Minister Malcolm X: Afrikan American Male Rite of Passage

by Clete Hassan Ladd

In “The Theology of Minister Malcom X: Afrikan American Male Rite of Passage,” Clete Ladd’s narrative barges ahead with the tidal weight of history rather than the academic dot-connecting of most scholarly projects. From tales of the Afrikan American community struggle for human rights to the individual’s tale of limited opportunity, hate, and prejudice, Ladd depicts Afrikan American juvenile males’ need for strong forces to swiftly and regularly transition them from childhood to productive manhood. Malcom X’s journey serves as the paradigm for this switch.

The thesis is compelling. However, for me the most striking aspect of this work is the opportunity to view the Afrikan American situation from the perspective of an Islamic Afrikan American, which is vastly different from the interpretation of race relations taught/assumed by a conflict-sheltered, Judeo-Christian, middle-class European-American.

Beginning with the thesis, adolescence is considered by many psychologists to be a uniquely modern phase of development (or lack thereof) in which a person is biologically but not socially an adult. For Mr. Ladd, Afrikan American’s slavery and exclusion from the white-led, segregated society for the bulk of American history is the primary cause of the Afrikan Americans’ lingering in adolescence and poorly transitioning into manhood.*

The father figure, a crucial factor helping young men grow into good men, is a role that is present or absent in a cycle of massive inertia: those who have a father figure are much more likely to be father figures, while those born from absentee, careless fathers are usually deadbeat dads themselves. Therefore, he argues that the nearly total damage to Afrikan American familial structure done by slave owners’ over two centuries by actively banning familial relations–mating them like “bulls” and “heifers” and separating the men from their families–is directly responsible for the continued epidemic of absentee fatherism in Afrikan American households and the impoverished rearing and hope of the teens.

Another factor contributing to the hopelessness of Afrikan American males’ transition to adulthood is the lack of religious identity. Ladd argues that being sold from Afrika as slaves destroyed many Afrikan Americans’ historic cultural and religious identity (Islam) as they were force-fed slave-owners’ Jesus figure. This religion was unacceptable to many who could not tolerate the religion of their oppressors, a religion that used Jesus’ submission to death and the NT passages on slavery as a mandate from God to maintain their position.

Ladd also pleas with his narrative that besides lack of father figures and acceptable religious identity Afrikan Americans had too few career opportunities to help young adults make good career and identity choices. To many blacks, an Afrikan American has to be a servant, a sharecropper, a factory worker, or a criminal. Of these jobs the one that offers identity and promises power, consequence, identity, value, and equality is gangs. This is the choice too many Afrikan Americans make. Being an investment banker is “white,” being a scientist is “white.” Etc.**

Islam, however, can provide a viable identity alternative for Afrikan Americans. Islam gives ancient Afrikan heritage and religion to guide behavior in the vacuum left by rejected Christianity of the slave-owners and segregationists; Islam provides powerful, social-bettering adult male figures; Islam arms them with the opportunity and power and justification to fight back with whatever means works against their oppression (including “eye for an eye” and self-defense — instead of that “submit to authority” of the New Testament). Islam provides therefore a swifter, more effective rite of passage. And Malcom X’s life and conversion offers a superlatively inspirational exmple of the power of Islam to accomplish the most difficult of transitions for Afrikan Americans. For Malcolm, Islam changed him from being an underachieving young, immature, prison-bound pimp and gang member who liked the name “Satan” to being a spokesman that demanded human rights in his country before the nation and before kings and presidents from all over the world.

Perception of Malcom X is markedly different depending upon whom you talk to. Some see him as a violent political figure–an angry, lesser Dr. King–while others view Malcom X as a spiritual leader, prophet, minister. I do not know enough about Malcom X to pass judgment on this, and anyway I wouldn’t like to engage in a battle that focuses a-productively on the epithetic interpretation of a person rather than on the future, on moving forward.

Many of the people in Mr. Ladd’s book said with angry dispair that America and Christianity are “for white people.” It is natural that Europe’s long history of conquest and their widespread use of the NT passages exhorting meek submission to oppression to beat down Afrikan Americans’ struggle for rights would fuel the feeling that Christianity and America are for white people. Dr. King proved that white racists’ Christianity is not the only version of the religion. And America does not have to be for whites or for blacks; America is its citizens. As Afrikan Americans gain their rightful place of equality America takes the shape of all its people.

We have a long way to go, true. But it’s hard to believe that only 41 years since the Selma-Montgomery march (my parents were preteens!), a Republican president from the South–elected with Southern, white Christians’ votes–would post two Afrikan American to the position of Secretary of State. (And Rice and Powell are popular in the South, too, unlike Marshal whose appointment in administration of L. Johnson was not well received, to say the least.) We have a long, long way to go. Anyone who inspires or trains people to grow up to be men and women of integrity, compassion, justice, and equality–whoever he may be, X, King, Ladd, Jesus, Hughes, Longfellow, Michael Jordan, Condoleezza Rice or Jerry Rice, your high school science teacher, Morgan Freeman, Johny Cochran, or Barney the purple dinosaur–is helping this nation of all the people and for all the people be a home for all races and religions. America will hopefully continue to accelerate its harvest of mature adults from the scattered, trampled seeds of our people with the help of Mr. Ladd, until “white America” exists only in memory.

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*Various factors contribute to the indefinite pause between childhood and adulthood, including financial, social, and familial experiences. Mr. Ladd addresses only the factors pertinent to Afrikan Americans’ unique environmental struggles to transition from boys to successful men. For young adults from affluent, white homes, trouble entering adulthood is caused by the opposite problem, I think: too many options and financial freedom to make no choice for a long time. The Industrial Revolution bettered economic conditions (for them) until they could send their children to high school and then college rather than working them in the family’s manual labor occupation from the early end of childhood at 11, 12, or 13. Responsibility-less autonomy now stretches late enough for many that degree-holding adults are still looking for themselves (in idle criticism) as their life becomes a sitcom of value only to those alike in life-phase. Thus, their problem is not being restricted from choices and being pushed into a bad choice by the pressing demands of survival, but rather having too many choices and no reason to make one. Well, it’s a pity, but not as bad as the adolescent problem of everyone else.

** To this day, for want of role models, many Afrikan Americans consider being smart, pursuing a college education, and living in the upper or middle class to be inconsistent with Afrikan Americanness.