Editorial commentary
This address engages the United Nations system's approach to questions of decolonization and human rights. The 'right to comfort' formulation refers to an analytical argument about the distinction between the political claims advanced by the newly independent African and Asian states at the United Nations and the political claims advanced by the major European and North American powers through the same institution.
Malcolm X (1925-1965) was the central public figure of the Black nationalist tradition of the 1950s and early 1960s. His political position evolved substantially across the final years of his life — particularly across the eleven months between his 1964 break with the Nation of Islam and his February 1965 assassination — and the standard reception of his work has often flattened that evolution. His writings, speeches, and the posthumous Autobiography (1965, with Alex Haley) remain central reference points for African-American political thought.
The argument rests on a distinction between two registers of political claim. The first is the claim to bare political existence — the claim that the population making the claim should be recognized as a political community with the standing to enter into international agreements. The second is the claim to substantive material standing — the claim that the population should enjoy a particular level of economic well-being, social services, infrastructure, and consumption.
The address argues that the major European and North American powers had organized the post-war international system to advance the second register of claim while continuing to resist the first register of claim for the populations of the African and Asian colonies they continued to administer. The arrangement was incoherent in its formal principles but operated as the substantive basis of the post-war order.
The broader context is the period of accelerating African and Asian decolonization across the 1955-1970 period and the corresponding shifts in the composition of the United Nations General Assembly. The number of U.N. member states grew from fifty-one at the organization's founding in 1945 to one hundred and twenty-seven by 1970; the political character of the General Assembly shifted accordingly. The address should be read as one document of the political-rhetorical work that the shift produced and was produced by.
This entry sits within the archive's broader catalogue of primary-source documents, book reviews, audio essays, and discussion circles. Readers approaching the material for the first time will find suggested reading paths in the curated bundles in the shop section; readers with prior background in the tradition will find adjacent material via the Read Alongside links at the foot of each detail page. The archive's editorial policy is to reproduce public-domain texts in full, to excerpt in-copyright material under fair-use conventions with attribution to canonical sources, and to cite living scholars by name where their work is engaged. Provenance fields on each document record the source, the year of first publication, and the canonical digital edition used as the basis for the version on this site.
Mr. President, comrade delegates, I come to bring to you the fraternal greetings of a country whose seven million children, women and men refuse henceforth to die of ignorance, of hunger, of thirst, while having to live the human experience for a quarter of a century, that is, an average life expectancy of barely 40 years.
I make no claim to set forth doctrines here. I am neither a messiah nor a prophet. I possess no truths. My only ambition is of a twofold nature: first, to be able to speak in simple language, that of the obvious and clear, on behalf of my people, the people of Burkina Faso; and second, to express in my way the words of 'the great damned of the earth.'
We must not allow the elites in our countries, allied with imperialism, to confuse our people about the meaning of struggle. Solutions to our problems will not come from the gracious gestures of those who hold the keys to the kingdom of plenty. Solutions will come from our struggle.
Editorial commentary
This address engages the United Nations system's approach to questions of decolonization and human rights. The 'right to comfort' formulation refers to an analytical argument about the distinction between the political claims advanced by the newly independent African and Asian states at the United Nations and the political claims advanced by the major European and North American powers through the same institution.
Malcolm X (1925-1965) was the central public figure of the Black nationalist tradition of the 1950s and early 1960s. His political position evolved substantially across the final years of his life — particularly across the eleven months between his 1964 break with the Nation of Islam and his February 1965 assassination — and the standard reception of his work has often flattened that evolution. His writings, speeches, and the posthumous Autobiography (1965, with Alex Haley) remain central reference points for African-American political thought.
The argument rests on a distinction between two registers of political claim. The first is the claim to bare political existence — the claim that the population making the claim should be recognized as a political community with the standing to enter into international agreements. The second is the claim to substantive material standing — the claim that the population should enjoy a particular level of economic well-being, social services, infrastructure, and consumption.
The address argues that the major European and North American powers had organized the post-war international system to advance the second register of claim while continuing to resist the first register of claim for the populations of the African and Asian colonies they continued to administer. The arrangement was incoherent in its formal principles but operated as the substantive basis of the post-war order.
The broader context is the period of accelerating African and Asian decolonization across the 1955-1970 period and the corresponding shifts in the composition of the United Nations General Assembly. The number of U.N. member states grew from fifty-one at the organization's founding in 1945 to one hundred and twenty-seven by 1970; the political character of the General Assembly shifted accordingly. The address should be read as one document of the political-rhetorical work that the shift produced and was produced by.
This entry sits within the archive's broader catalogue of primary-source documents, book reviews, audio essays, and discussion circles. Readers approaching the material for the first time will find suggested reading paths in the curated bundles in the shop section; readers with prior background in the tradition will find adjacent material via the Read Alongside links at the foot of each detail page. The archive's editorial policy is to reproduce public-domain texts in full, to excerpt in-copyright material under fair-use conventions with attribution to canonical sources, and to cite living scholars by name where their work is engaged. Provenance fields on each document record the source, the year of first publication, and the canonical digital edition used as the basis for the version on this site.