Malcolm X 1st Draft Intro

Cale Houghton 10/20

“The Autobiography of Malcolm X: An Analysis of Themes and Troubles”

When Malcolm is young, he comes across, “the first major turning point of his life,” (p.37). This huge realization is that white people have set up a society where it is impossible for blacks to succeed. This is, according to him, the biggest thing that has happened to him in his life. It seems like he would be permanently changed by it.

What disturbed this is that once Malcolm gets to Boston, he doesn’t think about his realization at all. He starts doing exactly the opposite, and making it seem like he is ashamed of being black. He conks his hair, which he later admits, “was my first really big step towards self-degradation,” (p.56). Also, he leaves behind his black girlfriend Laura for a white girl named Sophia because it helped him, “mature into some social status in Black downtown Roxbury,” (p.71). Also, as Kristian put it, he wasn’t even her “main dude”, he was her “side dude”. So in a way he is saying that because she is white, he is lucky to have her, even if she doesn’t treat him right. So, if Malcolm realized that white people were oppressive towards blacks, but then he acts like whites are superior, why would he change his opinion like that?

The answer that I came up with to that is that Malcolm is very easily influenced by the things that happen around him, and the things that affect him. And because his life is so fast paced, he has a lot of changes that come over him very fast. When he realizes black people are dealt from the bottom of the deck, he has been witnessing events that lead up to this realization his whole life. His family was always on the move, and always in poverty, because of white Klansmen. His dad was brutally killed by white supremacists. Through his eyes, “welfare, the courts, and their doctor, gave us the one-two-three punch,” (p.22). So he is very ready to accept that white people set up a society that blacks can’t succeed in. But once he gets to Boston, he starts getting pressured into thinking against that way. Everybody around him has conked hair, so why shouldn’t he? And since having a white girlfriend impresses his friends why would he not want her, even if he was a “side dude”.

Pod Reflections

Aryana:

Claim: Malcolm is easily influenced by his surroundings and the people around him.

Question: Why is it that Malcolm is always changing his mind about his point of view on white people?

Trouble: When Malcolm’s lives in Lansing, he realizes that racism is all around him. Then when he arrives at Boston, he disregards this and starts conking his hair and wearing zoot suits. But when he goes to jail again, he starts hating white people and the Christian religion, and saying that whites are devils.

Status Quo: Most people don't have such fluctuations, and if they are willing to fight for a cause, they won’t abandon it.

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Reworded Question: If most people who are willing to fight for a cause stick with it for their life, but Malcolm frequently changes his outlook on white people, why is it that Malcolm has so many fluctuations?

Reworded claim: Malcolm’s opinion is very easily influenced by his surroundings, so because he is always travelling and moving to new places, his outlook on white people changes.

Evaluation of Trouble: Her trouble is interesting, and it would definitely take more than a few words to answer, but it is possible to answer.

Cale:

Claim: Malcolm’s attitude is shaped based upon what happens around him.

Question: Why does Malcolm make the change from being uncomfortable around white people to trying to make himself seem more white?

Trouble: When Malcolm lives in Michigan he comes across the realization that black people are always at a disadvantage. But then once he moves to Boston he conks his hair and starts dating Sophia, which he admits later are both ways of admitting that it is better to be white.

Status Quo: If you come across a giant realization in your life, you wouldn’t just disregard it in a few months.

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Reworded Question: If most people wouldn’t disregard a huge breakthrough in their life, but Malcolm has this huge realization about white people and then stops caring about it, why would Malcolm no longer pay attention to his problems with whites in Boston?

Reworded Claim: Malcolms attitude is based on what happens around him, and because so much is always happening around him, his opinions are always changing.

Evaluation of Trouble: I think that my trouble is interesting, though I couldn’t say for sure if it would interest other people. The question will require more than two words to answer, in my opinion it sharpens understanding of the text, and can be thought of in a deeper way. It might not seem that way to someone else though, so I can’t be sure.

Malcolm X Exploratory Draft

One of the things I am interested in writing about is the theme of change throughout Malcolm X, or as he describes it, the “chronology of changes” that is his life. The thing that troubled me that related to this theme was something I noticed when I was talking in the fishbowl discussion: When Malcolm lives in Lansing, he comes across a realization of how black people are constantly being mistreated. When his white teacher says that he can’t be a lawyer because he’s black, he describes it as the “first major turning point in my life”, (p.37). Also he says, “Where ‘Nigger’ had slipped off my back before, wherever I heard it now, I stopped and looked at whoever had said it. And they looked surprised that I did,” (p.37). So he starts to stand up for himself, and realizes the unjust world he lives in. But what troubles me is that once he goes to Boston and Harlem, he doesn’t think about the unjusts upon the black race at all it seems. The vendettas that he has against the white race are almost completely forgotten: For example, his girlfriend Sophia is white, when just a little while before he was saying that he was feeling, “a restlessness with being around white people,” (P.35). That is a stark contrast to me. Also, Malcolm conks his hair. This might not seem that extreme, but he later admits that “I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that black people are inferior,” (p.56). So he is admitting that his conking of his hair is a form of  degrading himself, and making himself seem more white. And if you just think that a little while before that he was saying how he was uncomfortable with white people it seems ridiculous.

So, this brings me to the question, why does Malcolm make the change from being uncomfortable around white people to making himself seem more white? One answer that I just thought of is that maybe it’s because that was what was socially acceptable at the time. Everybody around him was conking their hair so they could look more white, so he felt that he had to as well. And dating a white woman is a status symbol, so that is why he dates Sophia. He says that, “It was when I began to be seen around town with Sophia that I really began to mature into some social status in Black downtown Roxbury,” (p.71). So a lot of these things that he is doing that contradict with what he said before are just because he felt pressured to do them to fit in.

Another theory that I came up with beforehand is that Malcolm’s attitude is shaped by what happens around him. This would explain his change from Lansing to Boston because in Lansing his father was killed by whites, and his mother was partly driven insane but white welfare workers. So it seems like that would make him hate white people, or at least feel uncomfortable around them. But when he moves to Boston he forgets about that dislike. In my opinion, that is because Roxbury is an all black neighborhood. So if Malcolm isn't around many white people, and he shapes his views based on what is happening to him in the moment, then he would have a very neutral view of whites, because he didn’t really interact with them.

But then when he goes to jail, he begins to hate whites again, and think about the experiences he just had with them: Because he was a black man going out with a white woman, he gets a much larger sentence than most burglars get (“we weren’t going to get average-not for our crime,” (p.153)). Meanwhile, Sophia and her white friend get a much better sentence. So I imagine that at the time Malcolm felt like white people had put him in jail, and that he had been screwed over by his white girlfriend. When Malcolm gets converted to the Nation of Islam he says, “The reason is that among all Negro’s the black convict is the most perfectly preconditioned to hear the words, ‘The white man is the devil’,” (p.186).

Also, when Malcolm changes his mind about white people being the devil in Mecca, I think that it was partly based on just a couple experiences. As soon as he meets a white person who does something nice for him, he immediately changes his mind about all of them.

All this makes me think that if you make up all your opinions based on personal experience, that you end up generalizing a lot of people. So maybe this was one of Malcolm's faults in his life.

Cale's Proposal

I am interested in writing about the theme of change throughout Malcolm X's autobiography. I was troubled by the fact that Malcolm realized when he was in Lansing that black people were always dealt from the bottom the deck, but when he came to Boston he forgot about that, and even got his hair conked, which he admitted later was attempt to be more like a white person. This is important in the book, because this was one of the major setbacks in Malcolm's life to him. He had realized what a world he had lived in when he was younger, and was ready to stand up to it (he started staring at people who called him "Nigger", but then he forgot all about it. One way to consider this is that when Malcolm moved into a predominantly black community, he no longer had the experience of having to live with white people, so he forgot about his vendettas against whites.

Intro to Mecca

For over a decade of his life, Malcolm has been fighting for the Nation of Islam, debating with people who support integration, and defending Elijah Muhammad in any possible way. He strongly believes that whites are all devils, and that the original people were black. He thinks that the only way to get blacks out of the ghettos of America and into the rightful place they have as the superior race is to separate from the whites.
When he goes on his Hajj, or a religious trip to the sacred city of Mecca though, everything about these views change. This suprised me because it seems very strange to spend a good portion of your life fighting for a cause, and then, in a span of a couple days, change your mind and decide that all of your findings are wrong. So I asked myself the obvious question: How is it that you go from feeling willing to give your life for a cause one day, and then soon after decide you disagree with it? Also, what could bring about that change? The answer I came up with when thinking about this problem is that Malcolm bases so many things in his life off of personal experience. When his father is killed by members of a white supremacy group, when his mother goes insane because of white state workers, and when his teacher tells him he can't be a lawyer because he is black, Malcolm realizes that black people are always at a disadvantage to whites (which is perfectly reasonable given all of those things that have happened to him). But then as soon as he moves into the all black societies of Boston and Harlem, he totally forgot about his bias against whites. And then when he gets put in jail by white people, and because he was dating a white woman, he starts over again in his hate of whites, which he continues for many years, because most whites in America hate him. But when he meets a couple of generous white-complexioned people on his Hajj, he decides that white people aren't devils after all. The "chronology of changes" that he describes his life as, is really because he changes his opinions at a personal whim.