Race, Identity, & Social Order
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“Never cross a man not afraid to die.”
Dehumanization
• “In the ghettoes the white man has built for us, he has
forced us not to aspire to greater things, but to view
everyday living as survival—and in that kind of
community, survival is what is respected.” (105)
– A life of oppression and brutality leaves the individual
brutalized
– In the absence of even the possibility of better things,
Malcolm X at this point in his life embraces a form of
nihilism. He sees his life of self-loathing, drugs, sex, and
crime as self-degradation.
– This is due in part to a lack of self-knowledge and selfrespect
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The color line
• “We laughed about the scared little Chinese whose
restaurant didn’t have a hand laid on it, because the
rioters just about convulsed laughing when they saw
the sign the Chinese had hastily stuck on his door: ‘Me
Colored Too.’” (131)
• “Hymie really liked me, and I liked him. He loved to
talk. Half his talk was about Jews and Negroes. Jews
who had anglicized their names were Hymie’s favorite
hate. Spitting and curling his mouth in scorn, he would
reel off names of people he said had done this.” (143)
• The race card: “Who in the world’s history has ever played
a worse ‘skin game’ than the white man?” (206)
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Being toward death
• “I believed that a man should do anything that he
was slick enough, or bad and bold enough, to do
and that a woman was nothing but another
commodity.” (155)
• “Deep down, I actually believed that after living
as fully as humanly possible, one should then die
violently.” (159)
• “I lived and thought like a predatory animal.”
(155)
• What does it mean to live and think like a man?
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Devils
• “The white man is the devil.”
• My mind “flashed across the entire spectrum
of white people I had ever known; and for
some reason it stopped upon Hymie, the Jew,
who had been so good to me….”
– Is Hymie white?
• I said, “Without any exception?”
• “Without any exception.”
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Devils
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Black Legion
Welfare officials
Judges
Teachers
Police
Johns
Customers
Sophia
Etc.
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• “Here is a black man caged behind bars,
probably for years, put there by the white
man. Usually the convict comes from among
those bottom-of-the-pile Negroes, the
Negroes who throughout their entire lives
have been kicked about, treated like
children—Negroes who have never met one
white man who didn’t either try to take
something from them or do something to
them.” (211)
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Discovery of Self
• “You don’t even know who you are,” Reginald
had said. “You don’t even know, the white devil
has hidden it from you, that you are from a race
of people of ancient civilizations, and riches in
gold and kings.” (186)
– History & education
• Slavery
• Opium war
– “History had been ‘whitened’” (187)
– “This ‘Negro’ had been taught to worship an alien God
having the same blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes as
the slavemaster.” (188)
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William F. Buckley
• “Why the South Must Prevail” (1957)
• In "the South, where the conflict is by no means dramatic, as in
Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences
between its culture and the Negroes', and intends to assert its own.
– National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the
majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority
may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for
any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized
standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.
• Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in
which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes
the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it
must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the
terrible price of violence.”
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George Wallace
• Wallace after losing 1958 Alabama gubernatorial race:
– "I was out-niggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I
will never be out-niggered again.”
• 1963 Inaugural address
– In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I
draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of
tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow .
. . segregation forever.”
• “We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his
separate racial station . . as we will work with him . . to develop, to
grow in individual freedom and enrichment....
– But we warn those, of any group, who would follow the false doctrine
of communistic amalgamation that we will not surrender our system
of government . . . our freedom of race and religion . . . that freedom
was won at a hard price and if it requires a hard price to retain it . . we
are able . . and quite willing to pay it.”
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This History of Yacub
• ‘Muslim’ used to refer both to members of the
Nation of Islam and followers of orthodox Islam
• “The humans resulting, he knew, would be, as
they became lighter, and weaker, progressively
also more susceptible to wickedness and evil.”
– Affirmation of blackness
– Devaluation of whiteness
– Plausibility a result of the system of white supremacy
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Conversion
• “If you will take one step toward Allah—Allah
will take two steps toward you.” (181)
• “I was going through the hardest thing, also
the greatest thing, for any human being to do;
to accept that which is already within you, and
around you.” (189)
• “The very enormity of my previous life’s guilt
prepared me to accept the truth.” (189)
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Ordering
• “I had never dreamed of anything like that
atmosphere among black people who had
learned to be proud they were black, who had
learned to love other black people instead of
being jealous and suspicious”
• Prayer, ablution, family order
• “Even the children spoke to other children” with
“mutual respect and dignity…. Beautiful!” (224)
– Order, cleanliness, & respect
– The problem is not with us...
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A New Self
• For me, my “X” replaced the white slavemaster
name of “Little” which some blue eyed devil
named Little had imposed upon my paternal
forebears.” (229)
– Break with the past
– Rejection of whiteness
• “Think of hearing wives, mothers, daughters
being raped! And you were too filled with fear of
the rapist to do anything about it?” (232)
– Fear, power, & violence
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“If Malcolm X were not a Negro”
• “If Malcolm X were not a Negro, his autobiography
would be little more than a journal of abnormal
psychology, the story of a burglar, dope pusher, addict,
and jailbird—with a family history of insanity—who
acquires messianic delusions and sets forth to preach
an upside-down religion of ‘brotherly’ hatred.”
Saturday Evening Post, Sept. 12, 1965
– “For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him, is
just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the
sheep, ‘Do you hate me?’ The white man is in no moral
position to accuse anyone else of hate!” (277)
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• “The Jew will never forget that lesson [of the
Holocaust]… they used violence to force the
British to help them take Palestine, “and then
the Jews set up Israel, their own country—the
one thing that every race of man in the world
respects, and understands.” (320)
– Why is this something universally understood?
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• “I think there are plenty of good people in
America, but there are also plenty of bad people
in America and the bad ones are the ones who
seem to have all the power and be in these
positions to block things that you and I need.
– Because this is the situation, you and I have to
preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an
end to that situation, and it doesn't mean that I
advocate violence, but at the same time I am not
against using violence in self-defense.
• I don't even call it violence when it's selfdefense, I call it intelligence.”
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