-
Chapter 2. Nightmarish Landscapes: The Orwellian World of Malcolm X
- State University of New York Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
C Ch ha ap pt te er r 2 2 Nightmarish Landscapes: The Orwellian World of Malcolm X JAMES A. TYNER “I have a dream that one day every valley will be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.... So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire ... from the mighty mountains of New York ... from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.... From the curvaceous peaks of California ... let freedom ring from Stone Mountain Georgia ... from every hill ... of Mississippi ... ... when we let it ring ... from every state and every city , we will able to speed up that day when all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing ... thank God Almighty, we are free at last.” Speech by M. L. King, Jr., delivered on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. INTRODUCTION “I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare .” So argued Malcolm X (1965b, p. 26) in his momentous The Ballot or the Bullet speech delivered at the Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland. The speech came just months after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. Malcolm X explained that he was not an American. Rather, in his words: “I’m one of the 22 million black people who are victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are victims of democracy , nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver — no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system.” The statements of Malcolm X1 refer directly to concepts articulated within the discipline of Geography, namely national and ethnic identity. But Malcolm X also spoke to the notion of geographical imaginations, of alternative place-making and place-meaning. I take this observation as the starting point of mystudy. In so doing I contribute to the project of David Delaney (1998, p. 9) who argues that “if we want to understand the historical constructions of geographies of race and racism in the United States, [then] we have to do more than map changing distributions of ‘black people’.” This paper, therefore, is a convergence of three areas of inquiry: cultural landscapes, dystopian literatures , and jeremiad rhetoric. I argue that through these three components an explicitly geographic understanding of Malcolm X is manifest. As Pierce Lewis (1979) succinctly writes, “If we want to understand ourselves, we would do well to take a searching look at landscapes.” This sentiment has been well expressed by geographers whose work is grounded in critical race theory. Peake and Kobayashi (2002), for example, identify a need to understand the historical and geographical specificity of “race” and its durability in influencing human landscapes. Ordinarylandscapes are important archives of social experience and cultural meaning (Groth, 1997). Malcolm X was an astute reader of the landscape, for these spaces provided meaning to his political thought. 26 James A. Tyner A second component of this chapter entails dystopian literatures. As indicated by the quote at the beginning of this paper, Malcolm X viewed the American landscape as one of a nightmare. He did not see a Promised Land; America was not a bright “City on a Hill” illuminating the world in all its glory. Rather, America was hypocrisy, a place of dreams deferred and promises not kept. And it was within these spaces that Malcolm X implored his audiences to retain a sense of self within a dehumanizing landscape. Through my positioning of Malcolm X within the genre of dystopian writings, I am providing a specific and unconventional understanding of his political thought. I cannot claim that he would have approved; to myknowledge, Malcolm X never specifically mentioned his ideas as dystopian. My justifications for such an approach, however, are derived from the arguments advanced by Malcolm X. First, by situating the writings and speeches of Malcolm X within a broader context, namely that of dystopian literatures, I indicate how his life’s work contributes in ways not traditionally associated with African Americans. In the conclusion of his autobiography, Malcolm X reflected on his perceived greatest failing in life, specifically...