[Kobi]

Medusa,

You are right, I need to take a break from this. I still stand by I am happy to hear as long as I am allowed to be heard. One without the other is unfair.

Wax....interesting. People seem to forget about the tranformation in Malcolm X after his trip to Mecca. He was still fiery but his focus a little different.

"In Saudi Arabia, he’d experienced what amounted to the second life-changing epiphany in his life as he accomplished the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, and discovered an authentic Islam of universal respect and brotherhood. The experience changed Malcolm’s world view. Gone was the belief in whites as exclusively evil. Gone was the call for black separatism. His voyage to Mecca helped him discover the atoning power of Islam as a means to unity as well as self-respect: “In my thirty-nine years on this earth,” he would write in his autobiography, “the Holy City of Mecca had been the first time I had ever stood before the Creator of All and felt like a complete human being.”

"...easy to overly romanticize Malcolm’s last period of his life, to misinterpret it as gentler, more amenable to white tastes then (and to some extent still now) so hostile to Malcolm. In reality, he returned to the United States as fiery as ever. His philosophy was taking a new direction. But his critique of liberalism went on unabated. He was willing to take the help of “sincere whites,” but he was under no illusion that the solution for black Americans would not begin with whites. It would begin and end with blacks. In that regard, whites were better off busying themselves with confronting their own pathological racism. “Let sincere whites go and teach non-violence to white people,” he said.

http://middleeast.about.com/od/relig.../me080220b.htm



But then again, I am just one of those uneducated, uninformed white people.

Originally Posted by waxnrope

Kobi,

Proof texting is a process whereby preachers take a verse of Scripture from here, a verse from there, pluck another from over yonder, etc. with the purpose of "proving" a point. Of saying what "G-d" says. It is a poisonous process insofar as it takes out of context, out of culture, out of history, and out of a particular people's society and twists it so that it suits the ideology of the preacher. Prooftexting "legitimates" the words from the pulpit because it came from Scripture. And, oh yes, it is of course used to dehumanize and condemn GLBTQI people as well as POC, and to justify the superiority of humans over nature, among other things. Prooftexting is often used by those who are ignorant of the historical, social, cultural and literary conditions which signified the need for the text in the first place.

Now, I bring this up because you have taken a web link as well as claimed specific ideas originated by African American leaders. As a person of mixed race, who puts down African American in the check box because I'm older and used to doing so, I have a stake in your argument. Moreover, I state that in your examples, you have prooftexted great African American leaders. For instance, Malcolm X in addition to saying not to blame the white man for everything, also critically discussed the "white man" as being the most murderous, warmongering people on the face of the earth. He also uttered the famous line, " ... by any means necessary" as a position of force to get the white man off our necks. You forgot that?

So, you have played your own card ~ in arrogance, in prooftexting, and displayed a certain lack of historicity with regards to racism in America. That is your privileged, WHITE opinion. But the African Americans that you cited, and any other person of color that you even think about citing ... I ask that you do not do so by way of prooftexting. Read all of it, CRITICALLy (and I see that you dislike this word ..), from its context. That is, the history, AND CULTURE. The words inscribed by our great leaders are SACRED to many of us. Whether they be Du Bois, Malcolm, King. Or, Cesar Chavez and Oscar Romero. These are sacred people to us and you do them a disservice by prooftexting and by your patent lack of comprehension ... that is what I call showing your white card.