every other person's {mainly white men} question in some detail]…,
BUT Then Ms Wolf dismisses Spike Lee’s movie as just ‘Betty’s story to white-wash their troubled marriage- Which is simply NOT TRUE. Spike’s movie is based on Malcolm’s Auto-biography, anyone who’s read it & seen the movie would [or should] know that. IMO Ms Wolf used this as a chance to take a clever little pot-shot at Sis Betty, to justify [= distract] why her [& Marable's] Book trashed Betty [& other key Black women in Malcolm's life- or conveniently failed to mention them]. & to justify why Marable failed to interview Betty for his Book [IMO it's kinda hard to look into the eyes of Malcolm's widow know full well you're going to write an insidious hit-piece on both him & her].
Surprised!?… This would imply that you haven’t learned the lesson.
@Nixakliel
You answered the question in the first line of your own with the context. A white woman’s scholarship is colder in this world of academic masturbation. So she had to render the seal of disapproval and the mark of legitimacy for some people on the value of this critique. I’d also go on to say I don’t expect this book to win any accolades from any of the living conspirators of the other narrative.
@The purpose
The same “Dangerous ideas” that were erased to make King a Dreamer, are out to make Malcolm a Punk. This revisionism unabated will soon make Darwin the father of African history and Slavery a blessing. The battle is unending when you contend in a society that makes it profitable to defame yourself and aggrandize servility to the disorder of the world. I’m glad the book was written, yet often times these things seem to be more for posterity than to solving the issue at hand… but as scholars they chart one aspect of the war. So I suppose the issue of intellectual masturbation has more to do with people not doing anything with it outside of the classroom. So like tomes of wisdom locked in a monastery at the top of a mountain, other struggles need to be had to make credible information such as this accessible and relevant outside of academia.
On one hand the Book tries to make Malcolm [as Detroit Red] out to be a homo-sexual prostitute for older white men [as a counter-narrative to his ‘stabling’ {?pimping?} even well to do white women {Sophia} as Detroit Red], & on the other hand tries to turn him & Betty into serial adulterers in an alleged ‘phony’ marriage [w him having fling(s) w girl(s) young enough to be his daughter(s) - which 'ironically' was one of the main reasons why Malcolm became disillusioned w Mr Muhammed].
All this was done in the name of ‘humanizing’ Malcolm- as if the ‘Auto-biography’ sugar-coated his life [It Did NOT]. Yet Ms Wolf claims [theorizes] that the ‘Auto-biography’ greatly exaggerated Malcolm’s mean street-hustler- Detroit Red persona [w little evidence to back it up], which then gave her & Marable the excuse to ‘Re-Invent Malcolm’s Life’ w their own narrative- fulfilling their own poly-trickal agenda(s), which obviously is antithetical to Malcolm’s goals.