Malcom X on Kendi, DiAngelo and the DEI Complex

They have done it again.

They have found a way to make you kneel and convinced you it is standing. They have taught you to beg and called it justice. They have put chains on your mind heavier than any that ever bound your ancestors’ wrists—and this time, they have taught you to forge them.

I am speaking of your new teachers. Your new leaders. The ones who write books telling you that you are broken. The ones who build careers on your pain. The ones who have made an industry—a billion-dollar industry—out of telling white folks they are sick and telling you that you can never be well until they are healed.

Listen to me carefully: Any philosophy that teaches you to wait for your oppressor’s confession before you can be free is not liberation. It is a new and more sophisticated slavery.

The Slave and the Psychologist

When I was in prison, I read. I read everything. And one thing I understood then that too many of our people have forgotten now: The most dangerous chains are the ones you cannot see. The ones you choose to wear. The ones that feel like virtue.

The old slavemasters needed whips and laws and dogs. The new ones need only this: to convince you that your dignity is held in the white man’s pocket. That your worth depends on his recognition. That you cannot rise until he kneels.

This is what they teach you now. This is what Kendi teaches. This is what DiAngelo teaches. This is what every corporate sensitivity workshop, every foundation-funded racial equity initiative, every token appointment to a board or committee is designed to teach.

They say: The white man has privilege.

I say: And you have given him more.

Because now you have told him that he holds not just the wealth, not just the institutions, but the very key to your soul. Now you have told him that until he confesses, until he flagellates himself, until he sits in hotel conference rooms and weeps about his complicity—you cannot be whole. You cannot be equal. You cannot be you without his permission.

What kind of liberation is this? What kind of freedom requires the oppressor’s tears before you can stand up straight?

The Hustle

Let me tell you what I see when I look at this industry—and it is an industry, make no mistake.

I see hustlers. Sophisticated ones. Credentialed ones. But hustlers nonetheless.

They have found the one product that never runs out: white guilt. And they have found the one market that never closes: Black pain. They stand between the two, brokering transactions, taking their cut.

DiAngelo charges fifteen thousand dollars to tell rooms full of white executives that they are fragile, that they are racist, that they can never be clean but must keep paying anyway. She has made millions. Her publisher has made millions. The consultants who teach her methods have made millions.

Kendi defines racism so broadly that everything becomes racist—and therefore nothing can be done except constant confession, constant vigilance, constant genuflection to the priests who alone can diagnose the sin. His center received tens of millions from the very corporations whose wealth was built on our backs. And what did our people get? Books. Seminars. Statements of solidarity.

Not jobs. Not ownership. Not land. Not power.

Words. We got words.

And who benefits? Not the child in Baltimore who cannot read because the schools have been looted for decades. Not the young man in Chicago dodging bullets because there is no economy, no opportunity, nothing to lose. Not the mother working two jobs who has never heard of “white fragility” and does not have time for such foolishness because she is trying to keep the lights on.

No. The ones who benefit are the consultants. The authors. The administrators. The foundation officers. The whole class of people who have discovered that there is good money in keeping the wound open.

And behind them? Behind the consultants and the corporations and the foundations?

The same thing that has always been there: the drive to dominate, to extract, to control. Call it colonialism. Call it imperialism. Call it exploitation. The name changes, the masks are updated, but the machinery is the same: cops to keep you in line, courts to make it legal, capital to keep you dependent, political parties to give you the illusion of choice.

The slave ship. The plantation. The colony. Jim Crow. And now: the managed grievance, the corporate workshop, the foundation grant, the token seat at the table.

Different masks. Same machine. And the machine has one purpose: to keep them on top and you reaching upward—always reaching, never grasping, always dependent on what they might give.

Once you see this, you cannot unsee it.

The Football Game

Now I must tell you something about American politics that our people have been slow to understand.

In my time, the Black man was like a football. The conservatives and the liberals were the two teams. They fought over us, ran plays with us, used us to score points against each other. But at the end of the game, we were still a football. We were not players. We did not own the stadium. We did not write the rules.

The conservative was the wolf. He showed you his teeth. He told you to your face that he did not want you in his neighborhood, his school, his country club. You knew where you stood with the wolf. You could see him coming.

The liberal was the fox. He smiled. He said he was your friend. He said he wanted to help. But after all his programs and task forces and initiatives—did you own more? Did you control more? The fox was more dangerous than the wolf, because the fox got you to relax. The fox got you to celebrate access instead of demanding power.

That was the game in my time. But I understand the game has changed.

Sixty years later, both teams want you on their roster. The conservative no longer says he does not want you. He says: Join us. Reject victimhood. Succeed as an individual. Integrate. The liberal still says: You are victims. Stay with us. We will advocate for you, manage your grievance, give you programs and representation.

Two foxes now. Two smiles. Two invitations.

But look closer. What does neither team want?

Neither wants you to build your own institutions before you integrate. Neither wants you to accumulate collective leverage. Neither wants you to negotiate from strength.

The liberal wants permanent clients—dependent on programs, dependent on advocacy, dependent on the party that “cares.” The conservative wants grateful individuals—assimilated one by one, attributing their success to the system, no longer organizing as a group.

The Irish did not do this. The Jews did not do this. The Italians did not do this. They built their political machines, their banks, their neighborhood economies first. They accumulated power as a group. Then they integrated—on their terms, from strength, with something to bring to the table.

Nobody told the Jews to stop talking about the pogroms. Nobody told the Irish to forget the Famine. They kept their history, kept their identity, kept their institutions—and also became American.

That is the path. Not permanent grievance. Not individual assimilation before you have built anything. But collective power first, then integration from strength.

Both teams want to skip that step. The liberal wants you to stay in the grievance and never build. The conservative wants you to join as individuals and never build. Both want you on the field—but still not owning the stadium.

What they will not give you is control of the police who patrol your neighborhoods. They will not give you ownership of the banks that decide who gets capital. They will not give you the deeds to the land. They will not give you the factories, the warehouses, the trucks, the stores—the means of building wealth that lasts.

But here is what you must understand: Nobody will give you these things. Not the wolf, not the fox, not any party or politician or foundation or ally.

This is not cause for despair. This is cause for clarity.

Power is not given. Power is built. Power is taken. The Irish were not given power. The Jews were not given power. The Italians who came to this country with nothing were not given power. They built their own institutions, kept their money in their own neighborhoods, organized their own political machines until they could not be ignored.

We must do the same. Not because we will find no allies—we may find some—but because a man who needs allies is not free. A man who has built his own house negotiates differently than a man who is asking for shelter.

Stop waiting for the game to become fair. Leave the field. Build your own stadium.

Civil Rights and Human Rights

Here is another trap they have set for you, and most of our leaders have walked right into it:

They have convinced you that your struggle is a civil rights struggle. An American struggle. A domestic matter to be resolved in American courts, by American laws, under American management.

This is a lie designed to keep you small.

Your struggle is a human rights struggle. It is the same struggle as the African throwing off the colonial master. The same struggle as the Asian refusing to bow to the empire. The same struggle that colonized and exploited people have waged on every continent for five hundred years.

When you frame it as civil rights, you are a minority—twelve percent, thirteen percent—petitioning the majority for redress. You are a beggar with a grievance, asking America to live up to its promises.

When you frame it as human rights, you are part of the majority of the earth’s people who have been victimized by the same system. You are not asking America to be better. You are indicting America before the world. You are connecting your struggle to every other struggle against exploitation and domination. You are naming the system—not individual prejudice, not unconscious bias, not microaggressions, but the global system of economic and political control that was built on our bodies and continues to feed on our labor.

But Kendi will not tell you this. DiAngelo cannot tell you this. Their whole framework is designed to keep your eyes on the white person sitting next to you in the seminar, not on the structure that put you both there.

The Monstrous Mirror

Here is the terrible irony—the one they will not tell you:

The white supremacist and the anti-racist agree.

They agree that white people are the center of history. They agree that white people have almost mystical power. They agree that Black people are secondary—either as inferiors to be dominated or as victims to be saved. They disagree only on whether this arrangement should be celebrated or lamented.

But the structure is identical. The assumption is identical.

And that assumption is this: The white man is the protagonist. You are a supporting character in his story.

I did not escape one prison to walk into another. I did not throw off the chains of Jim Crow to accept the chains of corporate diversity training. I did not reject the slavemaster’s contempt only to accept the liberal’s pity.

Pity is contempt in a Sunday dress.

What the Oppressor Wants

You want to know what the oppressor wants? The real oppressor—not the white man in the street, who is often as lost and confused as anyone, but the system, the thing that feeds on human division?

It wants you dependent.

It wants you grateful.

It wants you asking.

It does not matter whether you are asking for crumbs from the table or asking for confessions of guilt. The posture is the same. The relationship is the same. You are below. They are above. And you are waiting for something to be given.

Every time you accept the premise that you need white validation—even white guilt, even white shame—you are on your knees. Every time you act as though your dignity is contingent on their recognition, you have handed them your power.

And they will take it. They will take it and build consulting firms around it. They will take it and endow university chairs. They will take it and write books and hold conferences and create whole careers. And at the end of it all, you will still be waiting.

The Way Out

So what is the alternative? What do I offer in place of this poison?

I offer you what I have always offered: Yourself.

Your worth is not stored in the white man’s conscience. It is not held hostage by history. It is not contingent on anyone’s confession or contrition.

You are a child of God—the same God who made the mountains and the oceans. The same God who brought your ancestors through the unspeakable and kept the flame alive. The same God who is no respecter of persons, who sees no color, who calls every human soul to dignity.

Or if you do not speak the language of God, then speak the language of history: You come from civilizations that built pyramids and libraries and empires while Europe huddled in darkness. You come from kings and scholars and warriors and artists. You come from people who survived—who were brought here in chains and emerged unbroken.

That is your inheritance. Claim it.

Not because white people have agreed that you may. Not because a commission has certified it. Not because a consultant has validated it.

Claim it because it is yours.

Build

And once you have claimed it, build.

I do not mean build your self-esteem. I do not mean build your confidence. I mean build things that last.

Build schools that you control—where your children learn their own history, their own languages, their own greatness, not a curriculum designed to make them grateful for inclusion. Build banks that you own—where your capital circulates in your community seven, eight, ten times before it leaves, instead of flowing out to their corporations the same day it arrives. Build businesses that employ your people, that create apprenticeships, that pass wealth to the next generation. Build political organizations that do not beg for a seat at their table but demand control of the wards and districts where your people are the majority.

Control your schools. Control your housing. Control your local economy. Control your ballot.

This is what they fear. This is what the new enslavers cannot permit. Because if you build—if you stand on your own feet and create something that does not depend on their grants, their permission, their programs, their guilty tears—then their whole hustle collapses.

They need you to be a victim. Their careers depend on it. Their identities depend on it. The entire structure depends on a permanent class of the wounded waiting to be healed by the right incantation.

Refuse.

Refuse to be a permanent victim. Refuse to be a problem for white people to solve. Refuse to wait for their awakening. Refuse the transaction.

Build your own power. Then negotiate from strength—or do not negotiate at all.

To Those Who Would Be Allies

I returned from Mecca a changed man. I had seen white pilgrims, true believers, kneeling beside Black Africans and Asian Muslims and calling each other brother. I learned that the color of a man’s skin tells me nothing about the content of his soul.

But let me be clear about what I did not learn:

I did not learn that the system which oppresses my people is colorblind. I did not learn that all we need is better understanding, more dialogue, a few more seminars. I did not learn that the path to justice runs through white guilt.

To the white person who wants to work alongside us—and I believe there are such people, people of genuine conscience—I say this:

I do not want your guilt. Your guilt is about you. It centers your feelings, your discomfort, your journey. I am not interested in your journey.

I do not want your pity. Pity flows downward. It assumes I am beneath you and in need of your compassion. I am not beneath you.

I do not want your charity. Charity maintains the structure. It lets you feel generous while keeping control of the resources.

What I want is this: Act in your own sphere to dismantle the system that benefits you at my expense. Not because it makes you feel good. Not because it cleanses your soul. But because it is just, and because you understand that a system built on domination degrades the dominator as well as the dominated.

Organize your own people. The white working class has been taught to fear us when they should be joining us against the forces that exploit us both. That is your work to do, not mine.

And when we build our own institutions, stay out of the way. Do not ask to lead. Do not ask to be centered. Do not ask for gratitude. If you have resources, offer them with no strings. If you have skills, offer them in service, not supervision.

This is the solidarity I accept: shoulder to shoulder, facing the same enemy, each of us doing our part. Not savior and saved. Not teacher and student. Partners—with boundaries, with mutual respect, with clear eyes about the distance we have yet to travel.

The Heroic Vision

I close with this:

The human being is not meant to grovel. Neither the oppressor nor the oppressed. We are made for more than guilt and grievance, for more than cycles of accusation and confession that never end.

We are made to build. To create. To stand in our dignity and reach out across every divide—not as debtor and creditor, not as sinner and priest, but as free people engaged in the common project of human flourishing.

This is the heroic vision. This is what they have stolen from you. This is what I am calling you to reclaim.

You do not need Robin DiAngelo to free you. She cannot. You do not need Ibram Kendi to diagnose you. He will only keep you sick. You do not need any corporate workshop to certify your humanity. Your humanity was certified before the foundation of the world.

What you need is to remember.

Remember who you are. Remember where you come from. Remember that the power has always been in your hands—and the only reason you have not used it is that they have convinced you to look for it somewhere else.

Stop looking.

Rise.

Build.

And let them come to you.

In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful—and in solidarity with the oppressed of every nation—

Your brother,

Malcolm