Malcom Shabazz in mental prison

Chris Stevenson
c_stevenson@hvpress.net I really don’t know of the legal status of one Malcolm Shabazz; the grandson of Malcolm X. I admit my feelings for him has been divided, part of me thinks he is a moron of the highest magnitude, a smaller part of me feels there is a good reason for his violent behavior. After all, he was born under a rage and hate that simply could not be avoided even though he was born twenty years after Malcolms assassination, a rage his mother carried in her for years. Just imagine seeing your father taken from you in a hail of bullets by members of your own race and religion in the immediate term. Would it be irrational to assume that young Malcolm would stand to gleam some of that anger while still in his mother Qubilah’s womb? Anger that would later become insanity?

The fact that he was five or six-years-old, when hardcore behavior launched by the gangster rap industry no-doubt began to make an impression on him, and actually make his own conduct blend in. Selfish and unpredictable attitudes and the emerging black penchant to not know who their true enemy was had to have made it hard for many to isolate his behavior as being peculiar. By the 90’s this attitude among black boys was fashionable Burn his grandmother’s apartment? No problem. Hostility toward other blacks was home-grown, who did his mother see kill his father but other blacks? I take no pleasure in admitting that young Malcolm is more a product of generation X than Malcolm X. The Shabazz/Little family line of black nationalists who gave their lives for the cause from great-grandfather Earl Little, a Garveyite, to Malcolm and then his surviving wife Betty, stops dead at the guy most willing to give his life for some sports gear.

There are blacks who stand and wait for a great leader to emerge within this disturbed persona, but Prozac is thicker than blood. African Americans can go from street-wise and untrusting one minute, to naive and ignorantly hopeful a microsecond later. Last year celebrities like Denzel Washington and Russell Simmons began rallying to the aid of Shabazz; who was close to being released from yet another jail. Attorneys Percy Sutton (Malcolm X former lawyer) and David Dinkins (the former NY City Mayor) have taken it upon themselves to be his father figures. Noble endeavors all, but Malcolm X banks on you returning a blind eye. This is not a rough diamond that needs polishing, the original Malcolm fit that description during his hustler years. It’s safe to say this is someone with a mental illness, and issues. A 7/30/97 New York Times reveals an infant who once set fire to his sneakers during the middle of the night, and seeing things.

He has spent time in prisons that employ white prison guards who project their post-Malcolm X frustrations, and anti-black sentiments toward him through their verbal and physical abuse of Malcolm. The Shabazz family came through a crazed era; it will take more than drugs to treat Malcolm.