[inaudible conversations] >> welcome to c-span2's booktv. every weekend we bring you 48 hours of books on history, biographies and public affairs by nonfiction authors. ..

look for the entire three day schedule at booktv.org and sign up for booktv alert. weekend schedule in your in box. >> 1 booktv a panel discussion on the life and work of african-american history scholar manning marable who died on april 1st, 2011. this is just under two hours. >> welcome to the central library. i am lucy eco of the library of baltimore. we are pleased to have you here for this special evening. and a special hello to c-span's

viewers. when we originally booked manning marable several months ago we are very excited to have him here to discuss his landmark book malcolm x:a life of reinvention. we were heartbroken when we heard he became ill and passed away just days before that monumental book was released. we still wanted to honor him and his work and definitely is life. so thanks to a lifelong library supporter and our board member, mark steiner the aggression we arrive at this event tonight. we are really honored to have the people we have on our panel tonight. we know it is going to be a great tribute to a great man. before we get started we have a very special guest who we want to invite to say a few words,

manning marable's stepdaughter, maria s. steiner. [applause] >> good evening, everyone. on behalf of my stepfather and the rest of my family i would like to welcome you to this wonderful event. i am happy to see so many of you here to honor him and his legacy. he would be pleased to know how many people cared about him, his inspiration and his work and found truth in his scholarship. manning marable's last project was the ten year labor of love. when i go back to new york, but first question was his health and the second is how is malcolm. he would share with us the latest interview or discovery with such admiration in his voice. couldn't help but be excited as he was about everything.

it disappoints me that he did not make it here to see his book enter our lives but he finish that. we have to read it without him, but he would be happy we can at least do that. thank you all for coming. [applause] >> thank you so much. we really appreciate you being here tonight for this. and now on would like to introduce the moderator of many of you hear him every day on w e e a radio. he is one of our most active board members. please welcome dr. mark steiner. >> good evening, everybody and welcome. i am glad you showed up for this. it is important to add on to

what the library said, when we realized manning marable past. he was a great human being. we decided we couldn't just let today go and needed to gather a panel together to talk about his work. for me it was especially important, malcolm x was a figure we talked about in this book, very few people on planet earth stand from both iran and the united states of america. that juxtaposition of malcolm x and the power of his legacy that people rest over all the time. for made, when manning passed away and are called carlo right away and we came up with this panel it was because a young man of 18 years old was

assassinated, jump in a greyhound bus to go to new york to the side of the church at his funeral. thousands and thousands of people were standing there at the cemetery for his last walk. this book, some call him magnum opus, son:the tragedy. the legacy of the things that make his legacy even larger and greater. we will discuss that tonight. there is a microphone there. the second hour if not earlier, conversation at the mike. asking one thing. there's a panel with lots to say. don't go to the microphone and give a lanky 15 minute

discourse. -- [applause] >> michael eric dyson, prof. of psychology at georgetown university and host of the dyson show across the nation. [applause] >> lester spence, professor of science. melissa harris-perry, associate professor of politics, at tulane university. let's jump into the heat of the battle and talk about the significance of this book and argument around the

significance. clearly it is adding something huge to this discussion but what is it? before i throw out those ideas with the we agree or disagree i am curious starting with sherrilyn ifill, what is it for you that malcolm x, the life and the invention? >> first of all the significance is that manning marable wrote it. and manning marable himself really represents an example for many of us who became scholars and entered the academy of how one can live as a it relevant scholar who is relevant to the lives of african-american people, who is focused on bringing truth in great detail. this is my kind of book. put that in a footnote. i love it. i remember the night the news came out that manning marable

passed away i was in an arbor michigan giving a talk about slavery and preparation at university of michigan. the woman who was hosting me told me about it. she teaches at university of michigan in the law school and african-american studies department. white woman and she began to tell me about how manning marable had mentored her as a young scholar in new york. i didn't find it surprising i was in the heartland and someone was telling me this story because of his tremendous influence. the seeds that he planted as a mentor are extraordinary. i don't want -- before we jump into talking about malcolm x, want to say for me a good deal of the significance is that he wrote it. it is also a significant that unfortunately he died before the book was released but this evening and others like it are so important. i can remember when the mother

of and that hill died. she also had a book she had written and she died a week before the book came out and most of you never read the book because of course she wasn't alive to do the publicity. it is a powerful important book about what happened to mothers. the journey of a mother when her son is killed. something powerful for the african-american community. tonight is important and it is our job to carry it forward. in terms of the significance for me, i think this book is long overdue. because it provides missing details that in your intellectual spirit and your spirits. you just know have to be missing from what you know, those of us who did not personally know malcolm x but new people who personally knew him that we are missing from the

story. that is the day-to-day struggle of what it takes to evolve as a leader particularly an african-american male leader. who has integrity. it is a journey. it is not a place. there have been so many pieces of mao:'s journey that are missing. this is filled in in many ways but i found these huge gaps in terms of mark cohen x's journey and many are filled by this book and they are important because of the iconic position that he holds. i am sure we can talk about more. [inaudible]

such a distinguished panel. i wish manning marable could have been here. manning marable was prepared for the controversy. i learned that in conversations with him. he loved malcolm x like few other people. he loved the meaning of the man. he loved his historical significance. he loved his revolutionary potential and practice and he had to face up to the fact that as a historian and intellectual and scholar he had to tell the truth the best he could the best he understood it. the power and beauty of this book is is rendered in such accessible and eloquent prose and engage in a broad spectrum and continue a of scholarly data. it takes account of non accessed

data about malcolm and wrestles with the story of an iconic figure who meant so much to varying and competing contradictory constituents. manning marable had a difficult job to do. similar to spike lee doing his film with the fire and the heat of various constituencies figuring out what to make of this man that we love. even more so because this tries to grapple with significance of malcolm x it is an enormous work. i believe his magnum opus, that is saying a lot because manning marable wrote a great deal of brilliant things that have to be dealt with from some of his earlier stuff like capitalism under developed black america to

his work on black politics. it is an extraordinary career that he had a vocation for trying to bring lucidity and clarity to complicated and difficult truths. i love this book. i read it and was privileged to read it before it was published. it is a brilliant insightful invigorating and of trying comprehension of an immoral human being has emerged american soil. colt malcolm the greatest figure of the 20th-century. some has been exaggerated and some has been generated from people's own sense of insecurity and frailty and homophobia and the fear of dealing with the raw

truth of an evolving human being. i think the essence of this book is it delivers as complicated a vision of a man who needs to be understood and in his own autobiography that manning has challenged in a powerful way malcolm said they won't let me turn the corner and so many people have him in a bear hug that refuses to let him breathe freely the air of his own evolution. i celebrate this book and look forward to talking to you about it. >> like the rest of the panel are want to talk about manning marable. we often black box the act of cultural production. the act of writing a book or a song or painting a picture and i think we do that for a number of reasons. i think there are a whole bunch

of reasons we might want to compact that process. why here? manning marable suffered -- is important to talk about the disparity. psychedelic is something that affects black people more than white. when black people get it they get it worse. manning had to have both lungs replaced. book while dealing with that. we don't talk a lot about the act of production, the type of grind it takes. i wrote a little book that just came out. these guys wrote several. every time you deal with some type of crisis you have to do it. the fact that he was able to do it and had never done anything like this in his career which was already long is really a tough one. we have four rose as scholars. some of us are primarily mentors and some are primarily writers

and some art teachers. some are institution builders. manning with all four. the course at colorado -- columbia. he either founded or developed black studies programs. i believe he was in his 20s when he developed this. it is important to talk about scholar. with that said i will be the role of the credit. i believe that work is the work scholars will have to wrestle with when dealing with malcolm x's legacy going forward. even as it humanizes him there are a whole set of questions that are shunted aside or not effectively dealt with. and it diminishes the importance of an extremely important work. we will talk about that more but

he does not give enough attention to its evolution and as the nation of islam has a problematic politics, he doesn't effectively deal with some of the reasons why the nation of islam was as effective as it was in mobilizing people. so the book ends up -- doing a great deal. it is an excellent way to end a career. i am so sorry he is not here to participate. with that said there are some questions and we have to wrestle [inaudible] >> i will not take -- i will take an manning moment. i really loved him. i really loved him mostly because he was incredibly

snarky. i like nice people but i prefer people who are a little harsh and snarky, make the observation. i remember sitting and listening to people who were very important stalin is giving lectures in a room with manning and looking over and catching his expression and thinking of k, all right. having known him i know he would not want it to be exclusively a showed he loved you was to criticize and through clear eyed careful intellectual engagement. i appreciate you bringing that as well. a few things that are important about this book from my perspective, i would take some

disagreement with your representation -- he presents theologically without the sense of foolishness or ridiculousness he engages the theology of the nation of islam with as much respect and as much care as a historian of any tradition. if we read books about people who are important leaders with the christian tradition no one mocks the idea that by the way he believed in this religion where a guy got up after three days of being dead and walked around. but pretty frequently when you read scholarly works on the nation they do make fun of creation myths and they do mark -- theological precepts. manning restrains himself from

that and presents even though we know the rejection of many of those ideas that come later in the book from malcolm himself. the second thing this book did for me. i know a lot of people are angry that the text takes away the hero that is malcolm x for so many people. i will double back to that in a second but the thing he killed for me was alex haley. you read this and alex is not looking like we should feel very good about him. that has been done but there's a way in which it is happening here. the work he has to do to deconstructs the autobiography. to deconstructs the autobiography he takes us into the black box of alex haley's

and it is not always pretty because particularly when you are writing to feed yourself, you have to take that in ways that were challenging. the third thing i thought was important we talk about as we t

unwanted to think about malcolm's assassination in the context of it being a very american moment. we think of malcolm as the black nationalist critiquing america but at all points caught up in a very american structure including the nation's slow reading that again in the context of the killing of bin laden and the final thing i will say in this introduction is i am ready to give up alex haley's malcolm x. and spike lee's malcolm x and not everyone is. i have a dear friend who teaches at an all boys charter school in

the inner city. there is no book that appears more frequently on this friend's personal bookshelf and the i have never seen a bookshelf with fewer than 15 copies and never taught a class without teaching the autobiography. the work in political science is the idea that malcolm through the film and the autobiography he is a kind of magical talisman. you rub him to get your manhood fixed and hugh -- the malcolm x incantation to represent your anger at the american state and your sense of the organizing political possibilities of black manhood are. so it is that myth that is important and powerful and does important organizing work. but i am ready for it, to give

it up without demanding anyone else given up. but i wasn't ready to give it up into a village. i suspect it wasn't quite right but i wasn't ready to give it up to avoid. manning lets us give up that mess without walking into a novel it. it gives us something else that is contentious and we will have to deal with but at least gives us another malcolm who we can love and a different kind of way. >> i throw a question out. feel free to leap into things. fill in and -- i want to pick up on what you said. for some people there are parts of this book that are tearing

people apart who care about malcolm x and who care about this world in this way to read this book. let's begin with alex haley. alex haley, his book was a seminal work that moved millions of young americans, not just african-americans, moved human beings to understand the struggle about oppressed people and a sense of being african-american and where you stood and why you stood there and what you had to fight for. having said that i understand what you just said. i can read this and go did he trash alex too hard? some people criticize manning by saying that he also mobilized the image of malcolm x.

not similar from alex haley some would argue. what about the argument of alex haley's book no longer be relevant and this being relevant now? >> in light of what everybody said and after reading the book myself, surely you can't read alex haley's the same way. conclusion. you can see it through the same lenses because manning makes clear his political, ideological framework determines what he included or excluded, what he kept in, so the thing is -- it has been biblical -- there's a lot of stuff. you think manning's stuff is deep, the new testament scholars when you are a beginning minister to tell you about the

bible busters, it is a wonder you have anything left because i believe in trying to historically around these texts that reveal more about the projections of authors and the possibilities that they imagine than objective truth. i think the autobiography continues to be useful but it has to be seen in a specific way. and once we read haley's construction of his life, he was the secretary so to speak but doing a lot more, furrowing stuff in and keeping stuff out and fighting with publishers who wanted their own vision of malcolm to prevailed. not just haley and malcolm but white publishing houses and liberal ideological and political framework and

malcolm's own self mythologizing. let's not just act like malcolm himself was the template of objective truth upon which we could then print our conceptions of what his life was like. this is what manning helps us understand. he is trying to suggest the redemptive power of elijah muhammed. that gets turned on its head. when i think about the book i guess because there was a famous preacher preaching once, a very famous guy and these two seminary students were there on easter sunday and he was standing jesus got up on sunday morning and raised up and people oh yes, it is amazing. the two seminarians came to him after the sermon and said you restored my faith, i am in seminary and reading all this

stuff and you are talking about jesus's resurrection, and -- you could either say this guy was cynical, that he was lying or that even when you know the oldest of you read about in the was shaped and how jesus was aboard when they said he was and the stuff people wrote, the forgery, stuff in the bible was written by paul that wasn't written by fall and at the end of the day you may have faith that is sustained in the myths of the deconstruction but the deconstruction gives you a different sense of how it was produced. if you talk about professor spence's notion, talking about the black box assumes the crash too and the crashing has been the clash between our

understanding of intellectual processes that brings the sharpest scholarship possible with the kind of faith assertion. i think prof. melissa harris-perry is right that manning takes the theology of islam which makes as much sense as any other religious assertion that has been put out there, that is powerful. i don't think you have to give up alex haley's book but you have to give up what you think of his book and give up what you thought it did and forget what malcolm said about himself. began at the beginning. you begin by seeing that lives are lived in constant and repeated affirmation of ideals that constantly evolve. that is why frederick douglass had to write three and autobiographies and malcolm might have written the most. we have to give up what we think about it and begin to use it differently in form with all the stuff that manning brought to

was. >> i was going to suggest that this sound like a discussion about the bible because of the way people respond to text but it is not like a discussion about the bible because part of our problem is that we read books like they are religious texts. religion in and of itself is irrational. i am a christian. you believe it even though you can't scientifically proved it you believe what you believe. too often particularly when it comes to our heroes we read about them and in internalize stories about them as though they are a religious figure. so we cut off our critical faculties and we become interested in perpetuating certain myths. it happened with martin for many

years. we have been through that process we don't remember how much people were invested in a mythology about martin luther king jr. who had to be humanized over decades of recognize him as a man. that is the stage we are at with this text and i loved it because precisely as dr. dyson said as a competing narrative you can never fully understand any human being. we are all the product of competing narrative's including those about ourselves. when you start reading an autobiography we all know that we talk about ourselves differently than other people would talk about us. you are reading a biased text. i love frederick douglass. write the story. just saying. it is the failure of our critical faculty.

it is our investment has african-american people, we are very protective of our heroes. but sometimes it is to the exclusion of wanting to accept them as men and women and here is the danger and what i like this book. too much -- precisely what melissa said is true about malcolm becoming a talisman. what we do when we mythologize figures like malcolm x and martin luther king is we scare people from thinking they could be leaders. we make it look like the magical mystical -- you have to be born into it and have to be imprisoned and someone has to anoint you and we make it sound like magic and it is not magic. argument beings and everyone has the potential

leader. i like the they to they going to moscow number 7 and having this conversation and meeting. this is what is involved in a real life. as much as the more powerful parts of the book, those to me are very important because they describe and show people the mundane interactions with human beings and so forth that going to creating the story. it is powerful as it suggests to people malcolm x is a human being with great qualities and great potential because he had not reached where he could have reached and that is an important theme of the book also but he is accessible in ways that i think

alex haley's work makes and not accessible and to me that is powerful. >> what do you think will happen? when i was on your show a couple weeks back we talked about this book a little bit. and this was playing with the biography -- also raises issues about gondi's life and the human conflicts he had as well. any of us here have everyday in our lives. what does it do? what you just described. what does it do when we take -- what happens when we take iconic figures and humanize them, this

book about the trilogy about martin luther king's affairs and -- all those things as well? what happens to us as a people when that happens? leaders -- what happens when books like this come out and talk about things that make people's stomachs flip? >> it seems to me there are many possibilities. one is the most empowering story which is the more we recognize the humanity of those who do great things the more we feel capable of doing great things. go back to the seminary example, the other possibility of the story of jesus is that he is simultaneously divine and human part it makes the story more empowering. holding on to the human part -- part of what i would suggest

also is what we are talking about here when it came to king what we talk about with malcolm are not necessarily failings. they are simply identities and ways of being that are not in line with our conception of who this person is and that is different. in other words, when you steal someone else's idea even if it is a tradition to do so that is a problem. that is something where you need to pause and we need to engage what it means for king to have done that and how we understand those practices. when you engage in what appears to be a consensual sexual relationship with someone of the same sex it is not a failing. it is a practice. it is a practice that we then

have to recognize our understanding of who malcolm little is because my understanding from reading the book is it is manning's understanding to the extent that there was same-sex sexual relations that occurred in the part of his life when he was malcolm little. we have to comprehend that. first time that i read a revision of malcolm's understanding of himself was rereading of these suits suit. if you no robin kelly's brilliant reading of thesuit when malcolm talks about himself and haley's autobiography, i was without politics. i was just this guy out there doing this thing. it really is mohammad who gives me a political worldview through this. robin says wait a minute.

it is all about politics, right? you cannot be a young black man walking around in an expensive suit in world war ii when people are supposed -- we have been a war ten years and no one is supposed to sacrifice anything but in the context of world war ii how you demonstrate you are part of the domestic war effort was to be self sacrificial. black men were supposed to be always sacrificial in the american state even if there is no war going on so to the young black man wearing a flashy expensive suit in the context of world war ii and milan from manning with such beautiful -- how he gets out of serving in the war and get around -- got to love it. just crazy -- you are not sending me to war.

crazy. sure he doesn't have to go. all those things -- what robin kelly gives us is you were political. part of what i read when i read about things called failings is a lot of them are around the relationship -- a lot of them are around the harshness with which he treats his lieutenants and a lot of them around the anxiety about the question of same-sex sexual activity although it is not fair that there was ever a gay identity. i don't know that those are failings. those are revisions or understandings of how malcolm would have understood himself. to i think malcolm thinks he was

non-political in the zoot suit? yes. 2 i think robin kelly has something on the politics of the zoot suit? absolutely. to i think malcolm x look on malcolm little and had shame and understanding of the deep feeling as a man? absolutely. to i see manning reading it as such? no. he is giving us a different vision of what those practices were and what his practices are relative to his life going forward in this story. >> what is going to happen at first is what is happening now as a process. the question is you have this competing vision and this or original vision and a great deal of contention. overtime what is going to happen is you will reconcile that moment. at least for me personally i have been -- it really shifted to me when i became 40 because

at that point both martin luther king and malcolm x when they were assassinated. i am looking at this as a parent and i am like there is no way i would do what they did and sacrifice my children. no way in hell i would do that. at that moment for me they become different figures. i think what is going to happen is these two visions are going to reconcile themselves. it won't be -- it won't be an easy middle but it will be a more human middle. there are number of aspects of this new malcolm that we may disagree with and fight over but that new middle gets us closer to that small vision. >> what are the pieces you can fight over?

>> i read the same sex activity a bit different than melissa does. i know we are on c-span so i am trying to figure out a way -- [talking over each other] >> it is clear to me that something occurs and it is clear that something was in part dictated by the market's. it is not clear to me that what happened was a same-sex activity. and second, i would need much more information in order to verify that it in fact was. this is one of those areas that the citation -- there are 80 pages of footnotes but a lot of that stuff isn't footnotes. i think some of that stuff is

something that needs to be factually foot noted if for no other reason than those who have a challenge with it can verify. >> but does anybody -- let's take away the malcolm little moment and go just to the homoerotic practices of the nation in the sense that it is -- [talking over each other] >> just in the sense -- this is the footnoted part. this sense of malcolm -- we are there together and women over there. whether that is about erotic engagement with one another's body is a separate question than whether or not it is a social or political space that says the only body's ideas or person's goals that matter are men. part of the transition of

malcolm is a move into an increasing willingness to embrace a leadership role for women which seems to be at least in part engaged with liking them as human beings. taking the section melody out of it, that you have this narrative about his mother's mental illness or the woman who helps -- all these things manning built up and what he gives us is malcolm does not like women and maybe this is sexual and maybe it is not but the big issue is he thinks women could sit down and shut up. and malcolm turns into a person person becomes more of a -- what also has to have ethical and personal liking for women. it can't be just an exclusively political but the sexual erotic

is in part standing in for the political and theological. i couldn't agree more about this issue of separating malcolm little from malcolm x and seeing the journey of malcolm x being one that is not just about race but also a gender. i find precisely what you describe, this place where there is a focus on men and the ideas of men and do men are to the exclusion of women to be like ho-hum in the sense that that is the space in which most power is exercised in the united states and many places, that is the character of it. that is what it looks like and feels like and whether it is the nation of islam or the democratic party or the republican party or any other

powerful, wall street powerful organization or political science department or law school. this is how power -- this returns to earlier comments about a very american story. the pages were flipping are for me because i find this noncontroversial. the interesting part is the part you were referring to at the end and that is -- this is a perfect example of how as we begin to develop ourselves around this our minds and spirits to thinking about equality in terms that understand power and who is at the bottom and who is at the top and the ways in which race can be deployed in order to the same way and context in which it opened their mind about a variety of other issues including gender.

that transformation, the liking that melissa talks about to see women as people, that it critically important transformation that did become much more interesting for me because it suggests that this is also about the evolution of how we exercise power. power is sometimes most potent and most attractive and least controversial to those around you when it is being exercised in a way that is the exclusionary, harsh, cool, that is the easy power. the broader power that malcolm begins to talk about when he is a way in cairo and traveling in africa in this is going to benefit the whole, when you pursue the whole power as malcolm was doing and as martin was doing at the end of his life, then it is much more

disruptive, much more dangerous to the status quo, much more potentially disruptive and to me that part of the narrative is -- when you talk about the speeding up at the point of the assassination, that is where the story speeds up to the point that made my stomach hurt because when you see that coming you know what is next. >> very briefly, the brilliance of everything that has been said i want to have a couple things. first of all we have no combat records or cadillac sales. nobody is questioning that. we never questioned that. really prove -- where is the proof that malcolm was a pimp? manning deconstructs most of that. you were in lansing when you were supposed to be in new york.

suggest he wasn't doing that stuff than -- what does that say about us? we are comfortable with the notion that malcolm could have been a pimp. exploiting women as prof. perry was saying. exploiting women. i think given given the brilliant dichotomy or division between failure and practice i would say malcolm abstaining from women was a failure. i put it in that category. most of us who are men fail at that level. most of us that is a huge failure. the brilliant insights about the psycho sexual politics or the politics of the construction of the air what we have a problem with is malcolm rushed up closely against the homoerotic and not only as malcolm little but as melissa harris-perry talks about within the context

of a male preserve which was the nation of islam. we can talk about a bunch of others as well, what is interesting is we have no problem with him excluding women and using them and putting them on the street and selling their flesh but god forbid a homoerotic act which was not exploiting anybody because it was for pay and as we talked about it and hustlers have done a lot of stuff they did not invest in. it was a practice for money. professor smith talks about the commercial exchange. i am doing this because i want a happy ending or a great outcome. the reality is we have a problem because it exposes where we are. the deep and profound lacerating homophobia that blocks as from seeing malcolm as a greater figure because more men can identify with him.

a greater cross-section of struggling black men can identify with him because we struggled at so many points in terms of the abuse of women and self abuse and engaging in nefarious practices, that is one thing that needs to be expressed and opened up so that the evidence, empirically verifiable evidence is available, is lacking in the area where malcolm's greatest assertion of manhood is. i am not homophobic or i am as a man who is a heterosexual born in a heterosexual culture but if he was malcolm little and got converted and now he is malcolm x doing a different thing of the whole point of malcolm exaggerated his itinerary was to prove how deep elijah muhammed was. in elijah muhammed must have been deep.

whenever he was doing, hustling with women or whatever and so on and thievery -- the problem would be -- this is the difference between a practice and a failure -- i don't want to throw homosexuality into failure because it is trans gender or bisexual. we don't want to see that to demonize that. and how many men in religious organizations that officially theologically 8 same-sex activity are gave themselves. we have to acknowledge that. >> i'm going to say i'm a

baptist preacher. i brought that up because it was brought up and number of places it should have been brought before. >> number of siding issues -- the piece on this book is interesting. one thing -- what you were saying is the fact that malcolm x was more of a street hustler like the rest of us made it more powerful for us to know where to go. an interesting way of looking at who malcolm was in terms of the west side of the town. let me read this case in this book. this was malcolm -- malcolm x when he is on his sojourn through africa. he had just left the secretary's

home, the leader of guinea. i will read this one paragraph. as malcolm saw a recognition of status talking about big house and liberation for route africa, reflected on how he changed in the last few months, quote, my mind is more at peace, my thoughts come strong and clear and easier to express myself. paradoxically he then added my mind is almost incapable of producing words and phrasess lately and it has worried me. what he appears to be saying is his african experiences greatly brought to his mind is limited to have -- vocabulary of black nationalism was insufficient to the challenges he clearly saw confronting african. he says he needs to create new

theoretical tools and a different frame of reference beyond race. that paragraph says a lot. a lot of pieces to this, 100 page essays every other sentence. let's start with one. >> as manning -- that is non in part. [talking over each other] >> in other words i think manning is too ltd. in his reading of malcolm's worthlessness. part is the limitation of black nationalism. as lester spence brought up we have to grapple with manning's anxieties about nationalism so it gets read in that way but it seems to me part of it is the

expatriate experience makes english insufficient. not just that black nationalism is insufficient but english is insufficient. the contribution, problem for all of us who are imperial subjects is that we literally don't have language that is any language other than the language of our imperial masters. i hate to put him on the table. one of the things that i wish i could see president obama do more is speak in a different way in which. i know all the reasons he doesn't but part of what was at stake to me in the birth certificate madness is the fact that barack obama actually knows from whence he comes on the continent of africa. precisely the thing that makes barack obama not negro enough to the right. what the right ones customer

experience and what most of the one american construction for most of black history has been is experience rootlessness. we are not supposed to know where our birth certificate is. we are not supposed to know where we are from or have another language we can speak. some when i read that it is about the limitations of black nationalism but also the limitations of american this -- is not civil-rights, it is human rights. the fact that literally in glitch fails to have your dealings, fails to have the words, vocabulary, construction of sentences necessary to reveal the depth of black suffering. and so we see this malcolm at the end of manning's book. iee