Malcolm X Bisexual?: We Care About Civil Rights Not Who He Dates
March 20th 2010 08:05
Malcolm X is bisexual? What the? This is news to me. I have not heard this topic discussed. I found this information a bit in left field. This unraveled when yesterday’s New York Times stated that Malcolm X’s killer is being released!
According to the The New York Times, Malcolm X’s confessed assassin is being released next month. Thomas Hagan has been in custody since the shooting in 1965. He has been up for parole 16 times according to the paper. In reviewing the history of Malcolm X on Wikipedia, I clicked on the tab discussion and found (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Malcolm_X)
statements and a section about Malcolm X’s sexuality. I was a bit surprised.
.
Sexuality is not the newsworthy story according to writer Peter Tatchel. Malcolm X’s sexuality has been kept hush, hush according the October 2009 article, Malcolm X was bisexual Get Over It on the website, Guardian.co.uk.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/20/malcolm-x-bisexual-black-history. Tatchel used Bruce Perry's biography, Malcolm – The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America as a resource.
According to the The Independent website, [Really Long Link]http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/peter-tatchell-ignore-the-refuseniks-ndash-malcolm-x-was-bisexual-out-and-proud-1902777.html Perry’s biography discusses Malcolm’s sexuality “…without fuss or judgment, he documents Malcolm's many gay experiences, from his school days through to sex with men for money at the New York YMCA”. Supposedly, Perry gathered his information from interviews.
This is all very interesting information. Peter Tatchel writes a hard selling article about how Malcolm and many other Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgendered are not recognized historical. According to Tatchel, “Famous Black LGBT people are not acknowledged and celebrated. Either their contribution to black history and culture is ignored or their sexuality is airbrushed out of their biographies.”
This is an appealing point and I get Peter’s agreement that LGBT youth and the community at large should be aware of Black LGBT historic movers and shakers. What Peter is missing is that the world is in a slow progressive movement of civil rights and recognition of LGBT in many cultures.
So, Malcolm’s relationships and sexual journey is not paramount although his advocacy for civil rights is historically dominant. If anything, Malcolm’s sexual experience should be an example of human self-actualization.
Without Malcolm’s work in civil rights other movements would not have taken place. Let’s not put the cart before the horse. The struggle toward equality for LGBT is just that. Let’s not drag Malcolm X into it like some flag of redemption.
When Malcolm’s killer is released next month let’s not reuse his legacy for another battle. Let’s just respect his journey and remember his family during what will be a very difficult time.
If a site of Black LGBT historians is not up by next year. I’m calling Peter Tatchel and asking him why he didn’t do anything about it. “Little knowledge little required, much knowledge much required”. The site could be put up by anyone even me.
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