Greetings are extended to Malcolm X, who is 84 today — and whom I would like to see alive and speaking on Afghanistan and Guantánamo.
When we were very young, we were told Malcolm was “unstable.” When I got old enough to actually read his words, he was already dead. Reading him, though, I realized he was not at all crazy — he just had an incisive mind and a will.
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, ¡presente!
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
He was something else, wasn’t he?
I’m always amazed (now that I’m a grown up and know better) at how vilified Malcolm X was by society. In school he was always sort of subtly contrasted with MLK, so that MLK was “good” and X was “bad” without it ever being stated in that way. Now I just think X was a brilliant and energetic man with great ideas and whose life was cut short way too soon. Happy bday, Hajjy– allah yarhimu.
Awhile back, I worked with a student in our writing center who was writing about an excerpt from Malcolm X’s autobiography.
After our conference, which went well, the student looked up at me and asked, “So what is he doing these days?”
There was a moment there where I wanted to imagine the unimaginable: Malcolm’s life after 1965 and where he would be today, a few years into the new century. Imagine that.
Instead, I had to “kill” him all over again.
Now, that would be amazing. I wish it were true.
Meanwhile, here, they are saying JFK was assassinated because he was instituting socialism, and Obama will be assassinated for the same reason.
What radio personality started this insanity?