Reflections on Malcolm X and Black Feminism

Angela Davis, thinking back to her undergraduate days, remarks that hearing Malcolm X speak “before an audience composed of the almost entirely white student population had a profound effect on my own political development. No one could have convinced me then that Malcolm had not come to Brandeis to give expression to my own inarticulate rage and awaken me to the possibilities of militant practice” (A. Davis, “Meditations” 42).1

Davis's temporal marker (“no one could have convinced me then”) signifies the black feminist challenges to masculinist conceptions of liberation that have emerged during the thirty or more years since Malcolm X was assassinated. But her statement also acknowledges the way in which, at a critical juncture in her own development, Malcolm spoke for her and to her. Hence her statement and, more generally, the essay from which it is drawn have a two-fold implication. On the one hand, it is necessary to rethink Malcolm's contribution to racial liberation from a black feminist perspective. On the other, it is important to avoid replacing the either/or of race with an either/or of gender. We require, that is to say, a critical and non-reductive appraisal of masculinist conceptions of emancipation—an understanding of the processes of development they facilitate as well as the ones they inhibit.

The present essay focuses on Malcolm X and is intended as a contribution to this critical project. We will begin with a brief discussion of the various perspectives from which Malcolm has been interpreted. This will help us to restore the political context and content of his theory and practice. It will also lead us to the recognition that the assertion of black manhood during the 1960s was accompanied by a distinctive derogation of black womanhood, i.e., by the stereotyping of strong black women as domineering matriarchs.

Next, we will develop an approach to understanding the devaluation of black women by joining (a) the analyses of race/gender stereotyping art