We were honored today at Oakland's Art and Soul Festival to have a brief conversation with professor emeritus Oba T'Shaka, San Francisco State University.
Today was his birthday, 73, and we gave him a signed a copy of my latest book The Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables/fables, Black Bird Press, 2012.
A Malcolm X scholar, he had many questions as per Manning Marable's The Reinvention of Malcolm X. Shaka says Manning spent too much time blaming the Nation of Islam for the death of Malcolm, but spent little time on US government involvement. Even Malcolm said when his plane was refused landing in Paris, France, whatever happened to him was bigger than the Nation of Islam.
Oba is working on an expansion and update of his Malcolm book, one of the earliest. Much more information has been made available, including Malcolm's travel diaries, said T'shaka. He recommends Rodnell P. Collins memoir of Malcolm X, Seventh Child. The question of Malcolm's homosexuality was noted in the Collins' book. The professor says Manning stressed the homosexuality allegations. Other books have asserted the same.
We will only say that the gender identity question is the mission of every youth entering adulthood. We call this in primitive culture manhood and womanhood training, when the boys and girls are taken through the process of declaring and becoming responsible for their sexual identity. The climax is when the person in sexual identity crisis decides his gender identity and is firm about.
We only know it takes ineluctable energy to preserve one's manhood in this society, or one's womanhood as well. The young sister won a gold medal but all the talk was about her hair. Did her hair win the gold?
According to the professor, Manning only interviewed 35 people for his Reinvention of Malcolm. He calls Manning book a reinvention of the Malcolm X myth. This reinvention questions his sexual identity, after all, it is all about the emasculation of blackness in this land. What is Stop and Frisk? The New Jim Crow, legalized slavery under the US Constitution, involuntary servitude is legal for the incarcerated.
We must know that T'Shaka's colleague at SFSU, Dr. Wade Nobles has said while the men are doing time in prisons, black woman are incarcerated in colleges and universities. Yes, our woman are in prison as well, even with their advanced degrees many if not most will never marry. Is university the black woman's prison, those fortunate enough to get there, while for every black man in college, four go to prison. What does this do to male/female relations, social and family cohesion?
The profession reminded me that I had brought Eldridge to his house when ancestor Betty Shabazz came to San Francisco around the birth of the Black Panther Party. Shaka was a member of the first Black Panther Party in the Bay, a faction headed by Kenny Freeman, Ernie Allen, Oba' T'shaka, et al.
The Huey Newton/Bobby Seale Black Panther Party demanded the Black Party of Northern California, Shaka faction, arm themselves or go out of business. They closed down after threats and a gun blast at a party.
On his 73rd year, we must honor Bill Bradley, Oba T'shaka work his work in the Bay Area Civil Rights Movement, officer in CORE or the Congress of Racial Equality. His effort to end discrimination
on San Francisco's Auto Row. His organizing efforts, black studies research.
--Marvin X
8/4/12
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