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.