ABSTRACT
This chapter continues the focus on the exclusion of African Americans from the aspirational American identity of universal, democratic egalitarianism. Preceding chapters of this book considered works that expressed despair over ever rectifying this situation. One common response to despair over the possibility of long-term wellbeing is “future discounting,” living for today, following the slogan, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may be killed by the police or a white mob.” This is roughly the attitude that we find in the young Malcolm X, as depicted in Spike Lee’s film biography—though Malcolm X is more self-confident than the reference to despair might suggest. Lee’s film takes us through Malcolm X’s shortsighted, narcissistic youth, through his separatist, black nationalism, to a more nuanced sense of African American identity that at least allows for the possibility of inter-racial reconciliation in a future America. While the film rejects the separatist nationalism of Malcolm X’s middle period, it may suggest that something along the lines of such separatism is a necessary stage in responding to the psychological and emotional distortions of white racism.
