I think that any black man who teaches black people to turn the other cheek and suffer peacefully after they’ve been turning the cheek and suffering peacefully for 400 years in a land of bondage, under the most cruel, inhuman and wicked slave master that any people have ever been under, he is doing those people an injustice, and he’s a traitor to his own people. Nobody should teach the black man in America to turn the other cheek, unless someone is teaching the white man in America to turn the other cheek. And no one should advocate any peaceful suffering to black people, unless the white man is going to practice the same kind of peaceful suffering. What Martin Luther King is doing is disarming the black people of America of their God-given right and of their natural right. And the law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he’s attacked. And God’s law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he’s attacked. So, peaceful suffering and passive resistance and all of that stuff is all right maybe in India somewhere, where the people in India outnumber the whites about a million to one. But here in America, when you tell a—that’s like an elephant sitting down on a mouse—in India with Gandhi. But in America you have the mouse now trying to sit down on the elephant, thinking that he’s going somewhere, and it’s absurd. Having an opportunity to ride either on the front or the back or in the middle of someone else’s bus doesn’t dignify you. When you have your own bus, then you have dignity. When you have your own school, you have dignity. When you have your own country, you have dignity. When you have something of your own, you have dignity. But whenever you are begging for a chance to participate in that which belongs to someone else, or use that which belongs to someone else, on an equal basis with the owner, that’s not dignity. That’s ignorance. If I may add, for instance, King and these others will say that they are fighting for the Negro to have equal job opportunity. How can a group of people, such as our people, who own no factories, have equal job opportunities competing against a race that owns the factories? The only way the two can have equal job opportunities is if black people have factories as well as white people have factories. And then we can employ whites or we can employ blacks, just like they can employ whites or they can employ blacks. But as long as the factories are in the hands of the whites, the housing is in the hands of the whites, the school system is in the hands of the whites, you have a situation where the blacks are constantly begging the whites, can they use this or can they use that. That’s not any kind of equality of opportunity, nor does it lend toward one’s dignity. http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com/
