Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20110704

and this book, some call magnum opus, some call a tragedy, some thinks is destroys his legacy or makes him larger and greater. also chairman of the oversight board. [applause] next to her, michael eric dyson university professor at georgetown university and host a the michael eric dyson show. [applause] last, professor political science and african studies at johns hopkins university. [applause] melissa harris-perry can associate professor of african-american studies at princeton, but now to the university. [applause] let's jump into the heat of the battle and talk about the significance of this book in the arguments around the significant clearly it is adding something he should this discussion, but what is that? i read this book twice. before you throw some of those ideas, i'm curious starting with sherrilyn ifill, what is for you the significance of malcolm x? >> thank you, mark. first of all, significance of course is that bareboat road and he represents many of us to begin scholars, who entered the academy, of how one can read it as relative scholar of a scholar who is relevant to the lives of african-american people who is focused on bringing truth in great detail. this is my train of thought, 80 pages of footnotes. i love it. i remember the night that the news came out that manning marable had passed away as in ann arbor michigan where i had never been before, that giving a talk about slavery and reparations at university of michigan. the woman who is hosting me was the person who told me about it. she teaches at the university of michigan in the last school in the afro-american studies department, a white woman and she immediately began to tell me about how manning marable had mentored her in new york. i didn't find it surprising to simmer in the heartland somebody was telling the story because of his tremendous influence. before i jump into talking about malcolm x come i want to say for me a good deal is that he wrote it. i would secondly say it's also significant that unfortunately released, but that this evening and others like it are important. i remember when the mother of emmett till died, she also had a boat she agreed to and she died it would unshredded week before out.ook came most of you have never read it because she was allied to do the publicity. it's a powerfully important book about what happened to mothers, the journey of a mother when her son is killed, something powerful to the african-american community. tonight is important and it's our job to carry this forward. in terms of significance briefly for me, i think that this book is in some ways long-overdue because it provides missing details that in your intellectuals are at any inner spirit spirit come you just know have to be missing from what you know those who did not know marable unshared malcolm x that were missing from the story. that is really the day to day struggle of takes to evolve as a leader, particularly as an african-american male leader who has integrity. it is a journey. it is not a place and there have been so many pieces of malcolm's journey missing. i've always found these huge gaps in terms of malcolm x's journey and many are filled by this book in airports and because of the iconic position that he holds for so many and i'm sure we contact about our. >> well, i am honored to be here tonight in such a distinguished panel and of course in memory of manning. i wish he could've been here himself to talk about his book he would've loved this audience and the vibrant reception to let this book, this book has been accorded. this has been controversial as well. and manning was fully prepared for that in my conversations with him. he loved malcolm x that very few other people. he loved the meaning of the man he loved from its historical significance. practice and he also had to he had to tell the church is best as he could as bystanders today. the power and the beauty of this book is that it is rendered in such assessable and elegant prose, that engages a broad spectrum and continuing unscholarly data. if you will, on access data about malcolm in terms of interviews and in terms of some of the fbi files. and really tries to wrestle with a complicated story of an iconic figure who meant so much to varying and sometimes competing in outright contradictory to the achievements. some manning had a very difficult job to do. his film with the fire and the heat of various constituencies trying to figure out what are you going to make this and that we love? and even more so because this is a scholarly tried to grapple with the significance of malcolm x, it is an enormous work. i do believe it is a magnum opus and i've seen a whole lot because manning redeker to the alien things that have to be taught with from some of his capitalism developed down to his work on black politics and it's an extraordinary career that he had a vocation for trying to bring lucidity and clarity to complicated and difficult truths. so i bought this book. i read it. i was privileged to read it before it was published. it is a brilliant, insightful, invigorating, and assign comprehension of his outsized and immortal human being has and those who are constantly by some of malcolm -- the man in spite of copastor member you can't malcolm the greatest black figure to emerge in the 20th century. it just don't get it deeper than that. a lot of this stuff has come out has been exaggerated, sun has been generated from peoples since it insecurities and frailties and quite frankly and the fear of dealing with the raw truth of an evolving human being. and i celebrate this book. i think the essence is that it delivers as professor ifill said a complicated vision of a man who needs to be understood and in his own autobiography that manning has now challenged in a powerful way. malcolm says they won't let me turn the corner and so many people still have him in a bear hug and refuses to let him breathe freely the air of his own evolution. so i celebrate this book and look forward to talking to you about it. >> i like the rest of the pan on going to take a bit of time to talk about manning. we often black box the active culture production, the act of writing the book, the active writing a song, the act of painting a picture. and i think we do that for a number of reasons, but i think there is a whole bunch of reasons why we might want to unpack that process. many memorable stuff. and it working to talk about. manning had to have both once while dealing with that. so we don't talk a lot about the active production, dictate the grinder takes. like i wrote a little book that's coming out. these guys have written several. every time you're dealing with some type of crisis, you still have to do it. the fact he was able to do it any never done anything like this in his career, which is dirty a testament. we have four rows of scholars. some of us are primarily mentors. some of us are primarily writers, some teachers. some of us are institution builders. manning was all for. the university of colorado colombia. he there founded or developed black studies programs. he did some other stuff while it's really important to talk about that process and how greedy scholar he was. now with that said, i think i'm going to be the world's critic in that i believe this work is the work scholars who have to wrestle with and join with malcolm x's legacy going forward however even as it humanizes him, they are a of questions that are shunted aside or not affect the blue dealt with and diminishes the importance will talk a little more. he does not give enough attention to black nationalism and even of the nation of islam, have some incredibly problematic politics and doesn't effectively deal with some of the reasons why the nation of islam was as effective as it was in mobilizing people. so the book comes out kind of -- the book ends up doing a great deal and it is an excellent way to end a career. i am so sorry that he's not here to participate. with that said, there are some questions and hopefully will be able to wrestle with those. >> i too will take a commanding moment only because i just really loved him and i really loved him mostly because he was incredibly snarky. i like nice people, but i so prefer people who are that'll harsh and a little snarky and will make the observation. i can remember sitting and listening to people who are important scholars, giving lectures in a room with manning and looking over eye-catching as expressions and thinking yeah, okay. and so, certainly having known him in those places, i know he would not run to beat exclusively a lovefest. it was through criticism and through clear eyed, careful intellectual engagement. so i appreciate you bringing that as well. just a few things i think are days. i actually would take some disagreement with your representation of how we represent the nation of islam. one of the things i like best about the book was my sense that he presents at least theologically as he is discussing the nation without any start for the sense of foolishness. he engages theology of the nation of islam with as much respect and as much care as one historian of any religious tradition. for example, we read books about people who are important leaders within the christian tradition. no one mocks the idea that either way, he believed in this religion where this guy got up after three days of being dead and what to round. but pretty frequently when you read scholarly works on the nation, they do make fun of creationists. they do lock the fundamental underlying urological precepts and manning not only restraints himself, but presents himself in some ways that even though we know the rejection of many of those ideas that are going to come later in the book from malcolm himself. the second thing this book did for me, i know a lot of people are angry that the text takes away the hero that is malcolm x for so many people. i'll double back to that in a second. at the thing he killed for me with alex haley. yeah, boy coming to read this and alex is not looking like he should feel very good about 10. and that has been done, but there is a way in which it happening here is -- a work he has to do in order to deconstruct the autobiography. so in order to deconstruct the autobiography, he takes it into the black box of haley's writing, exactly the black boxer talking about. of course as you know it's not always pretty, particularly when writing to feed yourself. so i think you have to take that in ways that were challenging. the third thing i thought was critically important as we talk about manning's passing here. i'd read the book and i've read this section on the assassination and i read it very quickly because i got a very painful to read particularly in the context of manning found passing, something about the speed with which his narrative picks up there in the intensity of it. but a reread it again yesterday, that section in the context in the killing of osama bin laden. and not because in any way i think malcolm x or osama bin laden have anything to do with one another, but only in the sense of americans bloodlust, the desire to see the picture, the in these he has them about the murder of the opponent. and i wanted to pause and go back and think about malcolm's assassination again in a very american moment. we think of malcolm as the black nationalist critiquing america, but still about plants caught up in a very american structure including the nation. reading that again in the context of the killing of bin laden created a certain. im ratty to give up alex haley's malcolm x and spike lee's malcolm x. not everybody is. is. as a friend who teaches at an all boys charter school in the inner-city and there is no book that appears more frequently on the spring syllabus are on the friend's personal bookshelf than the autobiography of malcolm max. he was never taught a class to these kids about teaching the autobiography. and you know, the work in political science is this idea that malcolm is built through the film and through the autobiography is the kind of magical talent and you got him to get your manhood fix and you started to a malcolm x incantation to represent your anger the american states and your sense of which are organizing political possibilities of black manhood are. and so that meant is incredibly important and powerful and does organizing work. but i'm ready to give it up without to give it up into a void. i suspect that it wasn't quite right, but it wasn't ready to give it up to avoid. but in its text does is allow us to give up five minutes without having to opt-in to avoid. it gives us something else that is contentious and will have to deal with, but this gives us another malcolm who we can live in a very different kind of way. >> what i'd like to do is throw the question out. feel free to just leap into things. i want to pick up on some of the things you said and also some of the things in this book and come out of these notes are really attached themselves to what you're just saying. let me begin where we just left off. for some people, there are many hearts of matter if this book that are tearing people apart who care about malcolm max and care about this broken this way and have read this book. and so let's begin with alex haley. alex haley was, his book was a seminal work to move to millions of young americans, not just african-americans, move human beings understand to struggle on this planet about oppressed people and a sense of being african-american and where you stood in why you said the other to which you had to fight for an offense. so having said that, i understand what you just said. i can read this and going to do trash alec struve heard? some people have criticized manninen this book by saying that he also liberalized the image of malcolm x. not similarly, so what about the argument about the book know that they're being relevant and this being relevant now? >> well, you know, i think in light of what everybody said and after reading the book myself, surely you can't read hailey the same way. you can't come to the same conclusion. you can't see it the same lenses because coming in outcome and manning makes clear that his political ideological framework determined what he included, would be excluded from what he found that the bible. so the thing is -- bright? it's been a bible. so there's a lot of stuff were malcolm, when you're a beginning minister, it's a wonder you even have any faith left, which is beautiful because i believe in trying to deconstruct and the mythologize a lot of step that is secreted historically around these tags they reveal more about the projections of authors in the possibilities that they imagined than an object of truth. so i think that the autobiography continues to be useful, but it has to be seen in a specific way. and i think once the read hailey's autobiographical construction of malcolm's life, he was the secretary said his speed, that was doing a lot more by throwing stuff in and keeping stuff out and fighting with publishers who wanted their own vision of malcolm to prevail. it's also why publishing houses, political framework in its own self mythologizing. it's not like himself as a template of objective truths upon which we could then press our conceptions of what his life is like. this is what manning helps us understand. malcolm is exaggerating his hosting itinerary for particular purposes to try to suggest the redemptive power of elijah mohammed and silicates turned on his head at the end of his life. so when i think about the book now, i guess because there is a famous preacher preaching is very, very famous guy. and these two seminary students were there. it was easter sunday and he was chanting. jesus got up on sunday morning and restart. people yes, my god it's amazing. and the two seminary in schenectady easter sunday and said reverend so-and-so, you restored my faith. and then seminary and i'm reading all this stuff. and after you are talking about jesus resurrect team. [laughter] right? now, you could either say this guy was cynical, that he was lying or that even when you know that all the stuff you read which are reshaped to know jesus reminiscent he was in the stuff people wrote. before jury, right? facets of the bible was written by paul and all that stuff. at the end of the community still have a faith that is sustained in the mid-to the deconstruction, but the deconstruction of the tv set so that how the sex were produced. we talk about the black box of rejection. it assumes they are going to crash. and the crashing has been of the kind of -- the clash between, you know, our understanding of intellectual process these that he brings this sharpness scholarship possible with the kind of faith assertions. i think professor harris. sprayed on here, that and he takes the cosmology and the theology, which makes just as much sense than any other religious assertion that has been put out there. i could end by saying this. i don't think you have to give up alex haley's book, the chip to give up what you think and what you thought it did and give up a malcolm said about himself. would you begin? at the beginning. he began by saying that lives are lived in tents and repeated affirmation of ideals that possibly evolve. that's what frederick had to write three auto biology. so i think we don't have to give it up, but we have to give up what we think about it and begin to use the text differently informed about the stuff that manning brought to us. [applause] i would also said just that this sounded like a discussion about the bible in a way because of the way people respond to text. i guess i want to respond that it's not like a discussion to the bible. i think part of our problem is that we read books like their religious text. you know, religion in and of itself is irrational, you believe it. i'm a christian. you believe it and even though you can't scientifically prove of us have come you believe what you believe. too often when it comes to our heroes, we read about them and internalized stories about them as though they are a religious figure and a deity. and we cut off our critical faculty and we become infested in perpetuating certain myths. it happened with martin for many years through that process that we don't even remember how much people were invested in a mythology about martin luther king jr., who had to be humanized over decades that we now recognize that missing and feared dead as the state we're at now with this task. you can never fully understand raw the product of competing narratives. we all know we talk about ourselves a little to differently than how other people would talk about it. you're reading a biased texas to visit calls itself. i love frederick douglass, but i'm sure that if somebody else, it's mrs. douglas are writing the story -- and just pain. as african american people, we are very protective of our heroes, very protective of them. sometimes it is to the exclusion of wanting to accept them as men and women. here's the danger and that's why i like this book. too much of precisely what melissa said his true, you know, about malcolm becoming a talisman, what we do what we mythologize figures like malcolm x and martin luther king is the scare of people from thinking that they can be leaders. they make it look like it a magical, mystical tours do you have to be born into it and then you have to be in prison and to anoint you. we make it all sound like magic. and it's not magic. these are men and women and they are human beings. and everyone has the potential to be a great leader. and so i always feel that when we begin to get these tax that help us humanize, you know, i like the boring parts of the book. i like just the day to day going down to mosque number seven, having this conversation, having the meeting. this is what is involved in a real-life. as much as the more powerful and we refers to the book does to me a very, very important because they describe for people and show to people of the day today, the mundane interactions with human beings with different personalities and so forth to go into creating the story. it is an outlay in much less obviously kind of mythic story malcolm x, but it's very, very powerful with its suggested people that malcolm x is a human being that has great quality is great potential because he certainly had not reached where he could have reached. and that's an important theme of the book also, but that he's assessable in ways that i think alex haley's work makes him not assessable intermediates very powerful that's very powerful and a good thing. >> so what do you think's going to happen? when i was on your show, michael come a couple weeks back, we talk about this book. and i was playing with this book and play with the buyout as well, also he raises issues about gandhi's life in the human conflicts he has as well and any of us here have every day in our lives. so what does the do, what you just described, what does it do when we take -- it's been happening since the 60s. iconic figures of our existence and if someone argued, humanize them, under look at it as tragic. and taylor branch writes his book about his trilogy about martin luther king and clearly talks about ronald king's affairs, what is he faced? so what happens to us as a people when that happens? because leaders around pedestals usually. so what happens when folks like this come out and they talk about things that make people's stomach twist? >> i mean come it seems to me there are many possibilities. one is the most empowering story, which is the more we recognize the humanity of those who did great things, the more we feel capable ourselves and doing great things. it is to go back to the seminary example. it is the other possibility of the story of jesus is that he is simultaneously dividing fuming. if you go home onto the human part, could make the story feel more empowering. so holding onto the human part, the phillies part. the part of what i would suggest also is that some of what we are talking about here when it came to keenness about feelings. but a lot of what we're talking about when it comes to malcolm are not necessarily feelings. they are simply identity practices, ways of being that are not in line with our conception of who this person is. i think that somewhat different. in other words, when you steal somebody else's idea, even if it is tradition to do so, that's a problem. like that's an actual ethical moment they need to posit we need to engage what does it mean for king to have done that and how do we understand this practice is? when you engage in what appears to be a consensual relationship with someone of the same sex, it's not a failing. it's a practice. and it is a practice that we then have to reconcile our understanding of who malcolm little is because my understanding from reading the book as it really is -- it really is managed understanding to the extent that there was same relations that occurred during the part of trying to comprehend not. not the first time that i read a revision of malcolm's understanding of himself was robin kelley's rereading of this ensued, right? so if? filipino robin kelley's brilliant reading of his suit duties as a malcolm talks about himself in his autobiography, he says when i was in suits uteri was about politics. i wish is this guy out there doing this name and it really is mohammed who gives me political worldview through this theological worldview. the raven goes back and says wait a minute, this is good is all about politics, right? you cannot be a young black man, walking around in expensive suits in the city journal of world war ii went people were supporters to be -- they're because we been up for for 10 years and no one is supposed to sacrifice anything. in the context of world war ii, he demonstrated you are part of the domestic war effort was to be self sacrificial. and black folks in particular always are superficial vis-à-vis the american state, even if there's no work going on. so to be done black man wearing a flashy suit in the context of world war ii and that we learn from the anime with such beautiful star county gets out of survey in the war and how he kissed around the truth. he just camino, please pull crazy and just crazies out and is like crazy and the kind of takes the whole moral questions about making sure he doesn't have to go. some of those things are there. but what robin gives us -- robin kelley's book, malcolm, you were political. you don't want to say you were and maybe you couldn't see it, but it was incredibly political act to be a young man doing these things at this moment. the part of what i read when i read these things are now failing i think a lot of them are around the relationship with eddie. a lot of them are around harshness with which he treats his lieutenants and certainly a lot of the anxieties about the question of same sex activity, although it's never an identity, i don't know this a family. i think those are revisions or read readings are we understanding, even of how malcolm would've understood himself. i think malcolm thinks he was nonpolitical? yes. join us to thank robin kelley has some in on the politics of disease due? absolutely. do i think malcolm x but act on same-sex and had enormous shame and good at is a deep feeling of demand? absolutely. i do see many reading in the fact? no. as the man in giving us a different vision of what those practices were and what is practices are relative to his wife going forward in this whole story that they send. >> so what is going to happen the first is happening now, but it's a process. so the first thing is you've got this competing visions and then he got this original vision. he got agreed to that contention. but over time can what is going to happen is you're going to reconcile. at least for me personally, i've been a small democrat for a while, but have really shifted to me when i became 40 because at that point i was older than both martin luther king and malcolm x when they were assassinated and they have five kids. i'm looking at this as a parent way i would do if they didn't sacrifice the children. there's no way i'd do it. they become different figures. what will happen is these two visions of reconcile themselves to be a more human middle of. there a number of aspects about this new malcolm that we may disagree with and fight over and that gets us closer to the small democratic vision. >> what of those pieces do you think the fight is over? >> i read the same-sex activity a bit different than melissa does. i know were on c-span, so i'm trying to figure out a way -- [laughter] i can't say what i said to you over the phone. but it's clear to me that something occurred and it's clear that some team was in part dictated by the market and that you had cash exchanging hands. it is not clear to me that what happened was the same-sex dvd first and then and i would need much more information in order to verify that in fact was. and this is one of those areas that is the citation. super 80 pages of footnotes, but a lot of the stuff is the footnotes and i think some of that stuff is something that needs to be actually footnoted if for no other reason than those who had a challenge but they can go back and verify. that's the purpose of this. >> would anybody be a state with a malcolm little moment and let's go just to the homoerotic the sense that it is -- just in the sense and this is verified in the footnote, the sense of malcolm all us guys, women over there. so whether that is about engagement with one another's bodies is a separate question than whether or not it is a social political space, that says that the only bodies ideas and persons, goals that matter are men, right? and so part of the transition of mouth him is a move an increasing willingness to embrace a leadership role for women, which also seems to be at least in part india should have likened them into human beings. so again, take homosexuality out of it. he's got this whole narrative about his mother's mental illness come a whole narrative about the woman who helps to put all these things manning builds. what he gives us is malcolm does not like women. maybe this is, maybe it's not, but the big issue is malcolm think someone can sit down and shut at. i.t. is becoming more of a gender democrat, but the part of that is one also has to have ethical and personal liking for women, that it can't be just an exclusively political. but to me, the sexual and erotic is standing in for the political and theological. i've got to say, i found -- i mean, i couldn't agree more about this issue of separating malcolm little from malcolm x dement themed attorney at malcolm x been one that's not just about race, but also about gender. i find precisely what you describe, melissa, as this place in which there is a kind of focus on men and the ideas of men to the exclusion to be like ho-hum in the sense that that is the space in which most powers exercised in the united states and i daresay many places, but that is exactly the character of the year that's what it looks like, that's what it feels like and whether it's the nation of islam, whether it's the democratic party for the republican party or any other very powerful organization, political science department, law schools, you know, this is how power -- this returns a reader comments of this being like an american story. that stuff is like the pages were flipping back for me because i find this uncontroversial. but as the interesting part is precisely the part at the end and that is that how we begin to develop ourselves around this idea of racial justice and note that our minds and spirits to thinking about in terms of understanding and the ways in which race can be deployed in order to maintain the stratification and so forth is the same context in which it opens up our mind about other issues and that transformation, the late game that melissa talked about, beginning to see women as people, that is a critically important transformation that things did become much more interesting for me because it suggests that this is also about the evolution of how we exercise power, that power sometimes most proteins, most attract good, least controversial and least to those around you when it's being exercised in a way that is exclusionary, that's harsh, cruel, that's heating, that is the easy power. but the broader powers than malcolm begins to talk about what is the way in cairo in traveling and africa and this is for the whole -- going to benefit the whole. when you begin to perceive the whole power is malcolm was doing in this margin was doing at the end of his life, then it's much more disruptive, much more dangerous to the status quo, much more potentially disruptive and to me, that part of the narrative is the part that i find when you talk about the speeding up at the point of the assassination in the way this started to make my stomach hurt because almost when you see that coming, you know what's coming next. >> very briefly, you know, with the brilliance of everything that's been said, what to add a couple of teams. first of all, we ain't got no tent breakers, no cadillac sales. we have nothing in ain't nobody questioning it. really, where's the proof that malcolm is a? but minibuses deconstruct most of that. if you were been when you were supposed to be in new york. we are comfortable splitting women. i do think giving her dichotomy for division between the failure of prior is, malcolm's disdain for women is failure. i would budget in that category, which means most of us fail. but the huge failure. the brilliant insight there the construction of the erotic, what we have a problem is malcolm brushed up closely against the homoerotic and not only is malcolm little, but as professor harry sperry talks about within the context of an exclusively male preserve, which was the nation of islam and we can talk about a whole bunch of others as well, fraternities and the like, churches and deacon boards and so on and so forth. as interesting as we have no problem with them excluding wedding and using them, selling flash. god sure they got a erotic acts not exploiting anybody because it was as we talk about it and then answers parsers have done a lot of stuff they didn't ask essentially investing. as a practice for many. the commercial exchange cash. i don't love you. i'm doing this because i want a happy ending or great outcome. so the reality is we have a problem that really exposes where we are. a deep and profound lacerating that blacks have since more men can identify with him. a greater cross-section of struggling black men -- american men in general can identify with him because we've struggled at so many points in terms of the abuse of women in terms of self abuse come in terms of engagement all kinds of nefarious practices for exchange of cash and commerce. so that is one thing i think needs to be expressed and opened up so that the evidence can be empirically verifiable evidence available is lacking in the area where malcolm's greatest assertion of manhood is. on this point, i am not i am born. if he was malcolm gladwell and he got converted and now he is malcolm maxon doing a different thing, the whole point was to prove just how deep it was. if you have assigned staff and campaign and so on and stealing people's stuff. elisha mohammed could stand the man up and make an moral and ethical person. the problem would be again tonight they do different between a guess they are going to see that to demonize that. how many men and religious organizations that hates officially, theologically same-sex that dvds are gay themselves. so i think we have to acknowledge that. [applause] i'll just say really being brief [laughter] i'm a baptist preacher, homey. real quick, really being brief, i brought that the cause there were a number of places they thought should've been cited more. i just got out of. >> a question we'll get to a little bit about siting issues coaches on this book in the atlantic. one of the things he wrote was what you were saying michael eric dyson, the fact that malcolm x was a street hustler like the rest of us in interesting way of looking at malcolm was on the west side of this town. this is malcolm maxon is on a soldier to africa. he just let the secretary's home. i'll read this one paragraph. as malcolm sacha process the recognition of status, talking about the big house, liberation liberation.africa. by my needs to be more keys in my bats come strong and clear and is easier to express myself. paradoxically then added my mind is always incapable of producing words and phrases lately and it's freed me come and go. the middle eastern african experiences that greatly broadened his mind, yet is vocabulary of nationalist to address challenges he so clearly thought confronting africa. malcolm sensed that he needed to create new theoretical tools and a different frame of reference beyond race. now one paragraph says a lot. a lot of pieces to days. 100 page essays may be every other second. but let's start with one. >> of course, i'm sure he would say if he was here, that's been on in part. so part of what -- [inaudible] right, so in other words, i think that manning is actually of little too limited in his reading of malcolm's worthlessness. certainly parties about black nationalism and as professor spent tostada comic think we have to grapple with manning's own anxieties about national ascendant so it gets rather not way. but it also seems to be the part of eight is that the ex-pat experience makes insufficient. it makes english insufficient. so the contribution to us is the problem for all of us who are imperial said checks, write? is we literally don't have language that is any language other than the language of our imperial masters. so we have seen -- i hate to put them on the table. one of the things that i wish i could be president obama do more to speak a different language. part of what i -- but was to be at stake in the whole first certificate madness is the fact that barack obama actually knows from when he comes on the continent of africa is precisely the thing that makes barack obama not niekro enough for the. with the wants us to experience anything for most of the white american construction for most of black history has been this week to expand ruthlessness. we are not supposed to know where burster chickadees. were not supposed nowhere were from or have another link which we can speak. so when i read that, if i guess it's about limitations of black nationalism, but also simply that limitations of americanism. so we do this but it's not civil rights, his human rights. but the fact is utterly english fails to have what you're doing to feel to have the discourse, the worse, vocabulary, construction of sentences must very tube revealed that that does black suffering. and so, we see malcolm at the end of manning's book who is lake i keep wanting him to stay. he's beyer envies with the boys and my and i just keep saying, don't go that. they're going to kill you when you got that. and he knows that, too. we are again at the end of the story, write? and malcolm apparently knows that, too. but he goes back anyway in part because he is so american men because this is where the fight is. so for him, as much as america's insufficient and if much as he has a language, thought that the only place he cares about liberating. it is the only place in the entity is willing to die for. and so for me, meaning gives us what that struggle felt like. it is insanity. it is like. take this cup from me. and yet he goes back. [applause] >> so, when professor harris-perry talks, what it reminds me of is the beginning of each chapter, where he begins its musical bars and begins with a musical bar because black music is to capture something that the language doesn't. i think you're hitting the nail right on the head. were i would challenge that reading -- it is important to understand that trained to detect anxieties about black nationalists. whenever do not passage. there are a number of ways to the difference between someone in uganda, each of and be a black nationalist, even in america in the 1950s, black nationalist understood. he could make a claim is conservative black nationalists bringing it back to gender, what i found most interesting future we malcolm's attitudes towards them into nationalism when at the same time, martin luther king stated that he could not work with strong but winning. he did know how to do it. this is something. it's one of those passages where i mike now, this is trained to. if far more diverse when manning started. far more diverse. but we really need are more straight up black nationalist scholars because black nationalism is the most misunderstood by political ideology. i knew exactly the passage when he started reading because the passage struck me as well. and i would say my response to that was that this is a very american moment. if you traveled outside the u.s., this is the first time you go to africa, particularly as an african-american. is a contraceptive in american comedy of the whole framework and you know which are talking about what the history history of the whole name, you are struck down actually when you are confronted with the diaspora. i think this is not an unusual phenomenon. i think particularly as malcolm was in order rader, a speaker, he spoke all the time and those of us who speak all the time house phrase is that we line. michael eric dyson is original. everything he says i've never heard of before. you see, i don't know how he does it. the most of us humans, we have certain ways of speaking and we don't even realize they're transitioning us for wanting to another. particularly the subject that we read about coming over into. the first time i spent time in africa attacked much less. as virtually struck down. how is struck because some other reason most extreme, but also because i had to hit the reset button on a whole set of issues that had to do with race, mount insanity and so forth. in the process of hitting the button, it almost the computer is recalibrating. a lot of a lot of what you know now has to be viewed through a different lens that has to be recalibrated. what immediately comes after that, that's the part i like his once that happens, you actually have a lot to say. thomas i.q. of a new language. he is a new way of talking. there is a new infusion because of your thinking. there's a new infusion in your thinking as most are speaking. so when i read that -- and this is one of the points in the book as well, where four out of malcolm's critique of america and this is what made melissa is striking a moment ago about him coming back to america and this being the only place he was willing to die for is how distinctly american he was and the story is. so that is another one of those moments where i felt like that was a moment that americans will experience or can resonate with and he had that moment also. that is for me both the tremendous power of the story, but also the real tragedy of the story as well, that there is something about particularly the struggle for racial justice in america that has this air of the tragic to it because as much as unique these connections other places, you are american and it's got you, in ways that even when you don't want to be had, it's got you. something powerful and also very tragic. >> do you have something you want to add? >> no. [laughter] >> and you were going to do that. not to be brief, i will say this. i think that brilliant formulation about it's not just, you know, black nationalism that is at a loss they are in a powerful point about the music, about finding other ways to express them and to say it. i think what professor ifill talked about earlier is filed in regard to the contextual eddie is speechless maths. what happens if i think about it that this preacher and the spirit shall protect the spirit of african consciousness is a hold of malcolm at the moment. >> i'm a revelation their, he got them to say that over and over again, and one of the things that happened is in his sorry, we have diminished that period as them being somewhat misguided, frivolous, and what fred hampton and the black panther party did, you know, if that was so diminished and not so powerful, how come they created and attacked all those people over and over again because what they did, the black panther party and fred hampton, they did a critique of capitalism, and even our greatest scholars who are progressive, they don't really do a critique of capital im, and that's one thing that happened with king when you listen to the speeches and malcolm, that's what they thought to do is a critique of capitalism, and once you start doing that, that's where the danger happens, and our black scholars don't really do that. you talk about black nationals and this, but a critique of capitalism is very dangerous. >> who'd like to grab that first? >> it's a worthy comment in the context of manning whose politics were, i think, part of his anxiety was about black nationals because he understood his politics rooted in a black socialist tradition. now, i will say, and this is -- i was thinking, realm, you know, how do we do this? how do we -- i was a graduate student, and i was trying to get a job in the academy, and one of the most powerful things manning did was teach me how to get what i needed from this institution financially. people don't talk about it at all and act like get a job and go with it and the next day you ask for this and ask. i said, how can i ask for a contract and have a commitment to questions of economic justice, manning smiled that smile that if you knew him, you know, he said, melissa, nothing is too good for the working class. [laughter] one of the things i'm reminded in that and i appreciate the challenge you offered because i do think that there is real inteejt chewable danger -- intellectual danger in our connections to institutions that feed us, and i think that one of the things that manning's text on malcolm's book suggests to is us part of the fight, the fight that leads to his death with the nation is about having a roof over his head. if malcolm had had an independent wealthy whatever who could have taken his wife and four children at that point and put them in a home where they could have lived all together, he would not have will to fight with the nations the way he did, but he couldn't, he literally couldn't afford to live. one of the things we learn sometimes from some of the critical texts on king including dyson's text on king is he is hustling, working, giving talks not because he likes his big voice so much because that's what feeds himself and the movement. there's no doubt that we have to recognize that we are, even when you are the black elite, you are working class because you offer for the most part not from -- when my people, when they die, there's nothing. you are not intergenerational wealthy like your peers. you may have a big house, but you have a mortgage on that sucker, so there's way in which we are structurally positioned different than many others, but at the same time, we have to engage in an economic critique that fits with our political gender social one, but it can be difficult. i appreciate the comment in part because it reminds us of the work that malcolm and manning were both up to. >> yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. [applause] >> one of the things that points to so we now really study and can get a certain cache in studying. if you go to hopkins and see what they teach, i'm willing to bet you don't find anything on labor history. if you go to morgan, you wouldn't find anything on labor history. political science doesn't have a class on class politics even though i teach the class on racial politics so i think what we have to do is in some ways, those of us who in the academy who -- or the beneficiaries of manning's work, we have to reeducate ourselves to deal with class, and i say that as somebody with black national things, that's something that's important both interracially and intrarationally so we can understand and work the way how class plays itself out in black community. >> i think those are brilliant points. i hope you hear them because they are really important points, and i just would simply add to piggy back on what professor harris-perry said, king had to borrow money from his dad da to pay taxes because he was giving so much of it. the reason why i think he's the greatest american and malcolm in the same level of cohort because the level of sacrifice was mind boggling, and you have five kids, you think differently, and his wife is positioned as a shrew, but she had to take care of the kids. he left her in the hood. when he finally bought a home, he went to india and believed that people shouldn't owned property so when you started talking about, you know, the radical king, he was a true radical, and believed not in possessing personal property, but look he borrowed money from his daddy for taxes, and harry took out $100,000 policy life insurance on five kids each. if malcolm had a benefactor, if he had been los langston hughes, then he would have had a different perspective. as we deconstruct capital, the point of karl marx's capital, it didn't extent the value of capital because when the dude tried to marry his daughter, he said can you take care of her? marx said that. i i believe in ira, individual reparations accounts. [laughter] you can't give it to great, great, great grand pa, but you can redistribute wealth to people who inherit ideas, but it makes it undumb bent on us to press the argument forward and to tell the truth of the suffering of the masses who don't have the quandaries we have because they don't have a wage or a salary so when we deconstruct it, let's not talk about obliterating wealth, but talk about its distribution. i think that makes sense. [applause] >> good evening, i'm from west africa liberia, and i'm a middle school math teacher, and i say that -- i've been in this country for 25 years, went to school in baton rouge, university, a an all black school, very proud of that experience. i did not read manning's account of malcolm, but i think being around the people -- [laughter] you know, i know a lot about it, but i'd like to pose two points. one is i kind of quietly questioned the relevance of black nationalism as it was practiced in the 60s. you know, is it still relevant to have all these attributes to be put out there, and if you've read mannings book of a black africa, that's the truth i can take from that book? you know, i think it has a story that's not just, you know, an after i can american story, what would be that truth that i can take from it? thank you. >> [inaudible] >> let's tackle this first though. >> okay. [laughter] >> no, black nationalism is totally relevant. [laughter] no, here's the deal -- >> in the interest of time. >> to be brief -- [laughter] at its best, to me what black national ism is about is finding best practices, best cultural practices that we can use to develop the tools to create, reform, and reshape our identity and the spaces in which we live in a way that's humane and works best for black people and that can in turn serve as a set of practices or a kind of body of work to be used to change america in general so i would say that there is more of a need now for black nationalism than even in the 50s given the kind of shape, the changing of the way we understand blackness and race. we have been having this fight for nationalism and feminism for a decade so we don't have to replay that, but it's the best aspects of it, for me, the most dangerous aspects of it are the extent to which nationals have been policed in the boundaries and what's good for black people are determined who are the appropriate black people for whom something should be good for, and so what happens in practice if not in theory is a policing out of identities, of women, you know, of the claim by our colleague kathy colin in her great book is a one of the reasons the black church does slow in mobilizing around the hiv crisis in black communities because it required a focus on those elements of the communities that were considered disreputable. iv drug users, those who were gay men, those who have other sexual practices that people had anxiety about, and because the civil rights movement had been so fully engaged on making a claim on citizenship base the on the respectability of black people, so we deserve to be citizens because you are misunderstanding us. we are actually bill cosby; right? so what it didn't leave room for is you have the right to be a citizen even if you're not bill cosby and you have a right to health care if even if you practice these practices. it's a core love for blackness and black people, an option for blackness which so doesn't exist that having a preferential black perp, the black guy because if he's cheating you, than at least the cheating is going to a black guy; right? [laughter] or saying no, i don't want to live in the white neighborhood. it's option for blackness in a variety of ways, but the danger is that it can also limit what we think and prompt blackness is, and i think manning's book on malcolm does that in that it's trying to retain malcolm x as core leader of african american politics at this moment and simultaneously deconstruct who we think this black body is and suggest to us it's more challenges, more difficult, more complex at the boundaries of blackness than we typically allow it to be in our mythology. >> real quick, we disagree on nationalism, but not black feminists -- >> no, but -- [laughter] >> hello, thank you so much. i've really appreciated listening to all of you guys on the panel this evening, so thank you for being here. i'm iata rasheed originally from california, but been in baltimore for seven years. i'm an artist, but have a love for humanity and life and understanding people's stories so that's what brought me here this evening, but i come from -- my grandparents left cay catholicism and went into islam and my father and mother embraced islam and the son came about, and i'm a product of that. i lived in africa as a young girl, my father studied arabic and moved back to the country, and now i'm here living my life as a young muslim woman in america, and so one of the things that i find interesting is that story of black nationalism and how i'm a part of that, but then to understand that mohammed not only produced malcolm x, and these are like pretty significant figures in our times today that we all sort of look to, and i'm curious to know from the panel how you guys look to see how malcolm was directing the black community to essentially islam, i guess, and which when i say islam, it's arabic, is leam mean -- islam means the peace, so i'm curious to know how you guys feel about that and how malcolm -- i feel as a young muslim in america, how he was directing african-americans to understand islam, to study it, and to understand the -- the understanding of jihad which means struggle in arabic, but, yeah, it means struggle and how we all struggle and have our personal struggles, but it's really within. it's not about pointing fingers and saying this person is harming me, but we have to do the work on the inside, so pretty broad question, but i'm very ceer yows what you guys feel about mainly the question is how do you feel about malcolm leading the black community to learn and understand islam. >> okay. >> yeah, well, you know, my wife was in the nation of islam under elijah; right? as a young girl, she was 16 years old, and had left catholicism or was on her way. i get it confused. i know she was under catholicism and then under the nation of islam enwas reading malcolm x's book, huh it snatched out of her hand and was repremended and taken to elijah mohammed himself. i said, wow, that story could have turned out differently in many ways that i don't even want to speak on. i begin there for the reason that now as a mature brilliant minister and social activist srb she is, not me. right, right, well, so she as a mature miniature and -- minister and social activist who passed through islam, catholicism, and christian, well, she's still a christian, a post-post christian so to speak, but the marks on her life that i've been able to deserve and understand have been extraordinarily positive and edifying so malcolm x when i think of malcolm directing people to islam, i think about millions of people who subscribed and held fast to the faith. the problem, of course, is not in islam, in its theological varieties that it produces in the same way as christianity. it's in the practice and perversion of it by people who done messed it up, so i think that malcolm x's ambition, moral ambition cannot be dwieshed from -- distinguished from what he learned. mohammed did produce a minister in boston, and then, of course, converted, and, of course, mohamed ali made the choice, and i got to speak to him later, and he said he should have been much more open minded. i say that to say, to be brief, that it's the ideals and theology and moral varieties are great, and i think what malcolm did was love of black people. i'll say something here as a baptist minister. it transcends christianity and islamic faith. there's christians who claim they know jesus doing crazy stuff i don't approve of at all. i would rather side with atheists who are doing the work of good or motorcycle maintenance -- [laughter] whatever the book establishes your faith beautiful, because i think in the end here's where ironically where i try to be critical of the fascist dimensions of black insular thinking and the way in which professor hair -- professor harris-perry sighs, you want us to be together, but instead of these people who are black. what are you talking about? we can't all be together if you don't accept the gay people. either we're all together in the unity what they used to call operational unity with black nationalism in the 1960s, or it means nothing, and ultimately, my blackness and my religion converged into love, and i think love in the ultimate sense that unless we can embrace and love blackness at every instance of it, not that we're not critical of the ways in which it problem matized our humanity. if christian -- if king was doing something to help black people, cool, but it must help us become more humane in the midst of our struggles and anything, religion included that interviews with the -- interferes with the process of radical semination of love at the existence or in community, and i think ultimately to god. [applause] >> the only other thing i would say and we all give personal testimonies -- [laughter] no, only that -- [laughter] only that, only that there was this important opening of i think the black mind in the late 50s and through the 60s that had a lot to do with the civil rights movement and it's a mistake not to understand the significance of malcolm x and actually the movement of the rise of the nation of islam from part of that opening of the mind. i had two sisters who joined the nation of islam in the 60s as well. this was shocking. this was, you know, we were raised in a very christian family. this was extremely shocking, and yet what came out of it was a kind of respect, it made us curious. it didn't shatter the love and the relationship for something that, you know, we didn't really know much about. what we knew about the nation of islam we knew because of mohammed ali and malcolm x, no other markers within our community to tell us something about the nation of islam, and those two things we knew were regarded as positives, so it created this opportunity, it created this door through which we did begin to open our minds and we did begin to open our ideas about the range of black experiences that were out there. what's disturbing today, i don't know if this answers the question, but what's disturbing to me today is that post-9/11 and the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we had an opportunity to further that opening of our minds. it was actually the blast was -- you know, should have opened our minds, but the horror of this thing should have opened our minds and should have made us ask questions and should have made us listen for real answers, and there was a brief moment, about two weeks when i thought it was going to happen, and then it didn't happen, and, in fact, it has really closed the american mind tight in ways particularly about islam and the very things you were just describes in asking your question, and so this is a moment in which in reading this book, in reading about the nation of islam and reading particularly about malcolm's journey after his hodge and feelings about islam and how it began to center ideas about who he wanted to be and the contribution he was trying to make really just kind of calls to mind this very disturbing moment we're in right now where this is precisely what we need is to do exactly what the examination that michael eric dyson says we need to examine to find this essential quality of love that units this piece, but this is the moment where i say, no, we won't, no, no, no. we know that's the way, and yet there seems to be a willful desire to turn away from it. it's very poignant reading about malcolm's journey as a muslim in this book at the precise moment that we're in this kind of field of darkness and disinformation about islam. [applause] >> we are -- [applause] this is what we're going to do, first of all earlier suggestion right now, and we're going to take the next three folks in line there, each make a comment, and we'll see what time we have left. go ahead, sir. >> good evening. i really enjoyed everything said thus far. i'm michael lindsay, a lecturer the morgan state, and being a lecturer i primarily teach freshmen and sophomores, and what i discovered fairs the book -- as far as the book came out and wanting to bring it to class, i took it to one class, but what equipmently came to me is i was teaching young people who only have the despitely version of den -- denzel washington type version of him so it was hard to have a complexion documentation -- discussion about the book when there was little to prior knowledge, so, you know, i stated before, i can get rid of the spike lee malcolm x, the alex haley malcolm x, but i'm -- the question is to a generation that doesn't even have the alex haley malcolm x and just the denzel washington malcolm x, how do you think this book plays into the younger people coming up learning malcolm x for the first time period? >> that's a good question. >> ma'am, go ahead. >> i'm kochobi, an educator here in baltimore. my question is similar to the gentleman who stood before me. i just want to preface my question with the following. on the way here, my children and i took the light rail, and we saw about five young black males, teenagers being questioned by the police mta police, that is the transit police, and what bothered me is that four of them were let go, but one was sitting on the ground, and he was told to keep his hands behind his back. at the point of being asked to stand up, stood up without smugness, and he followed all of their, you know, commands so to speak, raise your hands, let me frisk you, all of that thing. i say that to say i'm one who totally embraces alex haley's interpretation of malcolm x's life. i say that as one who has not read mr. manning's book on malcolm x, but i fully intend to, but i just ask you scholars, you teachers, what is the message that this current work -- what is the message that this current work will bring to our young black males that alex haley's work has not brought? >> good question. in the blue shirt. >> hi, i'm alex. malcolm x meant a lot to me since i read it in high school, right when the movie came out, and it was a big deal in my school, never heard of him, and if he can hear me, i just want some respect to go to him. it's amazing, but i had a three-part kind of comment, i guess, one is that with seeing the failures of a great leader, it's almost like us growing up and seeing our parents differently. we see our parents as heros, then see their failings, and we just want to rage against the world because we are not what they thought they would be, and in the end we piece it together and realize that's what makes them great. the second part is i think a key to malcolm x and to what you're saying about how his story unfolded was that his story is all marked by conversion. he converted to the nation of islam, and therefore doing that, he had to create a narrative of conversion. i was once this. now i'm this. that even makes it harder when you're talking about biographies because he would keep reinventing that as he goes along, you know? he's inventing his story to go with the conversion. i think being muslim is a big part of who he is, and a big part of what makes it challenging for everyone, but i also notice that malcolm x becomes more and more alienated as he goes along because he challenges life, he challenges politics, and people go, oh, yeah, you did great, but he keeps going and challenging, goes to another country. one, he becomes muslim and becomes separate from the people he's around, going to another country, all the sudden becoming different from other americans around him. it seems like he's the life of increased alienation that in a way it's strange that he was killed by african-americans just like gandhi was killed by hindus. >> let you close out the evening and respond to this. just you left? get up there. sorry. i thought there was a whole line. >> i'm a student at the university. my question is because there's been discussion, kind i briefly about black nationalism, and i guess my question is is it possible to have a formulation of black nationalism that addresses the policing that goes on in some of what is referred to as the fascist elements of insular black thinking, is it possible to address the policing, and how does manning's book, how does his portrayal of malcolm x help in that conversation of the policing of the boundaries of blackness and black nationalism and its potential as a framework of political advancement of black people this this country? [applause] >> okay, great. let's tie these things together. >> well, i think i wanted to go to the question that the woman asked who saw the people on the light rail and actually reminds us of the earlier question i think we didn't answer about the theme that comes out of the book, and i'm not one to give people universal themes from books because that's the fun of reading it and discover it yourself, but i think i understand what you're mean by the question. also i hear anxiety about malcolm with clay feet, and so i want to say a couple things. i'm happy to hear the gentleman say your children realize that's why you're great because that's not happening with my kids now. glad to hear that. wonderful news. [laughter] but i do think that -- i think the anxiety. i don't think we should because we're in this room tonight and admirers of manning pretend to ourselves that alex haley's malcolm x is going away any time soon or spike lee's. you're right, first of all they showed not. the autobiography is a brilliant book and should be read because it's a brilliant book and it tells a story that's powerful telling us many things what it is to be black in america. it must be read. it's a seminal work, and it's not going to change because we learn more details about malcolm's life that make him more human. letters from a birmingham jail is no more diminished or the i have a dream speech because we know he had marital affairs or whatever. it doesn't work that way. you know, we do have to open our minds to that, and i would suggest that we follow the example of what white america does with its heros, i mean this seriously. we know a lot about george washington, for example, that we probably didn't know when we were little. he chopped down the cherry tree, father of the nation, and so forth, and at some appointment we learned more. you read andrew's amazing book about george washington and his slaves. it's worth reading. people didn't stop says he was the father of the nation or a great man or the founder. we have series to john adams, but the problem is we get so nervous about our leaders and the requirement they be perfect even as other portions of the american public recognized the complexity of our heros and refused to allow their essential greatness to be diminished so i have no problem maintaining what i think is a truth which is alex haley's malcolm x. that's a truth particularly because it has all the pieces we talked about. it's shaped by the time, by haley, how malcolmments to think -- malcolm wants to think of himself, all that is relative. the spike lee movie is a good movie, and although it's not a documentary, it never purported to be a documentary, and therefore it does what ever movie fixalize the account -- fictionalized act does and takes liberties and some are greater than others. those stories are not going away any time soon. i'm not certain this will be made into a movie. i mean, i don't know, maybe it will be, but i do think we shouldn't overestimate, you know, how quickly the revision will happen. it's going to take time for people to absorb some of what's in here, and i take it that this, and i think manning would want that that this would begin begin -- other people will write and look at the nation of islam and black nationalism in this period. this is the beginning of a story in many ways, and that, to me, since these are my closing remarks is what is great about the book as a tribe butte to manning. he's not closed something. he didn't write the work that ever closes the story on malcolm x, but opened a new story, and that means his work will go forward and have tremendous life as other people take up different aspects of it and begin to explore it even further. [applause] >> amen. i mean, i men, amen, i men. that's just great stuff that the book should be continued ton read, it's a great book, story, and the shape of moral ambition in america is the shape the story, and, you know, that's why we live in a post living culture where people go to the movies to get their, you know, fix for what novels used to do. novel is not dead, but it's certainly migrated to the screen, and the way in which people consume information, watching john daly versus, you know, cn or watching cnn opposed to reading the times. i don't think we should be elitist about it. even as we're rigorous in the exploration of the ideas there so i think the spike lee film is the greatest black bio-flick made. there's three or four minute segments in the film where denzel as malcolm is doing nothing but spitting fire at white supremacy in a way you wish obama could do in four years. we understand what the limitations are and why he can't do that. even though i'm a peace neck, at the end of the day, you know, i'm interrupting donald trump's show to announce bin laden is dead. how do you like me now? first of all, no mistakes allowed. at some level, i'm straight up black masculine about that and say, damn, you say i'm spineless, and now here they are for the world to see, and that's american empire, but it's a brown face and a brown body on american empire, and that's part of the problem. you got to kill somebody to prove you're american. that's the thing. that's -- not just somebody, right, right, anyway, so having said that the greatest bio-flick i think made the malcolm x film and denzel was right big time and i think al pacino got it because he had been robbed before of godfather. this is a great question in terms of malcolm x as, you know, in terms of conversion, it's true. i mean, the beautiful central element of malcolm's live is about constantly going from one thing to another, con stability conversion, constant rethinking, and i'll tell you what that involves, vulnerability and self-criticism and a lot of leaders and intellectuals and critics and whoever we are don't have that will ail -- and ability to be self-critical. black people killing him, and even if the state was involved and one of the things we didn't get to tonight is manning makes very clear the nypd knew what the deal was and that state police forces knew what was deal was and didn't warn malcolm. why do we find that hard to believe? they liked him better than malcolm x, why not warn malcolm x, one of the characteristics marks of blackness is self-sabotage and the willingness to hate other blacks . that's white supremacy spreading into blacks. white mouth speaks, black ideas moving. i think the hatred and self-hatred we internalized is characteristic to what happened to malcolm and what we must resist in ourselves and others as we treat. i think that's why love is at the heart and i think malcolm x embraced that at his best, and i think ultimately what manning's book can do is help open a conversation about what black nationalism is and what it should be and what any, not just black nationalism, but any ideology, any politics, any theory put forth in the name of people, the litmus test must be to what degree does it free vulnerable and working peoples who are black, who are poor, and whose backs are against the wall and to what degree does it arrive in their lives as a vehicle of liberation? that's the litmus test at the end of the day, and i think this book helps forward that particular thinking. [applause] >> the one question that wasn't really answered yet i think is the teaching question. i'll try to take it in a different way. 1965 is to this generation as world war i was to me and professor harris-perry. if you think about it like that, what we have is not just -- [laughter] if you think about -- >> did you make me older than i am? [laughter] >> if you think about that a second, it's not just about teaching malcolm, but it's about teaching the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s. you have people who don't know who rodney king is; right? getting back to the nationalism thing, i want to take another cut at it, this is why we need a set of cultural institutions that can teach our history in a way that speaks both to our past and our present moment; right? it's not just black nationalism that says, okay, gay people aren't black. there are black nationalist churches, but the black church is not nationalist; right? i would say that it's really about taking that -- taking that text, using it as part of the much larger body, and creating the spaces where you can take that larger body of text to speak to black people where they. [applause] >> thank you. >> that's it. harris-perry? >> okay, so a lot of different things, i'll try to do this quickly. i was feeling sad as i listened to the story about the young men and the mta and part of the reason i felt sad about it is my sense that ultimately this context, talking about a book and talking about thinker and ideas is profoundly important and woefully unadequate on that question. i sat at a dinner with a civil rights icon at one point and we were taking about king and x, and i was talking about the assassination of malcolm x and this leader said to me, martin luther king was assassinated, malcolm x was a common thug who died in a street fight. i was stunned and i said, well, but wait a minute, and he said let me explain. martin changed policy. when you look at what martin did, i can show you the 1964 civil rights act, the voting rights act, walk you through structural changes. now, i think there's a lot of reasons that that is unfair, but what i do want to take from that difficult moment and the ways i had to process and think about that is that a lot of what manning gives us and what we have done tonight is talk about ideas, and i don't want us to lose that ultimately our notion that the -- that alex haley's version of malcolm x can free the young men on the platform of the mta is the assumption that keeps them in that moment of bondage is their belief about who they can be rather than the set of public policies that make their bodies easily victimized by people in uniform, and so i care about what our young people believe. i'm a mother. i care. i'm a teacher. i care at my core about what we believe, but i do not believe that african-american inequality is primarily a result of lack of imagination on the part of black people which is to say that for me the critical liberating possibility of black religion, and this is true whether it takes the form of ancestral religions of christianity, or i wanted to come back to the nation question for a second because i think one of the things we're not honest about the nation is the islam is like jazz, is the black church is the blues -- god, i sound like cornell -- [laughter] i don't mean it that way, but it's an indigenous black institution. there's few black american theologies that are born here, not imported; right? the two that actually are here that exist here, that were born here are black liberation theology out of slave religion that's about christianity and the nation of islam. there's two forms of islam here, but immigration islam only finds its home here because the nation exists as an indigenous institution. part of what makes that initial slur towards president obama muslim, and then what we know when they say muslim what they mean is "n" word. we know those things are linked. part of the pain, the absolute pain of the moment of the killing of bin laden is that we all feel the jz barak obama get him, and we feel he had to kill bin laden to do it, but he had to kill the muslims to do it. a black president had to kill the muslim -- and then the white folks gave the credit to the white president who ain't round these parts no more. we feel that we know there is -- it was like black people wearing the nypd hats post-9/11, i never felt the moment. when i saw black men in the city of new york while rudy was the mayor wearing nypd hats as a reflection much their solidarity with the american state over against the islamic terrorists, okay, so our identities are complex, but the beauty of the nation and the beauty of alex haley's malcolm and the beauty of the christian god that enslaved people gave us is they are all about an incredible imagination that is outside of empirical evidence. my great, great, grandmother was sold on the street corner of richmond. she never knew anything but slavery, and she believed that god loved her. why? why would she believe such a ridiculous thing? there was no empirical evidence that god even vaguely liked or noticed the black people existed on the planet. like seriously, and so this is why i hate the form of christianity now that if god loves you you get a fine spouse and a great house. [laughter] >> prosperity. >> the whole inherent possibility is we've had extraordinary imaginations and grandma died a slave anyway despite the fact she knew herself to be a full human being loved by god. i know malcolm x's autobiography is a powerful text, but unless you hold it in front of you when they shoot at you, it is insufficient. it is perhaps important, but always insufficient so i suppose what i wanted to take away from it is that the work that we have to do is structural work. we -- the ideas are critically important. we need the ideas. i'm afraid about our vauntties i'm afraid there's ideas that say the best way to liberate yourself as a woman is to become michelle obama and attach yourself to an important man because -- and part what i love about the book is it deconstructs this book because you realize -- we can love her and not have to tell our daughters to be that. ideas matter, matter critically, but in the end the fact is if i don't want to bemy shelly obama -- michelle obama and if i i have equal pay and equal work, one of the reasons that women ended -- they couldn't control it because there was no ability to be able -- if i don't have health coverage so i would love for president obama to spit fire at the white folks, but i can see the housing policy is different. spit fire, that'd be hot, i wouldn't, but in the end, i just want us to remember that we will not -- we cannot save our children exclusively through ideas. we must save them through ideas, but it's never exclusively ideas. we already knew we're human and god loved us, and now we have to take the political work that says if god loves us and if i'm a human, then you as the state can want continue to -- cannot continue to treat me as though i am not. [cheers and applause] [applause] >> as i close the evening, i want to thank -- [inaudible] malcolm x's life as we mentioned, professor harris-perry, prefers dyson, thank you for all your time tonight. thank you all of you for coming tonight. thank the library for holing it. thank you c-span for covering it and letting you know it will be on wea next week, and on you can download it and also get the information you need on all of our guests op the books they've written and the works they're doing. thank you for coming out tonight. [applause] >> manning passed away on april 1, 2011 at the age of 60, just days before the publication of his biography of malcolm x. he was the director of the malcolm x project at columbia university. to find out more visit columbia columbia.edu. >> long before he put his john hancock on the the declaration of independence, he was arguably the wealthiest merchant banker living in america living in a mansion with a commanding view of the massachusetts landscape and sea scape. far from ease spousing individual liberty, hancock and his fellow merchants in new england governed it with ruthlessness that often left their competitors homeless and penniless. like today's tea party movement, the colonial tea party had almost nothing to do with tea. tea was nothing more than a social beverage for wealthy women. men seldom drank it and ranked below rum that americans consumed most. the tea party movement that sparked the american revolution actually began 20 years early in the 1750s and 60s when new england business leaders like today's tea partyers supported a costly government war, but refused to pay higher taxes to cover the cost of that war. the war had started in the early 1750s when overpopulation in the east, especially the northeast sent british settlers pouring over the mountains into what was then french territory. france at the time claimed all of canada, the lands around the great lakes, the lands around on either side of the ohio and mississippi river valley and the gulf of mexico. in 1753, the governor of virginia sent a young major named george washington and most americans don't know this story. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> now on booktv, walter olson arguing that poor policy ideas born in law schools migrated to the status of national policy. the discussion takes place at the heritage foundation in washington, d.c. and runs about an hour. >> what is taught in the law schools in one generation will be widely believed by the bar in the following generation said one great law professor, and he might have added that it will also because it is widely believed by the bar that winds up being believed by much of the press and public. this was not a new story to me. i've written several books about the legal system and in more cases than not, that can be traced back to academic origins. if you have a beef with the system, for example, in the united states, you should take it up with the dean crosser of berkeley. if you think that our system of sexual harassment law is less than ideal, you're problem is with professor katharine mchien and so it is with class action law and many, many others, and this can be traced big and small. i tell a study in the book about workplace law of the then novel idea that the law ought to come and for those of you who are not on lookism, it is the type of improper bias by which employers are constantly hiring really great looking people and promoting them more and paying them more other than the rest of us who are homely. [laughter] yes, it's unfair, but not until around the time the harvard law review ran and intermble, i shouldn't say that, an 80 or 90-page student note for the law to come to lookism, and not before then was a thought an issue of the law, but there in i believe the year 1999 there appeared this extremely long harvard law review student note, and it didn't take too long before lookism became an interest for legislatures and for judges, and indeed the district of columbia here passed one ordnance banning lookism and so have a number of municipalities leading to cases like the one reported a couple years back of the gentleman who was finding it hard to keep his job as a retail outlet because of the multiple tongue piercings which actually inflicted on him a speech inpedment and he said this is what got he fired, and he had called the lawyer i believe and was going to contest this. the harvard law reveal article thought about the implications and went to the extent o

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