FORUM
View Malcolm X as The Vitruvian Man
at what would be his 90th birthday
Bill
Turner
Guest
Columnist
"El-Hajj Malik El
Shabazz was a Vitruvian
Man," replied Alex Haley,
the author of the riveting
"Autobiography of
Malcolm X," when I asked
him 25 years ago to draw a
circle around the life of this
grand public figure whose
beleaguered parents named
him Malcolm Little.
When students are
introduced to mathematics,
often they start with a les
son on Leonardo da Vinci's
world-renowned drawing
that illustrates the proper
ties and relationships of
points, lines, angles,
curves, surfaces and solids.
The life and times of
Malcolm X - who would
be 90 this week had he not
been killed 50 years ago -
should be required study
for the understanding of
what is America's ongoing
dilemma: the discrepancy
between our valuing of
equality on the orie hancJ'
and the persistence of'
racial bigotry and inequali
ty on the other.
The Vitruvian Man has
been called the Canon of
Proportions. "By any
means necessary" was Mr.
Malcolm's standard and
all-encompassing response
whenever he was asked for
the formula for blacks to
achieve freedom and equal
ity. Taken on its surface,
that answer pointed to an
oblique reign of terror in
the minds of most
Americans, because it was
always blown out of pro
portion, taken out of con
text, and framed inside the
image of Malcolm as a
monster, as compared to
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Malcolm kept an open
mind in terms of any and
all strategies that could be
employed to achieve the
desired ends. "Necessary"
says that if violence is not
necessary in pursuit of
freedom, justice, and
equality then, it would not
be used. That pretty
straightforward line got
curved and convoluted.
lust as da Vinci's figure
depicts a nude male figure
as two overlaid positions
with arms and legs apart
and at the same time
inscribed in a circle and
square, Malcolm X's points
of view stripped bare the
two-faced image of
America. With the preci
sion of his peerless oratori
cal protractor and his level
headed logic, Malcolm X
drew lines and circles
around a binary set of laws:
one for whites and another
for blacks when it came to
freedom of speech, of reli
gious expression, of a free
press, the right to peaceful
ly assemble, to petition the
government for redress of
grievances, and especially
the right of people to keep
and bear arms.
The Constitutional cir
cle - the Bill of Rights -
did not square where peo
ple of color in America are
concerned?
The life and times of
Malcolm X, as told in the
"Autobiography," pub
lished in 1965, was
described by Time maga
zine as "one of the most
important books of the cen
tury." Malcolm X, between
his teen years and mid-20s,
was - between Boston and
Harlem - a self-described
live-by-the-wits street hus
tler, a drug peddler an
addict, a con artist, a thug,
and a gun-toting burglar
who was caught and con
victed and served eight
years in prison. That was
Malcolm's nature, his cos
mos, and he was but a
small-scale representation
of millions of poor and
uneducated young black
men, much similar to those
who fail in the classrooms
and have regular run-ins
with the law, still seeking
the American Promise, like
Freddie Grey, in modem
day Baltimore.
But, what is lesser
known about Malcolm, the
complex part, is how he
worked his way through
various changes and con
versions: from a turbulent
street life to a disciplined,
self-taught reader who
became entranced with
ideas, to the human rights
leader the world would
come to know; who, just
before his murder,
renounced the racist hostil
ity he voiced while he was
the leading spokesman for
the Nation of Islam. At the
apex of his life, the arc of
Malcolm's embrace orbited
all humans, stretching
worldwide like a geometric
ellipse; and, by changing so
fundamentally, he circled
his own square.
The Vitruvian Man and
Malcolm X exist in the
same space: both are
expressions of the search
for connections, with da
Vinci exclaiming, "Man is
the model of the world."
Malcolm X was an
exemplary model of rein- ?
vention and it is good that
he is now embraced and
hopefully understood by a
generation that has many of
the same and some even
greater and more complex
challenges than existed
during his lifetime.
Malcolm X symbolized
the very heart and soul of
the black experience; what
went around in his day has
come around again and the
circle is unbroken.
Like Alex Haley, said,
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz,
Malcolm X, was a
Vitruvian Man, a symbol of
the ages.
Dr. Bill Turner is a
noted educator, writer and
thinker who called
Winston-Salem home for
many years. Reach him at
hill-turner@comcast.net.
William H. Turner ?
5/16/2015
1 '
"Malcolm kept an open mind in terms of strategies
to meet the desired ends. 4Necessary'"
? Bill Turner
You Decide: How will the job market change?
Mike
Walden
Guest
Columnist
Although the job market
in North Carolina has been
improving for the last five
years, there still is a long
way to go.
The number of people
employed today is 4 percent
higher than before the reces
sion and 12 percent higher
than in 2000. But since the
turn of the century, the state's working age population (20
to 64) is up 24 percent.
Yet what if I told you that over the next 40 years, the
number of jobs in the state could actually fall by 1.2 mil
lion? This would send the state unemployment rate to well
above 25 percent. Am I just being an alarmist trying to
grab headlines?
Actually, these calculations are based on the work of
two economists - Frey and Osborne - analyzing the con
cept of "technological unemployment." Technological
unemployment simply means the replacement of jobs by
technology. Historical examples are vehicles replacing
wagon masters, word processing programs replacing typ
ists and answering programs and electronic calendars
replacing secretaries.
Recent research shows one of the reasons for the rela
tively slow recovery of jobs after the recession is the deci
sion by more businesses to replace workers with machines
and technology. This is particularly the case for routine
type jobs - jobs where the same task is being done over
and over. These kinds of tasks are obviously very suscep
tible to being performed by technology.
However, the expectation is that as technology
advances, technological unemployment will become
broader and deeper. Especially as "smart technology" is
developed - where the technology can gather information
and make decisions - jobs beyond those that are routine
oriented will become candidates for technological unem
ployment.
What Frey and Osborne did was tediously analyze all
jobs classified into more than 700 occupations and
assigned each a likelihood - or probability - that each
would be replaced by technology in coming decades. I
then took their results and applied them to the current
occupations in North Carolina.
"Die results were startling. Scores of occupations in our
state have more than a 70 percent likelihood of disappear
ing. Included are occupations such as retail salespersons,
cashiers, fast-food workers and office clerks. Customer
service representatives, janitors and cleaners, and auto
service technicians have a moderate (30 percent to 70 per
cent) chance of being eliminated by technology. Those
with the lowest likelihood of downsizing are jobs requir
ing a high level of complex decision-making, like physi
cians, nurses, teachers and computer software developers.
I also discovered an income element to these findings.
The occupations with the lowest probability of technolog
ical unemployment had the highest median salaries, while
the occupations with the highest probability of technolog
ical unemployment had the lowest median salaries.
I then used Frey and Osborne's probability of techno
logical unemployment for each occupation together with
projected growth rates in the occupation's industry and
job-to-output ratios to project the total number of jobs in
North Carolina's current occupations remaining in 2050.
This is where I found there would actually be 1.2 million
fewer jobs in 2050 than today.
But there's reason for hope. Notice the 1.2 million
fewer jobs is for current occupations in North Carolina. It
is likely there will be new occupations created in our state
over the next 40 years, just as there have been in the last
100 years. For example, when technological unemploy
ment came to farming, factory occupations were created.
When technological unemployment came to the factory,
service occupations appeared.
So, along with the current wave of technological
unemployment we'll likely see many new occupations
develop. What will they be? I certainly don't have a per
fect crystal ball, but I think strong arguments can be made
for new occupations in several areas, including repair and
maintenance of new technology; data management, analy
sis and logistics; efficient resource usage; global interac
tion; and assistance to active and independent elderly
households. Each of these developing occupations follow
socio-economic trends that are expected to dominate our
economy in decades ahead.
This means we will have to be agile with our future
educational and training systems. The downsizing of some
occupations and the creation of others will occur at an
erratic and often imperceptible pace. Formal and informal
training programs will have to be attuned to emerging
trends and be willing to rapidly shift resources away from
declining occupations to growing ones. Future workers
will not only have many different jobs during their
careers, but also many different occupations.
We've always had technological unemployment, but
the information-technology revolution is sparking a new
wave that has not yet run its course. You decide if we'll be
ready!
Dr. Mike Walden is a William Neal Reynolds
Distinguished Professor and North Carolina Cooperative
Extension economist in the Department of Agricultural
and Resource Economics of North Carolina State
University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He
teaches and writes on personal finance, economic outlook
and public policy.