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.
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