Malcolm X Was A Hood Nigga Who Almost Made It.
“I looked up to Malcolm X. He believed in Black possibilities. His pop’s was Garveyite, and his mom’s was from the Caribbean. The Trinidadian in me felt like Malcolm X and I shared a tribe somewhere down the ancestral line. Maybe he had the lineage of the Merikins like my family, the renegade enslaved Africans in the American South who joined the British Army during the War of 1812. After they participated in the burning of Washington D.C., they relocated to unsettled parts of Trinidad and created a self-sustaining community without white influence or interference. Was Malcolm also a Merikin, or maybe a Maroon descendant? I don’t know, but there was something about his spirit that felt kindred. His oratorical skills resonated with me. He was comfortable telling white people ``no,” and the same treatment was reserved for Black people who were lost in whiteness. He consulted with Maya Angelou and Muhammad Ali. He was a hood dude. He understood what prison felt like. He understood me, and I understood him. We wanted an exodus from cages. We embraced evolving in belief and perspective.” ((from Bird Uncaged: An Abolitionist’s Freedom Song)
Hood niggas showing love.
Gout-stricken knees, tightly rolled blunts, and Hennessy. Always Hennessey. The food were the fried, grilled, and baked delicacies of our community–Black southern and Caribbean. Hardcore rap played. N.O.R.E, Biggie, not Jiigga yet, stewed with some Dangerously by Barrington Levy. A weed cipher convened in the backyard of the event space, under a tent with rain and backyard dirt mixed. Some of us talked about our past with nostalgia — the good, the questionable, and the usually unspeakable in public spaces. The bad, too. Little ones mimicking the teenagers dancing to Suavemente, by Elvis Crispo capped the night.
One of ours left us, his family, our extended intimacy of brethren. And, he was a real nigga.
He loved his children. He went to house parties as a kid, rode bikes, devised ways to grow up that kept him alive till 45. He made a liar of rap lyrics about black men not being alive by twenty-one.
He was a hood nigga. He wasn’t Malcolm X, but I could imagine Brother Malcolm feeling comfortable around people like us at this repass, because Brother Malcolm was hood nigga who almost made it to old age. Unlike Malcolm, our dear friend, Lil Mikey, aka Half, was no world renowned thinker, leader, and activist. But, he was from the same type of community Malcolm cared about the most. In fact, Malcolm’s daughters, as children, would stay with family five minutes away from where Half and the rest of us lived in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Malcolm became real to me during my time in our shared alma mater — prison. We shared robbery convictions. He was 19 at the time of his first conviction, and I was 19 when I was arrested for the crime for which I’d eventually be convicted. Both of our mothers were Caribbean immigrants. Religion, though differing, made us good orators. Both of us disliked policing because of its commitment to harming Black people with impunity. A Black orthodox Muslim brother named Ra handed The Autobiography of Malcolm X to me several years into the prison sentence. It took me a whole three days to read the book. I discovered Malcolm was a product of the foster care to prison pipeline and the school to prison pipeline. He ran the streets. His adolescent years of self-discovery were mired in American racism and its poverty. He got some knowledge in prison.
People like me accept Malcolm as Detroit Red as much as we admire Malik El-Shabazz, because he was accessible to our flaws and possibilities. He evolved into a global freedom fighter and scholar who connected his personal trauma to the societal pathology of white supremacy. We loved the mystique of Brother Malcolm. His life was legend in the pantheon of militancy Claudia Jones, the complexities of Tupac, and the courage of Ida B. Wells. He was Kendrick at the Grammys and 3 Stacks at the Source Awards.
“My confession, it’s the story of any Black cat in this curious place and time,” the novelist James Baldwin said of Malcolm’s journey. The 21st century translation of this literary laureate’s observation of X is, “Brother Malcolm was a hood nigga who almost made it.”
Many of you reading this, white people, will not be able to read this essay aloud without censoring yourself, and that is my fidelity to our Black shining prince. Malcolm was a Harlem legend with global clout who was committed to making White people feel uncomfortable about the cancer of their racism. Imagine if I code switched for your benefit? And, for those of you who repeat parts of this essay despite the taboo would also be uncomfortable around Malcolm. Though we could never imagine Brother Malcolm saying nigga, I believe he would agree that many of you are undeserving of the nuanced Black experience.
The good, the bad, and the complicated.
Ma’Khia Bryant was a 16-year old hood nigga who almost made it. Ma’Khia was gunned down by Columbus, Ohio police officer Nicholas Reardon. She was a child — a Black child — a Black girl — a big Black girl, and because she fit that description, she was seen as the aggressor. They didn’t see her humanity. They adultified her. She was killed.
Ma’Khia was part of our complicated Black experience. She was an honor roll student, she was a file in the foster care system, her life was under threat by people in her community, and she was killed by the police. Unlike Malcolm X, young Ma’Khia did not sprout into a model of enlightenment and leadership. Her Black possibilities were executed at 16-years old.
Brother Malcolm was also a product of the foster care system. He entered when he was 13 or 14 years old. As an older teen Malcolm carried knives, guns and sold drugs. He wore bebop Zoot suits that older people thought were criminal attire. In Los Angeles in 1943 for five straight days, U.S. servicemen, police, and white civilians brutalized Black, Filipino, and Mexican youth who wore Zoot suits because the clothing was associated with criminality. The zoot suits covered the non-white skin tones that were the real perceived criminal. If he was gunned down or suffocated by police he would have been the imperfect victim just like Mike Brown, just like Ma’Khia. And his Black possibilities would have died with him.
The living value of a Malcolm, who would be celebrating his 97th birthday this May 19th, is that hood niggas with complicated experiences are not dispensable action figures. When we die we don’t multiply — not really.
But when we live we get to fall in love. Brother Malcolm survived long enough to fall in love with and marry Betty Shabazz, father of five children, and discover a life of purpose beyond his Harlem haphazardness. He helped create Muhammad Speaks, one of the most widely read newspapers produced by a Black American organization. He mentored and counseled Cassius Clay who became Muhammad Ali. Malcolm inspired young Maya Angelou, challenged Martin Luther King, debated Bayard Rustin at Howard University, and made Alex Haley an acclaimed writer.
It is easy to overlook that Brother Malcolm’s entire professional career lasted only 13- years. He was released from a six-in-a-half year prison stint in 1952, In a little over a decade Brother Malcolm, a formerly incarcerated person who was a product of the foster care system and American racism evolved into “our Black shining prince”, as he was affectionately eulogized by Ossie Davis.
During a four month trip to Africa in the year before his assassination he met with leaders from Kenya, Egypt, Tanzania, and Ghana scheming to build a global Black power movement before the Black Panthers were established. His death ended his global aspirations as a Black man who could hold court with world leaders and remain colloquial and authentic to sisters and brothers from the streets of Harlem. Though his objectives of global Black unity lives on through the 21st century, he is not here to see his vision through. He was shot up at a club in Harlem in the quotidian nature of some of my friends from Brooklyn. Brother Malcolm almost made it.
Toni Morrison published her first and seminal work, The Bluest Eye at 39-years old, the same age that Malcom’s life ended. She went on to author about two dozen more literary works and won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1993. What if Malcolm did not die? How many books would he have written? How many schools would he have opened? How many African nations would he have been able to galvanize for a global Black unity? Maybe he would have been able to coach and counsel the young Black Panthers.
His Black possibilities, though many realized, were cut short. Hood niggas like me and Ma’Khia look up to Brother Malcolm, not because of all that he accomplished, but because he was imperfect; because of what he almost accomplished–a long life. He made mistakes in his youth. He ran the streets. He grew up. He didn’t forget his friends who were taking longer to evolve. He emancipated himself from mental slavery. He wore fly suits and was photogenic. He loved Black people. He struggled to love himself and won — -
Almost.
Brother Malcolm was assassinated three months before his 40th birthday. His thoughts didn’t die, but he did. And that is another, and more compelling reason for our deep adoration for Brother Malcolm — maturing hood niggas still fear physical death despite living evolved lives.
Some of you all will never understand the nuanced Black experience in America, and because of that there are some terms of endearment that you do not deserve access to.
Half, aka Lil Mikey, was a hood nigga who almost made it, until cancer took him. Both he and Malcom made it past twenty-one. Though the manner of their deaths are drastically different, neither one of them got to make it to old age. I wish more Black boys and girls survive through old age. I hope I do.
I wish more hood niggas made it because we miss out on the best of our possibilities.
The world needs us.
