Introduction

Abstract

Mention Malcolm X, and you are almost certain to receive a reaction. Many admire him, many loathe him, but even now, more than four decades after his death, few lack an opinion about him. A polarizing figure, in death as in life, Malcolm X continues to haunt American national consciousness like few other figures. His name is known around the world, his autobiography is on American high school and college reading lists around the country, his life was the subject of a blockbuster Hollywood film, hundreds of websites are dedicated to his legacy, and he has even appeared on a United States postage stamp. And yet he resists now, as he did then, being fully accepted - or coopted, depending on your point of view - by the culture that he spent his life critiquing. Malcolm X will forever speak to all of us from the margins, pointing out our collective failure to live according to the ideals we proclaim, taking us to task for the inconsistencies and hypocrisies that riddle our politics, revealing our complicity and reviling our complacency. He will always speak in the voice of the marginalized, a voice that cannot be placated or patronized, a voice both self-righteous and self-educated, passionate and cerebral, angry and eloquent.