I didn’t grow up looking up to Martin Luther King Jr. I couldn’t relate to his story. My father wasn’t a pastor and I wasn’t a church boy.
My role model was Malcolm Little, otherwise known as Malcolm X. He was my father figure, almost because I didn’t see what a positive role model looked like. Malcolm X grew up with a deceased father and a mentally disabled mother. I could cling to that. My father was killed when I was one year old and my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a child.
Malcolm X was a man who came from a similar background to mine, who didn’t smoke, drink or fornicate. He was intellectually inclined. I wasn’t a physically talented child; I was intellectually superior. Everybody was twice my size growing up, but I was twice as smart.
I grew up a nerd, but there aren’t any role models like that in the hood. Malcolm X was a guiding light to read, study, pray and find God. When everyone around you plays football or basketball, they get all the attention. I wasn’t overlooked, I was underlooked, as I called it.
Academics aren’t something that is praised highly in the Black community. I couldn’t look up to Kobe or LeBron; I sucked at basketball. Football was cool, but it wasn’t paying my mother’s bills. King didn’t even like marching, nor did we keep his dream alive.
King’s mother was killed at his family’s church by a Black man. I believe in Malcolm X’s ideology of economic freedom over political freedom. You give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. You teach a man how to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.
I don’t believe marching will get us anywhere. If we want respect, we have to earn it. We cannot fight the same system that we rely on. If we were to go out and do it for ourselves, then we would gain more respect from other ethnic groups.