In a recent message to the voters of Northcote/Birkenhead, ‘Education drives our economic prosperity’, National MP Dan Bidois (Ngāti Maniopoto, Ngāti Huiao) dutifully extols the current coalition government’s mantra about ‘the biggest set of changes in decades to uplift educational outcomes’.
Surprisingly, though, he chooses to begin his message with a short quotation from Malcolm X:
‘Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.’
Surprising, not least because during his lifetime Malcolm X was a prominent revolutionary leader of the African American nationalist movement who continually called white people to account for their hypocrisy towards the issue of civil rights for black people. After his death he was an inspiration to the Black Power movement. He remains today a hero to generations of Afro-American youth. This is surely not your typical North Shore influencer back story!
So, is it instead a case of ‘cock-up or conspiracy’ from the Northcote electorate comms team? One must ask because to appreciate the true message behind the words that Dan Bidois quotes, you need to know a little about Malcolm X the man and a little about the specific historical moment in which he used and intended that his words should be used.
According to online sources, Malcolm Little changed his surname to Malcolm X while he was a follower of the black nationalist group, Nation of Islam, in the tradition of others who believed their family name originated from slaveholders. Malcom X was a charismatic leader in the American civil rights movement. Unlike another leader, Martin Luther King, who advocated unity among all peoples, and non-violent methods to achieve this, Malcom X called for black people to use ‘any means necessary’ to protect themselves and he also advocated for a separate black nation. He was a spokesperson for the Nation of Islam organisation until 1964. (In February 1965, a member of the Nation assassinated him.)
After breaking with the Nation, Malcom X undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca and converted to Sunni Islam, taking the name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, and advocated living according to the tenets of Islam rather than those of black nationalism. He also visited a number of developing African nations that were newly emerging from their colonial past and addressed their umbrella group the Organisation of African Unity. His focus at this time was shifting from civil to human rights and in mid-1964, he established and gave a keynote speech at the founding rally of the Organisation of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in Harlem, New York.
That is some brief background on the man, but what about his words? The Malcolm X quotation that Dan Bidois appropriated to link schooling to national economic prosperity is taken from that speech in Harlem to the OAAU in which Malcolm X read out the organisation’s aims and objectives for Afro-American human and civil rights and for self-determination. Section 3 of the speech proclaimed the importance of education, but I suspect little or none of what Malcolm X read out would resonate with National Party (or NZ First or Act) voters in Northcote Birkenhead.
The quotation in full is:
“Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children, and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.”
So, for Malcom X, education primarily drove progress towards the achievement of collective human and civil rights. These were an essential precursor or means to greater economic participation and prosperity for structurally marginalised groups. Without these rights, Afro-Americans would have no prospect of economic prosperity and social recognition.
Yet we know that in Aotearoa, the struggle for human rights is certainly not top priority for the current coalition government. We know this because: (i) so-called ‘race-based’ public services policy and services provision have been summarily dismantled; (ii) legislation was passed under urgency to halt all pay parity claims in progress and to narrow the criteria against which future claims may be made; (iii) the leaders of both Act and NZ first have said that, despite previous governments committing us to it, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has no legal standing and therefore indigenous people have no unique legal claim to their language, culture and identity rights; (iv) there have been and are concerted ongoing efforts to eradicate the constitutional primacy of Te Tiriti o Waitangi through the Treaty of Waitangi Principles Bill, the Regulatory Standards Bill, and the contractual obligations on charter schools that are unlike any state school; and (v) the school curriculum is being rewritten by unrepresentative, hand-picked groups to elevate one specific form of Western knowledge interest above mātauranga Māori and Pacific peoples’ knowledge interests.
In summarising the Afro-American experience of being marginalised, ignored, and excluded from the public education system in the early 1960s, and proposals to address these inequalities, Malcolm X included the following.
Every Afro-American should take advantage of every educational opportunity available.
Afro-American children are being ‘criminally short-changed by the system’, by people who simply do not understand the problems Afro-Americans and their communities face.
Textbooks do not tell the stories, histories, and contributions of Afro-American people.
The goal of an integrated schooling system is under-funded, under-supported and doomed to failure.
As a first step to ending racism, the schools that the system says cannot be improved should be turned over to Afro-American people to run, to be staffed by black principals and black teachers with some textbooks about black people written by Afro-Americans.
Board members to govern these schools must be recommended by OAAU. These schools will become showplaces for what can be achieved when Afro-Americans govern themselves.
If the proposals for self-governance are not met, parents should keep their children out of the neighbourhood school until Afro-Americans control it.
Afro-American parents must play an active role in every part of the school. They have as much responsibility as the teacher to see that everything is ‘up to par’ in the school.
He concludes his comments on education with this call to action:
‘We must establish all over the country schools of our own to train our own children to become scientists, to become mathematicians. We must realize the need for adult education and for job retraining programs that will emphasize a changing society in which automation plays the key role. We intend to use the tools of education to help raise our people to an unprecedented level of excellence and self-respect through their own efforts.’
Sound familiar? The Education section of Malcom X’s speech to the OAAU is effectively a manifesto for self-governance and self-determination by Afro-American people in the United States in the 1960s. But it should be obvious from the bullet points above that much of it could equally well read as a manifesto for self-governing kaupapa Māori economic and social services provision, including education, in Aotearoa today.
Do you really want these words from Malcolm X to ‘ring true in every community in New Zealand’ as your column proclaims, Dan? Could it be that National MP Dan Bidois has been radicalised by ngā rōpū tautohetohe towards a mana Motuhake agenda? Or is he subliminally messaging his own heartland National voters – ‘Hey guys, read between the lines. If we are not careful Act and NZ First are going to put National beyond the pale with their anti-Treaty obsessions? ‘
Of course, the more likely answer is that this is just a local comms team cock-up, set in motion by something along the lines of: ‘Please, I implore you, find me an uplifting few words to add some pizzazz to this depressingly and deadeningly predictable schooling policy script I am obliged to send out to my electorate.’
30% F. Must do better, Dan.
A powerful piece John: please send to mainstream media.
Brilliant John! Context is so important to meaning-making …