Ep 139: Lessons on Living Justly from Malcolm X

Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz, author of The Awakening of Malcolm X, joins
us for a talk on race, history, and the power of learning.
Teaching our teens to live justly starts with a strong family
foundation.


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Full show notes


Unless you and your teen live under a rock, your child has
probably been exposed to a lot of discourse about racism this
past year. Sparked by the killing of George Floyd, the world
erupted in protests and outcries for equality this summer–and the
world has never been the same.


With the video of the tragic murder available online amongst
plenty of other intense dialogue about race, you might be
wondering how you can talk to your kids about it all. You may
feel like you don’t know how to approach the topic, or don’t feel
like you can do an adequate job covering the vast history of
racial inequality and all of its nuances.


If you don’t know where to start, it can be powerful to give your
kid some reading material. Books can help teens learn about these
issues from an expert, and then the two of you can then have a
discussion about it. Need a text that feels right for an
adolescent? Our guest today has got you covered. Her name is
Ilyasah Shabazz, and she’s the author of The Awakening of Malcolm
X: A Novel.


Ilyasah is the daughter of human rights activists Malcom X and
Betty Shabazz, and does incredible work as an educator, author,
motivational speaker and activist. In this new book, she’s
describing the pivotal period of Malcom X’s young life, when he
was imprisoned for 6 years and began to see the world
differently. In telling Malcom’s story, she hopes to give young
people the guidance they need to handle life’s trials and follow
their vision for a brighter future.


In our interview, we’re covering some critical moments in Malcolm
X’s youth. We’re discussing how educators can shed more light on
the contributions of black and indigenous people throughout
history, and why we need reform in our criminal justice system.


What Malcom X’s Story Can Teach Us About
Adolescence


Ilyasah breaks down her father’s childhood in this episode, to
help us understand how he became the revolutionary he was. Malcom
was raised by two civil rights activists, who lived through the
height of Jim Crow. They instilled in him a respect and love for
literature, learning, humanity, and living creatures, Ilyasah
says. Despite his father’s murder and his mother being
institutionalized, Malcolm’s leadership skills were always clear.
He was voted class president in the seventh grade even after
losing his family, his home, and everything he once knew.


After being arrested for grand larceny in 1946, Malcom served six
years in jail. He stayed at the brutal and unforgiving Concord
Reformatory with many other disadvantaged black and brown folks.
He later transferred to the experimental Norfolk prison colony,
where he was on a debate team. While a part of the colony, he
went toe to toe in debates with students from MIT and Harvard,
which shaped his intellectual capacity. He had access to an
extensive library of books, which he read profusely, learning
about everything under the sun.


These books taught Malcom incredible lessons about the history of
black civilization. He learned that black people had an
incredibly rich past, with important contributions to astronomy,
architecture, literature and more. He began to realize that the
way black citizens had been taught to see themselves was all
wrong. And so, instead of staying at this prison that was much
kinder to him, he went back to the Concord Reformatory to teach
the brown and black folks that they came from a robust tradition
of intelligence and invention.


In the episode, Ilyasah and I talk about how important it was for
Malcom to educate himself and others, and how you can educate
your own children and the people around you. In fact, we talk
about education quite a bit–like how our schooling system has
some serious flaws in how it depicts people of color throughout
history.


Inclusive Education


Ilyasah believes that education is the most effective tool for
eradicating injustice! In the same way that Malcom brought
knowledge to the inmates, Ilyasah and I discuss the importance of
changing the narrative of our education system to truly teach
young folks the history of black and indigenous people.


In the episode, Ilyasah explains how black stories are omitted
from our history classes. Textbooks rarely paint people of color
as being iconoclasts, thinkers, scholars. In reality, there have
been many brilliant black individuals throughout history who
changed the world. We also rarely discuss the contributions of
ancient black civilizations in the classroom. It’s simply
expected that students will learn about the Roman empire and
ancient Greece, but the vast wisdom and invention that came from
the African people is almost never mentioned.


Ilyasah goes on to talk about how learning about the hard parts
of being a black person in United States History can help
students understand the need for reparations in the black
community. And these difficulties are far from over. One of the
biggest ways people of color are marginalized in the United
States is within the criminal justice system.


Why We Need to Talk About the U.S. Prison System


Three million black and brown people are in prison today, just
like Malcom once was. Not only that, but 80 billion tax dollars
are spent on average every year on correctional facilities–money
that could be spent on creating programs for young people to keep
them out of these correctional facilities, says Ilyasah.


The issue is only growing, which is why we need to pay attention.
Ilyasah recalls when she was younger and there were tons of
tax-funded after school programs and even an after school TV show
that existed to keep inner city kids safe and out of trouble.
Now, she says these have been cut and the money redirected
towards prisons.


When Malcom educated other prisoners at the correctional facility
during his youth, he was seeing them as more than just inmates.
He understood that they were all unique, individual people.
That’s what Ilyasah says we must do if we want to transform our
prison system: see the humanity of incarcerated individuals.


Although TV and movies might make prisoners out to be scary
thugs, in reality they are scared people, placed into conditions
which are nearly impossible to survive. Not to mention that
people of color are disproportionately targeted, meaning most of
these folks have been victims of racist justice system.


If we take the time to educate ourselves and live with
compassion, we can help fight against the prejudices of the
world. As Ilayash says we can’t wait for the world to change; we
must change it ourselves.


In the Episode...


Ilayash’s powerful vision for a better world makes for an
incredibly engaging and educational episode this week. In
addition to the topics mentioned above, we discuss:


How to talk about race--no matter who you are

What teens can learn from Malcom’s persistence

Why the summer of 2020 was so powerful for civil rights

What we say when it comes to educating our kids about
prejudice



Although we’ve made progress to...