malcolm x and the assassination of a revolution

The prophecies that our revolutionaries were able to make were not divine. They were informed by these people’s deep understanding of domination — and the cycle and patterns it uses to perpetuate itself. The violence Black folks have made psychics out of us, but not because of ancient spiritual practices or crystal balls, but because we’ve been intimate with evil for so long that we know it like our palms and we’re able to read the future like a palm reader. The predictability of evil, power, and greed makes crystal balls out all of us in some way, and it’s never any better illustrated than Malcolm X.

Malcolm told a reporter, “I’m a marked man […] No one can get out without trouble, and this thing with me will be resolved by death and violence.” In 1964, Malcolm X was predicting his own death because he knew intimately how intraracial violence and internalized white domination would turn into a type of cancer for the Black community. He was right and he was killed.

On the anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination, it is important to remember the revolutionary’s life and work, but also recognize that the other critique to be found in Malcolm X’s death is that the violences and terrors that are created by white supremacist patriarchy do not call for white bodies necessarily to be the vehicle — it just needs willing bodies. And if we do not relentlessly resist the things that seek to dominate us, we will forever be fighting on the outside and the inside the forces of racist oppression.