Race, Identity, & Social Order
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
“I was seeking for the truth.”
“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)
– “He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a
convenient symbol of ‘hatred’—and that will help him escape facing
the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to
show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed
against my race.” (439)
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Violence
• “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 selfdefense.
• I don't even call it violence when it's self- defense, I call
it intelligence.”
• Symmetry and asymmetry of violence
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• “The only thing that anybody… could ever find
me guilty of, was being open-minded. I said I
was seeking for the truth…” (428)
– Deep commitment to truth
• Truth vs. Fact
– His faith in the Hon. Elijah Muhammed was the
core of his being
• “It felt as though something in nature had failed, like
the sun, or the stars.” (351)
• Who is he now?
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The last conversion
• Takes the Hajj
– On the Hajj, “You could be a king or a peasant and no
one would know.”
– “Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere
accented the Oneness of Man under one God” (380)
– Kindness & brotherhood with all Muslims, even those
who would be white
– “The holy city of Mecca had been the first time that I
had ever stood before the Creator of All and felt like a
complete human being.” (420)
• Double consciousness
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• White & black people not the problem, whiteness
and blackness are the problem
– “That morning was when I first began to reappraise
the ‘white man.’ It was when I first began to perceive
that ‘white man,’ as commonly used, means
complexion only secondarily; primarily it described
attitudes and actions. In America, ‘white man’ meant
specific attitudes and actions toward the black man,
and toward all other non-white men.” (383)
• Whiteness is essentially defined in US by rejection of &
dominance over non-whites
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Blackness & Whiteness
• While approach to race changes, militancy does not
– Racial cooperation
• “I don’t mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?” (418)
– Black militancy
– Not black nationalism, but black inter-nationalism
• “To come right down to it, if I take the kind of things in
which I believe, then add to that the kind of temperament
that I have, plus the one hundred percent dedication I have
to whatever I believe in—these are the ingredients which
make it just about impossible for me to die of old age.”
(435)
• “If I can’t be safe among my own kind, where can I be?”
(497)
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Blackness & Whiteness
• “It isn’t the American white man who is a
racist, but it’s the American political,
economic, and social atmosphere that
automatically nourishes a racist psychology in
the white man.”
– “The white man is not inherently evil, but
America’s racist society influences him to act
evilly. The society has produced and nourishes a
psychology which brings out the lowest, most
base part of human beings.” (427)
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Ossie Davis’ Eulogy
• “Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy,
controversial and bold young captain—and we will smile.
Many will say turn away—away from this man; for he is not
a man but a demon, a monster, a subverter and an enemy
of the black man—and we will smile. They will say that he is
of hate—a fanatic, a racist—who can only bring evil to the
cause for which you struggle! And we will answer and say
to them:
– Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him
or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did
he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with
violence or any public disturbance? For if you did, you would
know him. And if you knew him, you would know why we must
honor him: Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black
manhood!”
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Ossie Davis’ Eulogy
• “However we may have differed with him—or with
each other about him and his value as a man—let his
going from us serve only to bring us together, now.
– Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common
mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place
in the ground is no more now a man—but a seed—which,
after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to
meet us.
• And we will know him then for what he was and is—a
prince—our own black shining prince!—who didn’t
hesitate to die, because he loved us so.”
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• Why did you eulogize Malcolm X?
– “You may anticipate my defense somewhat by considering the
following fact: no Negro has yet asked me that question. (My
pastor in Grace Baptist Church where I teach Sunday school
preached a sermon about Malcolm in which he called him a
"giant in a sick world.") Every one of the many letters I got from
my own people lauded Malcolm as a man, and commended me
for having spoken at his funeral.
• At the same time-and this is important most of them took
special pains to disagree with much or all of what Malcolm
said and what he stood for. That is, with one singing
exception, they all, every last, black, glory-hugging one of
them, knew that Malcolm—whatever else he was or was
not—Malcolm was a man!”
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Ossie Davis
• “White folks do not need anybody to remind them that
they are men. We do! This was his one incontrovertible
benefit to his people.
– Protocol and common sense require that Negroes stand
back and let the white man speak up for us, defend us, and
lead us from behind the scene in our fight. This is the
essence of Negro politics.
• But Malcolm said to hell with that! Get up off your
knees and fight your own battles. That’s the way to
win back your self-respect. That’s the way to make the
white man respect you. And if he won’t let you live like
a man, he certainly can’t keep you from dying like
one!”
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Ossie Davis
• You can imagine what a howling, shocking nuisance
this man was to both Negroes and whites. Once
Malcolm fastened on you, you could not escape.
– He was one of the most fascinating and charming men I
have ever met, and never hesitated to take his
attractiveness and beat you to death with it. Yet his
irritation, though painful to us, was most salutary. He
would make you angry as hell, but he would also make you
proud.
• It was impossible to remain defensive and apologetic
about being a negro in his presence. He wouldn’t let
you. And you always left his presence with the sneaky
suspicion that maybe, after all, you were a man!”
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• “I knew the man personally, and however much I disagreed
with him, I never doubted that Malcolm X even when he
was wrong, was always that rarest thing in the world
among us Negroes: a true man.
– And if, to protect my relations with the many good white folks
who make it possible for me to earn a fairly good living in the
entertainment industry, I was too chicken, too cautious, to
admit that fact when he was alive, I thought at least that now,
when all the white folks are safe from him at last,
• I could be honest with myself enough to lift my hat for one
final salute to that brave, black, ironic gallantry, which was
his style and hallmark; that shocking zing of fire-and-bedamned-to-you, so absolutely absent in every other Negro
man I know, which brought him, too soon, to his death.”
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