BY MALCOLM X
I intend for my talk to be very informal, because our position in America is an informal position, [Laughter] and I find that it is very difficult to use formal terms to describe a very informal position. No condition of any people on earth is more deplorable than the condition, or plight, of the twenty-two million Black people in America. And our condition is so deplorable because we are in a country that professes to be a democracy and professes to be striving to give justice and freedom and equality to everyone who is born under its constitution. If we were born in South Africa or in Angola or some part of this earth where they dont profess to be for freedom, that would be another thing; but when we are born in a country that stands up and represents itself as the leader of the Free World, and you still have to beg and crawl just to get a chance to drink a cup of coffee, then the condition is very deplorable indeed.
So tonight, so that you will understand me and why I speak as I do, it should probably be pointed out at the outset that I am not a politician. I dont know anything about politics. Im from America but Im not an American. I didnt go there of my own free choice. [Applause] If I were an American there would be no problem, thered be no need for legislation or civil rights or anything else. So I just try to face the fact as it actually is and come to this meeting as one of the victims of America, one of the victims of Americanism, one of the victims of democracy, one of the victims of a very hypocritical system that is going all over this earth today representing itself as being qualified to tell other people how to run their country when they cant get the dirty things that are going on in their own country straightened out. [Applause]
So if someone else from America comes to you to speak, theyre probably speaking as Americans, and they speak as people who see America through the eyes of an American. And usually those types of persons refer to America, or that which exists in America, as the American Dream. But for the twenty million of us in America who are of African descent, it is not an American dream; its an American nightmare. [Laughter]
I dont feel that I am a visitor in Ghana or in any part of Africa. I feel that I am at home. Ive been away for four hundred years, [Laughter] but not of my own volition, not of my own will. Our people didnt go to America on the Queen Mary, we didnt go by Pan American, and we didnt go to America on the Mayflower. We went in slave ships, we went in chains. We werent immigrants to America, we were cargo for purposes of a system that was bent upon making a profit. So this is the category or level of which I speak. I may not speak it in the language many of you would use, but I think you will understand the meaning of my terms.
When I was in Ibadan [in Nigeria] at the University of Ibadan last Friday night, the students there gave me a new name, which I go formeaning I like it. [Laughter] Omowale, which they say means in Yorubaif I am pronouncing that correctly, and if I am not pronouncing it correctly its because I havent had a chance to pronounce it for four hundred years [Laughter]which means in that dialect, The child has returned. It was an honor for me to be referred to as a child who had sense enough to return to the land of his forefathersto his fatherland and to his motherland. Not sent back here by the State Department, [Laughter] but come back here of my own free will.… [Applause]
Now I am not here to condemn America, I am not here to make America look bad, but I am here to tell you the truth about the situation that Black people in America find themselves confronted with. And if truth condemns America, then she stands condemned. [Applause]
This is the most beautiful continent that Ive ever seen; its the richest continent Ive ever seen, and strange as it may seem, I find many white Americans here smiling in the faces of our African brothers like they have been loving them all of the time. [Laughter and applause] The fact is, these same whites who in America spit in our faces, the same whites who in America club us brutally, the same whites who in America sic their dogs upon us, just because we want to be free human beings, the same whites who turn their water hoses upon our women and our babies because we want to integrate with them, are over here in Africa smiling in your face trying to integrate with you. [Laughter]
I had to write a letter back home yesterday and tell some of my friends that if American Negroes want integration, they should come to Africa, because more white people over herewhite Americans, that islook like they are for integration than there is in the entire American country. [Laughter] But actually what it is, they want to integrate with the wealth that they know is herethe untapped natural resources which exceed the wealth of any continent on this earth today.
When I was coming from Lagos to Accra Sunday, I was riding on an airplane with a white man who represented some of the interests, you know, that are interested in Africa. And he admittedat least it was his impressionthat our people in Africa didnt know how to measure wealth, that they worship wealth in terms of gold and silver, not in terms of the natural resources that are in the earth, and that as long as the Americans or other imperialists or twentieth-century colonialists could continue to make the Africans measure wealth in terms of gold and silver, they never would have an opportunity to really measure the value of the wealth that is in the soil, and would continue to think that it is they who need the Western powers instead of thinking that it is the Western powers who need the people and the continent that is known as Africa. The thing is, I hope I dont mess up anybodys politics or anybodys plots or plans or schemes, but then I think that it can be well proved and backed up.
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