Malcolm X and the Black Urban “Crisis”

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In Chapters 6-9, Malcolm explains that he has committed himself to a life of crime in
order to make ends meet and survive. In fact, Malcolm states, “In the ghettoes the white man
has built for us, he has forced us not to aspire to greater things, but to view everyday living as
survival – and in that kind of community survival is what is respected.” 1 Malcolm expounds
upon this point when he explains, “Almost everyone in Harlem needed some kind of hustle to
survive, and needed to stay high in some way to forget what they had to do to survive.” From
these quotes two things are abundantly clear, 1) Malcolm understands the Black ghetto (or
communities in which the majority of Black people living are proletariats and do not own
property) is a construct of the White capitalist, and 2) The Black people living in the Black
ghetto are fighting for survival and thus degraded from human beings to animals fighting to live
another day. Malcolm explains his life at this point in time is animalistic – he is a criminal, with
no care about life and is using drugs to numb himself from his everyday living conditions. Still, in
order to properly understand Malcolm’s life and the Black American experience it is imperative
that we begin with an analysis on crime.
In his sociological study, The Philadelphia Negro, W.E.B. DuBois defines crime as “a
phenomenon of organized social life, and is the open rebellion of an individual against his social
environment.”2 By defining crime as an open rebellion against a social environment, DuBois is
contextualizing crime as a response to an individual’s displeasure with their living conditions.
These living conditions are obviously influenced by the state 3 and re-centers a discussion on
crime not solely on the criminal, but also the state’s role in constructing a society that
influences open rebellion.
1. Define crime in your own words.
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2. What are some examples of Malcolm surviving instead of living that are explained in
Chapters 6-9.
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1
Malcolm X with the assistance of Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, (Grove Press, Inc., New York,
1964), 91.
2
W.E.B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 235.
3
The totality of institutions which facilitate governance and insure social control.
3. How does a mind state focus on survival versus living lead to people engaging in a life of
crime?
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The Colonized Black Community vs. The myth of Black pathology
What is clear about Malcolm’s explanation of the Black ghetto is that these are
communities in which there are a high concentration of Black people who lack basic resources
to live and thus are forced to survive. In order to properly understand the Black ghetto we have
to return to the foundations of America as a settler-colonial nation-state 4. As Malcolm explains
the Black ghetto was built for Black people by the White capitalists. In fact, the Black ghetto
exists to confine Black people to particular areas of the city. The confinement of Black people to
particular parts of the city is accomplished through individual decisions made by White
supremacists who flee communities they previously lived in when Black people begin to move
into that neighborhood (this is called white flight) or inflict violence on Black people who move
into a community with a majority of White residents and through the state’s institutions of
dominance and institutions of socialization.
First, Malcolm’s years living as a “criminal” in the Black ghetto are during Jim Crow, an
era in which it was legal to deny housing based off of race. Quite simply, homeowners could
refuse to rent or sell to Black people. Still, this focus on individuals ignores the role of the state
in its creation of the Black ghetto. For example, the creation of the Federal Housing
Administration in 1934 insured private mortgages and decreased the size of the down payment
that was required to buy a home. While this clearly is done to increase home ownership, the
FHA implemented this system by rating neighborhoods according to “financial stability.” These
ratings went from “A” to “D,” in which “A” rated neighborhoods were “in demand” and
qualified for federal loans for home ownership, while “D” rated neighborhoods were ineligible
for federal home ownership loans. Neighborhoods without Black residents were of course rated
“A,” while “D” rated neighborhoods were Black neighborhoods. The rating of Black
neighborhoods as a “D” and therefore not eligible for federal loans was another barrier the
state enforced (this time through legislation and the banks) preventing Black economic growth
(housing is a form of property ownership that can be leveraged to elevate from a proletariat to
managerial laborer in a capitalist system), but also gave financial incentive to White
supremacists who felt they did not want to live amongst Blacks. Thus a Black person moving
into a predominately White neighborhood, then threatens the neighborhoods FHA rating and
racist acts to prevent Black people from moving into a White neighborhood are backed by
financial incentive.
4
A nation-state in which the institutions of socialization promote the culture of the settler-colonists while
attempting to erase the culture of the colonized and the institutions of dominance work to exploit the lives and
labor of the colonized people and to protect the settler-colonists from a revolt of the colonized people.
Despite the 14th Amendment which states,
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws.
We see the state did not (and continues not to) give equal protection of Black citizens and
deprived Black people of property. This lack equal protection shows Black people were not (and
still are not) granted full citizenship rights. The absence of full citizenship, despite living within
the jurisdiction of the state and the state’s ability to profit off of citizens deprived of human
rights shows that Black people as a colonized people within the United States. In the context of
Black people living as colonized, we can understand the Black “criminal” is largely rebelling
against the social environment that confines his or her existence.
The understanding of the Black “criminal” as a rebel to substandard living conditions
rejects the racist notion of Black pathology or the idea that Black people naturally criminal and
irresponsible. Arguments of Black pathology are typically reduced to “Black people must do
better,” and places the onus of drug usage, criminal behavior, and substandard living conditions
on the colonized Black community while failing to ask where the drugs are imported from, why
criminal behavior occurs, and why housing development of the Black community primarily
occurs when attempting to remove Black people from the community. The argument of Black
pathology would suggest Malcolm X was just another “criminal” black male with no motivation
to be anything positive in life as opposed to a young black male, who has an 8th grade education
(and disengaged from school due to racist teachers), living in a community in which Black
people are cut off from owning homes and have limited access to jobs. Malcolm remarks that
even Black college graduates from Howard University living in Washington, D.C. were limited to
jobs like “Janitors, porters, guards, taxi-drivers, and the like. For the Negro in Washington, mail-
carrying was a prestige job.”5 With such limited options for even the most educated Black
people in America, what options are left to less educated Black people? Moreover, how can any
discussion of the Black “criminal” fail to include that the disenfranchisement of Black people
increases the opportunity for Whites (less competition for jobs) while allowing the state to
maintain a large base of proletariats that the capitalists can exploit, and if/when this group
begins to revolt through criminal behavior can be imprisoned and are no longer protected by
the 13th Amendment which states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
1. How does Malcolm describe the Black ghetto in the early portions of The Autobiography?

5
Malcolm X with the assistance of Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, (Grove Press, Inc., New York,
1964), 73.
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2. How would you describe the living conditions of predominately Black neighborhoods today?
How are the schools, houses, and job opportunities?
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3. Explain the concept of Black pathology in your own words.
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4. How should Black criminal activity be framed in order to dispel myths of Black pathology?
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The Slave Codes and the Roots of Black Criminal Activity
We define power as “the ability to define reality and have others use those definitions
as if they were their own.” Given this definition of power, we can now begin to understand that
the law is not necessarily a metric of justice, but is actually one of many ways the state
expresses and enforces its power. The court system which is an institution of socialization 6
defines what is legal and what is illegal. This definition of legality does not have to be just. For
example, The Fugitive Slave Act state it was illegal to assist in helping an enslaved person
escape from enslavement. The Slave Codes were a variety of laws all of which focused on
keeping Black people enslaved. These examples are just two of many which show just becomes
the courts mandate a particular behavior as legal or illegal this is not a metric of justice.
Furthermore, the state then uses institutions of dominance7 to enforce the laws created by the
courts.
America’s foundations are one that immediately criminalized Black behavior. Beginning
with the Slave Codes which worked to prevent any organizing that could lead to Black
liberation, evolving into the Black Codes of Reconstruction which forced Black people into low
wage or debt based labor or Jim Crow laws which prevented Black people from having equal
access to everything from water fountains to schools, and even manifesting through the
creation of mandatory minimum sentencing which disproportionately imprisoned Black people

6
The state’s institutions which are used to define reality.
7
the state’s institutions which enforce the state’s definition of reality.
for long periods of time often for nonviolent criminal offenses 8. In short, we see the state has
worked to actively keep Black people at the bottom of a caste system through a number of
ways, one of which being imprisonment.
Even after being imprisoned we see people who have been convicted of felonies return
to society with less rights than they had before. In some states people who were convicted of a
felony lose the right to vote, there are also restrictions on public housing subsidies for people
previously convicted of a felony, and decreased job opportunities. With these challenges in
place, the advent of “career criminals” is rationalized, as some people feel they have a better
chance at surviving by continuing a life of crime because the legal options pose so few
incentives.
1. Explain how the law is an example of the state’s power and not necessarily a form of justice.
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The Black Panthers and their Solution for the Black Urban Crisis
Many groups have attempted to create alternatives aimed at stopping the state’s oppression of
Black people. One of the most popular and well-thought out attempts was the Black Panther
Party and their 10 Point Program. Below is their 10 Point Program. Read over it and respond to
the following questions.
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.
Do you think Black people have control over what happens in their communities? Why or
why not?
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2. We want full employment for our people.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man
employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will
not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen
and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all
of its people and give a high standard of living.

8
By disproportionate sentencing it is meant that Black people were convicted and imprisoned at a higher rate than
their percentage of the overall country and despite committing crimes at the same rate as Whites.
Do you think this is a good idea? Why or why not?
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3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our Black Community.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue
debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as
restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as
currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the
Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews.
The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over twenty million black people;
therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
Do you believe this is a fair request? Why or why not?
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4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community,
then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with
government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
Do you agree with this request? Do you believe this request would improve Detroit? Give an
example to support your answer.
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5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American
society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day
society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man
does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little
chance to relate to anything else.
What do you think students should learn about in school?
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6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.
We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a
racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in
the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of
America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the
racist military, by whatever means necessary.
Why did the Black Panthers think black men should not have to fight in the US Army? Do you
think this request is fair?
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7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.
We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense
groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and
brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear
arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self-defense.
Do you agree that organizing self-defense groups would prevent police brutality?
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8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because
they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
Do you think this is a good idea? Why or why not, defend your response.
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9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer
group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United
States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people
will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be
tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious,
geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be
forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We
have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average
reasoning man" of the black community.
How does a jury influence a person being found guilty or not guilty?
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10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major
political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black
colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of
determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of
the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle
them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and
happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be
changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that
mankind are more disposed to supper, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to
provide new guards for their future security.
What would it take to properly implement the Black Panther Party’s 10 Point Program?
Defend this response.
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