Death of the Liberal Class - Chris Hedges [105]
“King did not speak to black self-hate, and Malcolm did,” Cone explained:King was a political revolutionary. He transformed the social and political life of America. You would not have Barack Obama today if it had not been for King. Malcolm was a cultural revolutionary. He did not change the social or political structures, but he changed how black people thought about themselves. He transformed black thinking. He made blacks love themselves at a time when they hated themselves. The movement from being Negro and colored to being black, that’s Malcolm. Black studies in the universities and black caucuses, that’s Malcolm. King never would have done black studies. He taught a course at Morehouse on social and political philosophers and did not include a black person. He didn’t have W.E.B. Du Bois or Frederick Douglass. None of them. He had all the white figures like Plato and Aristotle. Malcolm helped black people to love themselves.
King and Malcolm would have excoriated a nation that spends $3 trillion waging imperial wars in the Middle East and trillions more to fill the accounts of Wall Street banks while abandoning its poor. They would have denounced liberals who mouth platitudes about justice while supporting a party that slavishly serves the moneyed elite. These men spoke on behalf of people who had nothing left with which to compromise. And for this reason they did not compromise.
“You don’t stick a knife into a man’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and call it progress,” Malcolm said.34
“I’ve decided what I’m going to do,” King preached at one of his last sermons at Ebenezer Baptist Church:I ain’t going to kill nobody in Mississippi . . . [or] in Vietnam. I ain’t going to study war no more. And you know what? I don’t care who doesn’t like what I say about it. I don’t care who criticizes me in an editorial. I don’t care what white person or Negro criticizes me. I’m going to stick with the best. On some positions, cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?” But conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” And there comes a time when a true follower of Jesus Christ must take a stand that’s neither safe nor politic nor popular but he must take that stand because it is right. Every now and then we sing about it, “If you are right, God will fight your battle.” I’m going to stick by the best during these evil times.35
Because neither man sold out or compromised, they were killed. If King and Malcolm had lived, they, too, would have become pariahs, victims of the liberal class.
That liberal class is indifferent to the profound personal and economic despair sweeping through this country, still entranced with the aphrodisiac of Obama’s victory. Liberals argue that offering unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on their nonexistent health-care policies is a step forward. They argue that passing a jobs bill that will give tax credits to corporations is a rational response to an unemployment rate that is, in real terms, close to 20 percent. They argue that the refusal to assist the estimated 2.8 million people forced out of their homes in 2009 and the estimated 2.4 million forced out of their homes in 2010 by foreclosure and bank repossessions is justified by the bloodless language of fiscal austerity.
Dean Henderson’s career with FedEx ended abruptly when a reckless driver plowed into his company truck and mangled his leg. No longer able to drive, stripped of value in our commodity culture, he was tossed aside by the company. He became human refuse. Because of the swelling and the pain, he spends most of his days with his leg raised on a recliner in the tiny apartment in Fairfax, Virginia, which he shares with his stepsister. He struggles without an income and medical insurance. He fears his future.
Henderson is not alone.