SeparationSegregationIntegration Sandwich

Sometimes, I forget how I attend a liberal school in a liberal city in a blue state in the United States. I don’t have many experiences of meeting and talking to someone who I would not consider to be a part of the “liberal bubble” within which I find myself and most of my contacts to live in. Sure, a few comments may be slurred here and there, but seldom have I met someone who believed it down to the core of their existence.

I don’t really know what to say about Malcolm X’s idea for separation. In all honesty, I don’t feel so high and mighty to have an opinion to back him up or oppose him. If he would like to separate himself from the white people, that’s fine by me. If he would like to go up and hug every white person within a five block radius, I would find that odd but still accept his decision. (Quite a strange visual that is, imagining him running up and kissing white people on the cheek).

It seems understandable to me that everyone should have the right to decide whether they want to be a part of society or not. Sure, they may be looked at funny for their choices, but a person’s decision to do so does not offend me. I know that Malcolm X wishes to separate from the white man, and I don’t blame him. I would separate too if I had his history and ancestry woven into my identity as well.

I do note that we live fifty years after his time, where racial tensions quietly flicker in a dying fire of hate (or so people tell me). I do note that integration is very common, but I also see it being rare in Chicago, one of the most separated cities today. People still keep to their own kind, so how can I call Malcolm X a sissy or any other name when what he speaks is being practiced in the futuristically present time of 2013? I can’t yell obscenities at him or cruel words, because his idea is actually a foundation for Chicago’s layout.

And you don’t hear people yelling about their quiet separation today, now do you? We consciously or unconsciously chose the path which Malcolm X wished for the Nation of Islam in the 60s. Only those who purposefully seek out integration have the right to judge his idea.

If he wishes to separate, so be it.