My parents considered Malcolm X a terrorist. They didn't use that word because it wasn't quite in the vernacular the way it is today, but I have a feeling other white people were fed a similar view.
The movie about him helped erase some of the stigma, but I bet lots of whites still associate his name with radicalism (I guess it is radical to demand basic human rights). So white people have a responsibility to push back hard on not just that sentiment, but on efforts by bigots who want us to believe that the Middle Passage didn't happen, or that coffles of slaves weren't marched across the continent to breed or be worked to death.
Even so-called progressive whites get uncomfortable and defensive about how the American empire came to be. White people need to take a zero tolerance view against those who want to censor the Black experience, both the negative ones and the positive ones.
I always insist that there is not a white person in America who doesn't have racist tapes in our heads, even if we had enlightened parents, because we were surrounded by so many racists growing up that it is impossible for some of it not to get absorbed through the skin.
For me, one way to remember Malcolm X is to yell at my peers when they hide under the covers any time something uncomfortable needs to be discussed. And cheer on efforts like CRT, which is nothing at all like white nationalists say it is.
The delicious irony of CRT is that it wasn't in mainstream thought at all until white nationalists started freaking out about it, and it certainly wasn't getting taught in public schools.
But Education Week, a journal all public educators read, recently published a very positive article about the benefits of teaching it in schools. Eat your heart out, Tucker Carlson.
I'm an optimist. I think the backlash is just that. A backlash by a loud, fairly small, and desperate group who cling to their psychosis for whatever reason. The momentum for civil rights is still there, it's just encountering a speed bump that we can all work at removing.
