Are Obama and Malcolm X Similar?

“REAL MEN DON’T PUT THEIR CHILDREN ON THE FIRING LINE”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Feb. 25, 2013) — The official second inauguration of the man known as “Barack Hussein Obama II” took place on January 21, 2013, which was celebrated as a federal holiday recognizing the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Since occupying the Oval Office, Obama and his wife Michelle have recognized King, who was slain in 1968, as a pre-eminent civil rights leader who dreamed of equal treatment based on the “content of their [blacks’] character” rather than the “color of their skin.”

Obama and Michelle have considered the commemoration of King’s birthday, which was actually January 15, as a “day of service,” urging Americans to participate in volunteer activities in their communities.  President Ronald Reagan signed the law in 1986 making King’s birthday a national holiday.

Despite advances in race relations since King made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, some still believe that there is more work to be done.  King preached against all forms of violence and advocated sit-ins and peaceful disobedience in achieving equal footing with whites.  On January 21, the Obamas “paid their respects” to King at a monument erected in his honor in the Capitol rotunda.

Much has been made of Obama’s having been “the first black president,” although his life story states that he is half black and half white.  Obama’s Justice Department has allowed blacks to go unprosecuted because Eric Holder considered them “his people.”

King and another civil rights icon, Malcolm X, had met once at the Capitol in March 1964 despite deeply divergent views on how blacks could achieve equal treatment.  While King deplored violence, Malcolm’s approach was to advocate self-defense and equal rights “by any means necessary.”

The Post & Email has noted that while Obama shows great respect for King, he does not mention Malcolm X.  Some have speculated and reported that there is a biological relationship between Malcolm and Obama.  Malcolm’s marriage to Betty Sanders might not have been as happy as had been reported while he was alive.

In the struggle for civil rights for blacks, Malcolm referenced the U.S. Constitution and Second Amendment, stating that blacks had the right to defend themselves against white oppressors:

Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle.

Malcolm himself stated that he would apply for a pistol permit after the home in which he and his family had been living was set on fire, although he might have already owned a pistol on the night of the fire, which occurred one week before his assassination.

Malcolm X was slain by Thomas Hagan and possible accomplices at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem on February 21, 1965 after beginning a speech to approximately 400 supporters.  Hagan served 45 years in prison, although he claimed that the other two men incarcerated for the crime were not guilty.  In April 2010, a blogger claimed that the real assailant had never been charged and that a total of five men from Newark, NJ had committed Malcolm’s murder.  The blogger’s information was used in the biography of Malcolm written by Dr. Manning Marable, who died several days before his book was released in 2011.

Malcolm had accused American society of white supremacy and did not believe that President Kennedy was doing enough to combat it.  Blacks were called “Negroes” during the 1960s, as heard in both King’s and Malcolm X’s speeches and writings.

Questions have arisen over why the term “African” was used to indicate the “race” of Obama’s claimed father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., in 1961 on Obama’s purported birth certificate.

Malcolm had accused King’s peaceful movement of being fueled by whites and specifically, “white liberals.”  Malcolm described King’s actions as “psychologically unrealistic” to attain full civil rights for blacks.  Some of his famous speeches included “The Ballot or the Bullet,” a talk on finding “the root” of the problem, and “The House Negro and the Field Negro.”

Malcolm said he deplored the term “negro,” and on a televised appearance from Chicago, he said, “Mr. Muhammad teaches us that  ‘negro’ is a term that was applied to us during slavery by the slavemaster and right today, is a term that is used only to point out the descendants of slaves; it’s never used for black people, period. Africans can come to this country; they aren’t called ‘negroes,’ and if they are called ‘negroes,’ they resent it.”

During his years in prison in Charlestown, MA from 1946-1952 for robbery, Malcolm had joined a movement known as “The Black Muslims,” led by Elijah Muhammad.  While in prison, he participated in the prison debate team, developed oratory skills and read voraciously, including literature classics.   After his release, he became a spokesperson for The Black Muslims, eventually promoted to second-in-command to Muhammad, preaching on the East Coast, particularly in New York and Washington, DC.  The headquarters of the group was in the South Greenwood area of Chicago, where the Obamas’ home is located.

In 1964, Malcolm traveled to Mecca, Saudi Arabia; Cairo, Egypt and other Middle Eastern and African locations and returned with a different world view of integration.  He eventually left The Black Muslims after calling Muhammad a “hypocrite” because Muhammad had had an affair with his secretary while preaching strict faithfulness to one’s spouse through his faith.  While his views on segregation were considered radical for most of the time he preached, after a pilgrimage to Mecca and African nations during which he observed people from various races worshiping together without malice, his stance against the “blue-eyed devils” softened and he called for integration between whites and blacks.

Before his break with Elijah Muhammad’s organization, Malcolm claimed that the Nation of Islam did not support the use of violence.  Even after the rift, Malcolm remained a Muslim until the time of his death.

Malcolm said that in the Muslim faith, a man was judged by “his deeds” rather than “the color of his skin.”  Malcolm stated that Elijah Muhammad had mistakenly said that whites could not “enter into Mecca” and that skin color was actually “incidental.”  However, Malcolm said that “whites” in American society were not part of “the brotherhood” which he observed in the Middle East.

In his speeches, Malcolm spoke with a southern accent but also the short “r” used by Bostonians, perhaps a carry-over from the years he spent with his half-sister, Ella Collins, as a youth.

At the end of his last full speech, Malcolm decried the alleged manipulation of facts by the media wherein blacks were called “racists” and wherein “the victim” was made to “look like the criminal.”  He gave a speech at Harvard University about “media manipulation.”  Obama’s campaign directors have stated that they controlled the media.

In 2004, during a debate with Alan Keyes for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois, Obama had deplored America for its “legacies of slavery and Jim Crow” (51:03) against blacks.  Obama stated that it was “immoral” for people to be “having a tough time” paying for health care or “saving for their child’s college education” (55:40).

During the debate, Keyes emphasized Scripture, his belief that abortion is “immoral,” and that “separation between church and state” is not found in the Constitution.

In 2008 in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Obama made a comment about “my Muslim faith,” which Stephanopoulos corrected to “my Christian faith.”

Since the Newtown, CT school massacre on December 14, 2012, Obama has stridently pushed for gun control measures.  Sheriffs across the country are declaring that they will not implement unconstitutional gun control measures decreed from the White House or Congress.

Under Obama in 2012, 44,700,000 families were receiving food stamps, a form of “welfare,” up 33% from 2009. The Obama regime reportedly awarded “performance bonuses” for new enrollees to the Food Stamp program, now called “SNAP.”  In a New York Times article from October 5, 1963, Malcolm X was quoted in a speech given the night before in Fresno, CA as having told his listeners to “…be polite and get off welfare.”

In early May 1963, civil rights demonstrations organized by Martin Luther King to protest Birmingham, AL’s strict segregationist laws included a “Children’s Crusade” approved by King.   Many young and high-school-age children were arrested in addition to Dr. King. Of the march, a black child growing up in Birmingham recalled that “Hundreds of teenagers and younger children filed out of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church where they were greeted by Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor and his storm troopers, who treated adult and child alike. The marchers were beaten and knocked from their feet by powerful water cannons operated by city firefighters and then taken to jail.”

As reported in an article dated May 10, 1963 in The New York Times’s archive collection, Malcolm X was quoted as having said of the protest, “Real men don’t put their children on the firing line.”

On August 28, 1963, a march on Washington was held during which blacks protested a lack of employment and inferior treatment in American society.  On September 15, four children attending a Sunday school lost their lives when the church was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan.  With the nation horrified, public sentiment led to Congress’s passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

On January 16, 2013, Obama had four children from across the country as a backdrop when he spoke about gun violence and the 23 executive actions he would sign in an attempt to combat it.  Many state legislatures are deliberating over bills which, if passed, will limit magazine capacities and possibly impose storage restrictions on lawful firearms owners.

In Malcolm’s day, an “extremist” was a black person who demanded equal rights to whites.  Malcolm believed in “intelligently-directed extremism” in the quest of “liberty.”  To Malcolm, America was a “racist society.”

In Obama’s America, an “extremist” is considered someone who seeks to uphold the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, and traditional American values, with a new task force organized last month to monitor “online radicalism.”

Both Malcolm and Obama are known for their oratorical skills.  Malcolm liked to know where people stood, and Obama claims to head the “most transparent administration” in U.S. history.