Written by Black Men Build’s National Political Education Team 

an article from WARTIME 2025: 100 Years of Malcolm X

Malcolm X loved Black people. We know this without a shadow of a doubt. His love was not abstract—it was rooted in action, in study, and in the sincere belief that our liberation was worth fighting and dying for. Even when he made mistakes or held views we now know to be limiting or harmful, Malcolm acted from a place of genuine commitment to what he believed was in our best interest. It was this deep love for Black people that allowed him to evolve, to learn, and to grow. He challenges us to do the same.

Malcolm was born into a patriarchal* society, adopting many of its norms, beliefs, and practices. As a young hustler and a pimp, he ran the streets as Detroit Red viewing women as tools for profit and undeserving of respect. But as he grew politically conscious of American racism, African history, and colonial oppression, Malcolm began to challenge these inherited ideas and work to make amends for the harm he caused in the community. His life was a testament to constant transformation through critique, reflection, and integrity.

As a member of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm’s ideology was initially shaped by patriarchal beliefs, such as those expressed in the NOI’s “Message to the Black Man,” which envisioned a Black nation led by men with women supporting quietly from behind. However, these beliefs had consequences and were part of what led Malcolm to confront and eventually break with the Nation of Islam, particularly over the sexual exploitation of women and girls within the organization. Malcolm’s lived experiences and active participation in liberation struggles exposed him to powerful Black Nationalist and Communist women such as his mother Louise Little (UNIA), his sister Ella Collins (OAAU), comrades Vicki Garvin, Maya Angelou, Yuri Kochiyama, and elders like Queen Mother Moore (UNIA; CPUSA), Shirley Graham DuBois (NAACP; CPUSA) and Claudia Jones (West Indian Gazette; CPUSA). These revolutionary women shaped Malcolm’s evolving consciousness and challenged rigid gender roles and sexist practices within the Freedom Movement, making it clear that our struggle to transform society will involve transforming the foundations of how we relate to one another in community.

Colonialism has always enforced harmful systems, including patriarchy, homophobia*, and transphobia*, across Africa and the Diaspora. These systems are historically embedded in the foundations of capitalism, from the sexual exploitation of women and girls on the plantations and industrial sweatshops of Europe and its colonies, to today’s cocoa plantations in Mali, garment factories in Haiti, and industrial mines in the Congo. They also persist through the genocidal pressures faced by Black men today—mass incarceration, lynching (police murder), sexual assault (stop and frisk), unemployment, lack of healthcare, gun violence, and suicide.

Yet, we must also ask ourselves: what of our queer African siblings who fight relentlessly for the freedom to be who they are and the love and belonging of community? What of our transgender African siblings who challenge the colonizer’s pseudoscientific definitions of “man” and “woman” and the gender roles we are destined to play under their system that bred us like cattle? What genocidal pressures do they face? How does their position at the intersection of multiple forms of oppression inform their consciousness? And what lessons do their struggles and resilience offer our collective liberation movement? Malcolm loved what he called “bottom of the pile Negroes.” It is a love that resonates deeply with the legacies of ancestors like Marsha P. Johnson and Huey P. Newton, who fought fiercely against all forms of oppression and advocated for women’s and gay liberation.

Black Men Build embraces this legacy. We affirm:

• We are transforming to meet the moment.
• We are bonded with Black women and all Black people in the fight for true freedom.
• We are against patriarchy and heteronormative bullsh*t and we will be bold enough to say it with our chest.
• We embrace all processes of decolonization with our full hearts and maximum effort.

Black Men Build aims to decolonize our masculinity, so we can engage the fight for true freedom as connected, loving, and conscious Africans. We understand this society was built by us but not for us, and so what we are taught about the world, how we should exist in it, what is “natural,” and even what we believe it takes to “be a man” is imposed on us by the same oppressors we aim to defeat. This means decolonization is a constant process, or as the elders say “freedom is a constant struggle.” We recognize patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia are corrosive and antithetical to our liberation project. But this recognition is only one step. We understand this is a daily process of education and transformation at the individual and community level. We understand the stakes are life and death. They always have been. Malcolm reminds us “The price of freedom is death.” Too many of our people pay that price without ever achieving freedom, especially our LGBTQ+ family. 

“For the only great men among the unfree and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor.” — Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Huey Newton on Gay & Women’s Liberation (1970)

(1970) Huey P. Newton, “The Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements” | BlackPast.org 

Definitions

Patriarchy (sexism): an ideology and social, political, and economic system that positions men, masculinity, and heterosexuality as the ideal. Under patriarchy, cis heterosexual men are deemed naturally superior to and dominant over other genders/sexualities and granted power to exploit those groups especially for socially reproductive labor (i.e. the work involved in sustaining human life, reproducing the workforce, and maintaining social structures like child rearing, cooking, cleaning, intimacy, taking care of elders, etc.). This system’s rigid construction of gender and sexuality harms all people including men.

Similar to how white supremacy employs racism; patriarchy employs sexism to explain, justify, and reproduce itself by attributing gender inequality to inherent natural differences between men and women, divine commandment, or other fixed structures rather than social organization and political economy.

Misogyny (misogynoir): a term that specifically refers to a hatred of women and femininity. The word is formed from the Greek roots misein (“to hate”) and gynē (“woman”). In addition to patriarchy and sexism, misogyny is a force that normalizes and justifies violence against women and other marginalized gender identities and sexual orientations. Misogynoir (“noir” is a French word for “black”) refers to the specific ways misogyny targets Black women in our white supremacist, colonial society. Misogyny and misogynoir serve to violently discipline members of society into their designated gender roles.

Homophobia: the ideology that justifies the fear, exploitation, persecution, and extermination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other gender and sexual identities. The social function of homophobia is to enforce rigid gender distinctions (see also heteronormativity). The term was adopted in 1972 by George Weinberg (b.1935), an American psychologist. The use of ‘phobia’ has been criticized as implying a pathological and irrational fear rather than a form of prejudice analogous to racism. The ideological forces weaponized against LGBTQ+ people pre-date this official designation.

Transphobia: the ideological justification for the fear, exploitation, persecution, and extermination of trans and gender nonconforming people. Transphobia enforces the strict gender binary necessary for patriarchy to function

Feminism: an umbrella term for various liberation ideologies designed to combat patriarchy. For this reason, some prefer to say feminisms (plural)  to highlight the important distinctions between how various populations engage the struggle against patriarchy depending on their historical experience or avoid the term altogether (e.g. Africana womanism, Black queer feminism, proletarian feminism, indigenous feminism, etc.) . Similar to the concept of “nationalism,” feminism has conservative and revolutionary strains.

Feminism can also be understood as the movement to end sexist oppression. Radical feminism is working for the eradication of domination and elitism in all human relationships. This would make self-determination the ultimate good and require the transformation of society as we know it today for people of all gender identities.

To see full article and discussion questions, see the Peoples College x BMB Malcolm X Study Guide 2025 inspired by “Malcolm & Martin & America – Chapter 10 Nothing But Men” by James H. Cone and Excerpt from “Ironies of the Saint” by Farah Jasmine Griffin