Michael Sawyer: Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X
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Michael Sawyer: Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X London: Pluto Press, 2020. 145 pp. ISBN 978 074534074 6, (Paperback) James B. Stewart 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Sawyer’s Black Minded is a spirited effort to locate Malcolm X within the pantheon of political philosophers. The project’s complexity is first signaled by the length of the introduction—30 pages. The phrase “Black Minded” was invoked at a 1964 rally and in a 1965 speech. Sawyer informs, “Stated succinctly, Black Minded is a way of knowing about the self and, in doing, understanding the self to be a necessarily radical political subject as the threshold condition of that knowing” (10). No extensive written record is available to facilitate interrogation of Malcolm’s ideas; instead, commentators must rely on his speeches as the most useful primary sources. The construct, “Thinking in Motion,” is used by Sawyer to describe Malcolm’s alternative strategy to develop his political philosophy. Sawyer explains, “Malcolm X’s style of knowledge production . . . in many ways presaged the nature of twenty-first century communication in the sense that it was uncurated, ‘on the fly,’ far closer in style to forms of ‘social media’ discourse that we are accustomed to today” (26). Alarms will be raised for many Black/Africana Studies scholars by Sawyer’s discussion of his methodology: “In this effort properly to place the thought of Malcolm X in conversation with thinkers that represent this canon, some decisions seem obvious (DuBois, Audre Lorde, Fanon, etc.), while others may appear reductive or perhaps unnecessarily reifying the presence of white, European male thinkers (Hegel, Sartre, etc.)” (132). Unfortunately, Sawyer is at his best when discussing Eurocentric thinkers. He seems unaware of Black/Africana Studies scholarship that could enrich his interpretations. As an example, his interpretation of DuBois’s thought would have benefitted significantly from consulting other sources such W.E.B. DuBois On Race & Culture (Routledge 1996).
* James B. Stewart [email protected]
1
Penn State University, State College, PA 16801, USA
Journal of African American Studies
The contours of Malcolm X’s thinking are said to shift across three periods, i.e., (1) pre-incarceration, (2) incarceration ➔ break with Nation of Islam (NOI), and (3) Mecca ➔ assassination. Sawyer’s primary interest is the third period, during which Malcolm was presumably “working through categories of thought that we now understand as post-colonial” (32). With respect to Malcolm’s religious commitments, Sawyer asserts that Malcolm eventually concludes that religion must serve as a means to ameliorate real conditions of oppression rather than serve as a means to blunt the effects of subjugation (15). The treatment of Malcolm’s incarceration and subsequent activities would have been significantly improved by accessing Jed B. Tucker’s, “Malcolm X, The Prison Years: The Relentless Pursuit of Formal Education,” (Journal of African American History, Spr
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