Autobiography of Malcolm X Lesson 2, Chapters 4-9, 140-244
Introduction: Cornel West Argues for the Urgency and Importance of Malcolm X in His Book Black Prophetic Fire Published in 2014
One. “The fundamental shift from a we-consciousness to an I-consciousness”
West argues that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were committed to serving an oppressed community and giving voice and justice to the vulnerable, the helpless, and the disgraced.
Sadly, West points out, we now live in a consumer society where the “I” has become more important than the “we.”
He writes that the “seductive myth of individualism in American culture” has taken black leadership, once committed to “empowering others,” to the trivial tasks of selfishness: the “pursuit of wealth, health, and status.”
American culture, West writes, is numb to ideas of justice and obsessed with money and self-aggrandizement.
West wrote his book “to reinvigorate the Black prophetic tradition and to keep alive the memory of Black prophetic figures and movements.” He devotes a chapter to Malcolm X.
Malcolm sacrificed personal comfort, riches, and popularity and suffered “painful loneliness,” persecution, and even his life to pursue justice for the voiceless and the disgraced.
Where Cornel West’s book really speaks to the heart of our research paper topic is in the Introduction in which he writes that the original intentions of the prophets, like Malcolm X, have been “shaped according to the cultural icon of the self-made man or the individual charismatic leader.” Emphasis of the self-made man, which many say Alex Haley, the co-writer of Malcolm’s Autobiography, dilutes the prophetic power of Malcolm X.
If Alex Haley, who shaped the Autobiography after Malcolm’s X death, emphasized the self-made man narrative, then one could argue that the book loses its original power for Alex Haley’s vision. However, I would state that both the real prophet for the voiceless and the self-made man narrative exist in the book and that it is the interpreter, rather than the book, that is responsible for what is emphasized.
Malcolm X’s greatness, West reminds us, was dependent on his connection to a movement, Black Nationalist and later human rights. He was not an individual movement, a cult of the self as so many now perceive him.
Cornel West warns us not to be lulled into the delusion of a post-race society in Barak Obama world. As he writes:
“If high status in American society and white points of reference are the measure of the Black freedom movement, then this moment in Black history is the ultimate success. But if the suffering of Black people—especially Black poor and working people—is the ultimate measure of the Black freedom movement, then this moment in Black history is catastrophic—sadly continuous with the past. With the Black working class devastated with stagnating wages and increasing prices, and the black poor ravaged by massive unemployment, decrepit schools, indecent housing, and hyperincarceration in the new Jim Crow, the age of Obama looks bleak through the lens of the Black prophetic tradition.”
West looks at President Obama through the critical lens of an America with a threatened and shrinking middle-class and an economy that gives more and more to the One Percent.
For Cornel West, Civil Rights and the fight to end racism is connected to economic injustice and West judges Obama in the context of the 2008 financial crisis, “primarily caused by the systemic greed of unregulated Wall Street oligarchs and their bailout by the Wall Street-dominated US government.” West then observes that no Wall Street criminals went to jail while hundreds of thousands of poor black people go to prison for lesser offenses. In 2009, over 840,000 black men were in prison.
In the Malcolm X chapter, West points out that Malcolm X is seen as a threat to white Americans. Specifically, he is seen “as a proponent of reversed racism, if not of hatred and violence.” Even the black community, West points out, is divided on their judgment of Malcolm X. In particular, middle-class blacks were “horrified” by Malcolm X’s “extreme” message.
Cornel West explains the controversy: A lot of Malcolm X’s “controversy is due to the continuous juxtaposition between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., a false opposition that is based on one-sided public images and that has led to a sanitized Martin and a demonized Malcolm, a gross mistake that overlooks what they share in common and how much they overlap.
West praises Malcolm X for thing primary things: His “profound commitment to affirm black humanity” when it was disgraced in a racist society and “his tremendous courage to accent the hypocrisy of American society . . .”
To emphasize Cornel West’s veneration of Malcolm X, we read that “Malcolm X is the greatest figure in the Black prophetic tradition.” West cites Malcolm as a great figure of the revolutionary parrhesia.
Parrhesia is a term from Plato’s Apology, “where Socrates says, the cause of my unpopularity was my parrhesia, my fearless speech, my frank speech, my plain speech, my unintimidated speech. Malcolm is unique among the figures in the prophetic tradition to the degree to which he was willing to engage in unintimidated speech in public about white supremacy.”
I personally love comedians and Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and John Oliver, to name a few examples, because they are so direct and frank of their criticism against stupidity, greed, injustice, and hypocrisy.
Ironically, in many ways these white comedians, who use fearless language to fight for the underdog, have a lot in common with Malcolm X. If I were a 1A student, that would be my thesis. A larger point is that at the time, Malcolm X’s blunt speech was considered threatening, but now mainstream comedians share is fearless speech, his parrhesia, and in this sense Malcolm X was forty years ahead of his time.
Malcolm X articulated that “being black is a crime,” West writes, and he intended to wipe that stigma and self-hatred from being black and teach the black community to take pride in who they are.
We further read that Malcolm X was able to explain the evil narrative white America told black people:
“White supremacy had told Black people that Black history is a curse, Black hope is a joke, and Black freedom is a pipe-dream, and you are locked in; you are trapped in a white-supremacist maze or labyrinth, and there is no way out.”
Malcolm X says it’s time to change the narrative, to first tell the truth of the white lie that it is a curse to be black and to do so fearlessly.
Cornel West says that Malcolm’s rage at the memory of rape, lynchings, enslavement, brutality, and disgrace is not a victimization mentality in Malcolm X. It’s a justice mentality. All oppressed people, West writes, should remember injustice done to them, not to be victims, but to free themselves from self-hatred and to fight for justice.
More than any black figure, Malcolm wanted to purge self-hatred from black consciousness. He did more to restore dignity to the black soul than any figure.
More than Martin Luther King, Malcolm X resented white people for their oppression of black Americans and he called whites “devils,” resulting in making him an inflammatory figure.
Another cause of Malcolm X’s controversy was that he was outspoken about America’s false gods. As Cornel West observes, Malcolm shot down American idolatry. Malcolm defined the idolatry, the love of money or human beings, and rebuked it and this made him an enemy to many.
Study Questions
One. Malcolm spends much of his autobiography on “the outside” as a misfit. What are the disadvantages to being a misfit and what are the advantages?
Malcolm has a chip on his shoulder and he hasn’t figured it out yet (not until he’s in prison and has an epiphany). He is also from the country, so he isn’t cool like city people.
Malcolm doesn’t fit with his “brainwashed” brothers who believe if they play by the rules and appease whites, they’ll get a crumb of cheese; he doesn’t quite fit with the hipsters because he’s in the middle zone between The Hill and cool cats (the latter group make him feel awkward and out of place); he doesn’t quite fit on The Hill, which is too uppity; he doesn’t fit with the white people who casually disdain him and casually use the “N word” in his presence as if he’s not there.
He finds himself hustling and the more he becomes visible on the police’s radar screen the more he has to go underground and re-energize his hustle until it gets more and more dangerous.
Are there any advantages? An outsider has a sharper point of view on what’s happening to others because he has the advantage of distance and he can learn from his alienation.
When we’re alienated, we’re uncomfortable and we never get complacent with the group. Apart from the others, we tend to think more about why things are the way they are.
We could call this a contribution to our metacognition or Third Eye.
Two. On page 201 we read about wealthy white patrons of black clubs who get drunk and come up to black people and slobber, “You’re just as good as I am—I want you to know that?”
What is Malcolm’s attitude toward these kinds of statements?
He sees these as pathetic and ineffectual statements of guilt for the destruction resulting from the religion of white supremacy. These expressions of guilt do not impress him because he believes that, even though these white people speak truth in the drunken moment, in a crisis these white people will revert back to their tribalistic ways. In other words, they will act in their self-interest and reflexively depend on their white power and privilege.
Additionally, Malcolm sees there is a spiritual bankruptcy in the world of white supremacy and these whites are desperate to parasite off (siphon) the soul and flavor of the black world and of black art and culture while at the same time maintain their white privilege. Over and over Malcolm saw white people trying to befriend blacks as tokens or symbols of soul and enchantment but Malcolm saw this for the canard that it was: Condescension and the using of other people.
We read on page 209 that Malcolm came into contact with a throng of rich white men who visited Harlem as their “sin-den” to seek out strange curiosities and debase themselves in all kinds of debauchery and perversions. They took off their “respectable masks” and became beasts, feeling free to do so in Harlem.
Malcolm says there was no respect for the mixed relationships; it was all about making the fetish of the other. Part of this fetish was status and another was the myth of the exotic from being with “The Other,” Los Otros.
Three. What hypocrisy did Malcolm see in the false religion of white superiority?
On page 212, we read about the white man criticizing the black man for his low morality when Malcolm, working as an intermediary for debauchery, saw white men seeking out all sorts of depravity, perversion, and debauchery.
This double standard has placed black Americans at a disadvantage at the beginning and forces blacks to work twice as hard to get one-fourth the credit.
Four. For Malcolm, the “hype,” to dupe someone, is part of America’s moral bankruptcy and it affects people of all colors (219). Explain.
We all hustle others, and ourselves, in one way or another, a theme masterfully developed in the film American Hustle.
America loves its myth of innocence and freedom when in fact it grew on the backs of slavery and exploitation. America believes in exceptionalism, that it is morally superior to all other countries. Malcolm X pointed out this farce.
Five. On page 225, Malcolm uses the word “atheist” to describe himself as a nihilist. Explain.
His cynicism at looking at a world based on hustle makes him reject all morality. Therefore, “anything goes” is his mentality.
Nihilism is in fact the restless abandonment of morality or an ethical code.
The nihilist is “too cool” for morals.
Humanity becomes reduced to a “predatory animal” (225).
The existential vacuum or emptiness of existence is so unbearable that drug-induced intoxication becomes the norm (225).
The nihilist sees himself in control of the world but as an addict he is a slave to his addiction.
Nihilism, however, is a hustle of its own because no one is a real nihilist since people claiming to be nihilists will become offended and feel violated when others treat them in a nihilistic fashion.
Six. What huge mistake does Malcolm make with Sophia?
On page 240, we see the beginning of the end for Malcolm. With all those drugs, he is “slipping,” losing his edge, his caution.
Then the stolen watch is in repair and the watch has been reported. “All the jewelers in Boston had been alerted.”
Being arrested most likely saved Malcolm’s life since Sophia’s husband was poised to hunt down Malcolm (241). In fact, Malcolm believes he escaped death twice that day.
Seven. What was the biggest scandal of Malcolm’s crime?
That “nice white girls” got mixed up with him and that there was a sex scandal involved. The actual crimes were of little interest (242). This feeds into the fear of those who embrace the white supremacist religion. This mixing with the white women would tack on many years to Malcolm’s prison sentence (243).
Eight. What doctrines and life lessons influenced Malcolm during his life up until the time he was sent to prison?
His father was a black separatist who taught, under the doctrine of Marcus Garvey, that America, founded on white supremacy, could never be a true home to black Americans. Only by returning to Africa, could black Americans enjoy dignity and be cleansed of the self-hatred that was stuffed down their throats every day while living in America.
White supremacy had created a Color Privilege Scale so that blacks treated light skinned blacks with more favor than darker skinned ones evidencing the insidious unconscious power of WS.
Malcolm’s aspiration to be an attorney was shot down by his white English teacher, who was another reminder that white America wanted “black people to know their place,” a lesson he learned with greater acuity when he was arrested and found to be mingling with high society white women.
Contrary to its rhetoric of being a Christian nation superior to all the other nations of the world (creating the term “American exceptionalism”), America is a façade of morality. Behind that façade is a cesspool of greedy perverts and hustlers, so we have a choice: Hustle or be hustled because there is no morality; there is only nihilism. The world is a brutal jungle and we need to be smarter than everyone else so we can be at the top of the food chain.
This doctrine proved to be so unbearable to Malcolm that he intoxicated himself on drugs and a life of debauchery until his reckless living resulted in his arrest.
Review of White Supremacy
White Supremacy was not an “unfortunate glitch” in American History, which is largely about the flourishing of freedom and democracy. To the contrary, White Supremacy, a false religion, was the foundation of the white American psyche used to fuel slavery and help white people feel good about themselves for enslaving, torturing, and terrorizing black people for whites’ own pleasures, profits, and whims, and caprices.
White Supremacy is a religion, an evil Kool-Aid, that doesn’t die easily. This religion states that whites are God’s chosen people, the superior race, who have the entitlement to exploit all other races for their profit and pleasure.
You will see these attitudes deeply engrained in white people today, including white people who don’t use racist language or even understand what “white supremacy” is because this religion has been brought down from generation to generation and often people aren’t even aware of their belief systems.
Malcolm X didn’t see America as a free country with this “tiny glitch” called White Supremacy; rather Malcolm saw White Supremacy as the world that ran the whole country from the economy, to culture, relationships, etc., and as such America was a hostile place for black Americans.
Today, racist images of black Americans are typically seen in the media, which portrays them as drug users and “thugs,” too lazy to work, even though there are no jobs in the inner cities. Nor are there any viable education institutions.
White Supremacy was the Mother of Slavery, Jim Crow (reverting blacks to brutal policies of segregation and built-in poverty), and Jim Crow 2.0, the prison system, which imprisons blacks disproportionately to whites and which incarcerates entire generations of black men so that most black children don’t have parents.
These injustices are chronicled in Michele Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which shows that blacks are being enslaved into the prison system, which makes billions of dollars and which employs over 2.5 million people.
Based on the insidious power that Malcolm X saw in White Supremacy, he would not be surprised by Michelle Alexander’s findings.
WS was based on mutual ignorance. WP had to make BP ignorant by either depriving them of reading or giving them ineffective, underfunded “schools.” WP also had to make them ignorant of BP’s humanity by turning BP into racist stereotypes. Doing so bolstered their WS beliefs and assuaged (soothed) their conscience for subjugating BP to slavery and Jim Crow laws.
WS created an American façade built on the rhetoric of freedom and democracy.
WS violence was unfettered so that many whites committed acts of violence against BP with impunity. Zero arrests were made between Civil War and World War II during which time there were over 5,000 lynchings (murders).
Essay Assignment
McMahon said in class that “Malcolm X was an autodidactic genius who showed us that literacy could be used as a vital tool for two essential undertakings: The first was to strip away the façade of a false America, replace the mythic America with a sobering reality, that of a country that relied on white supremacy as the foundation of its economy and identity and that this false religion, white supremacy, continues to metastasize across the country, in different forms, today; the second was to use literacy to reinvent the self, one from ignorance, degradation, learned helplessness, victimization, and moral dissolution into a person of knowledge, dignity, critical thinking, purpose, and effective action.”
But some people disagree with McMahon’s “exalted view” of Malcolm X and argue that Malcolm X was a hustler and a demagogue who reinvented himself through fabrication, contrivance, exaggeration, and myth-making to reinvent his view of America, and himself, and that this view of America is unjustly skewed, pessimistic, and hellish in its rendering.
Which camp do you belong to, McMahon’s or McMahon’s critics? Defend your position in a thesis that generates a six-page research paper of about 1,500 words. Remember you don’t have to agree with McMahon to write a successful paper. However, you do need to devote a section of your essay to refuting your opponents if your essay is to be A-grade.
Your guidelines are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
Simplify the assignment by making the assignment a question:
Is Malcolm X a valuable prophet who inspires us to see the truth of America, racism, and universal dignity or is Malcolm X, as rendered in his Autobiography, a myth that exaggerates the Malcolm persona, racism, and “evil America”?
Perhaps the most popular book that Malcolm admirers don’t like is Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, which states that Malcolm X exaggerated his criminal past to conform to the heroic self-made man narrative and that this narrative was encouraged by the Autobiography’s co-writer Alex Haley.
However, leading black intellectuals have praised the book, including Henry Louis Gates, Cornel West, and Michael Eric Dyson.
But a group of black scholars have rejected Marable’s book as a fraud written in complicity with “en elite publishing” house. They claim Marable’s book taints Malcolm X in both spirit and fact. These views are contained in Jared A. Bell and Todd Steven Burroughs’collection of essays, A Life of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X.
My take is that the writers who contributed to A Lie of Reinvention are upset because Marable's book is not a hagiography, a gushing fanboy book that idealizes Malcolm X in the manner these writers want Malcolm to be idealized.
Malcolm doesn't have to be idealized to be seen as the important prophet that he was.
Furthermore, Marable doesn't denigrate Malcolm X the way the writers claim Marable treats Malcolm in his biography.
Generating Ideas for Your Essay
One. What are the confines or limitations of the essay topic?
You’re being asked to argue if Malcolm X was an authentic prophet who offered powerful, insightful insight into America’s myth of innocence and the effects of racism on the psyches of the exploited. Additionally, he is one of the most salient voices in American letters who championed the transforming power of literacy, which he acquired while he was in prison.
On the other hand, there are those who argue Malcolm was less than authentic, that in fact he was a hustler of sorts who re-invented himself as a form of self-promotion and myth making.
I reject the latter argument because I don’t see Malcolm benefiting from the role he assumed, both as a black leader and as a critic of American culture and politics. To the contrary, Malcolm was persecuted and eventually assassinated for holding to the integrity of his beliefs.
Additionally, I don’t hold any prophet to a standard of perfection. Malcolm X was a deeply human and flawed person who evolved his views over time.
I reject the either/or fallacy that says one is either a full-fledged prophet or a contrived persona or impostor. A prophet can be both great and imperfect.
Two. What sources of information are you responsible for using in your essay?
In your case, the sources are described in your writing prompt:
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
Three. What is the purpose of your essay and who is your audience?
Are you writing to inform your readers? To persuade them? To entertain them? To change their behavior? Some combination of these?
Clearly, you are asked in the writing prompt to write an argumentative essay that addressed your supports for about three-quarters of your essay. For the last quarter of your essay you should address your opponents’ counterarguments with rebuttals.
Your audience is the general reader, not a scholar. You’re language should be appropriate for an educated adult and you should make the subject compelling for the person who does not specialize in the subject your are writing about.
Four. What is the required length of your essay and what is required document design?
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
The design is MLA with 12 font in Times New Roman.
What deadlines do you have regarding any drafts or partial completion of the manuscript?
By the end of Week 15, you should have your first draft to show your instructor. We’ll have an activity for everyone to do in class while they are waiting to speak to me.
Find ways to keep your brain active on the assignment even when you’re not writing your essay:
Talking and listening (and examining opponents’ views in particular)
Annotating texts and taking notes
Listing
Clustering
Freewriting
Asking the 6 journalist questions
1. Who is X? (Who is doing X?)
2. What is X? (What is the issue with X?) (What is the value of X?) (What parts make up X?)
3. When is X? (When was X?) (When will X be?) (When does X end?)
4. Where is X? (Where is X taking place?) (Where does X come from?)
5. How is X? (How is X done?) (How is X measured?) (How does X work?)(How did X happen?)
6. Why is X? (Why does X occur?) (Why did X happen?) (Why will X happen again?) (Why didn’t something else happen instead of X?) (Why was this method or procedure followed to produce X?)
Questions applied to Autobiography of Malcolm X
- Who objects to Malcolm X?
- What are the objections?
- When were these criticisms made and how have they changed, if any, over the course of history?
- Where are these objections to Malcolm X most prominent?
- Why do Malcolm X’s critics find him so threatening?
- How do Malcolm X’s critics make their case against him?
Keeping a journal
Students too often disdain these brain activity and prewriting exercises because they believe, erroneously, that these types of writing are “wimpy,” “lame,” and “touchy-feely.”
They couldn’t be more wrong. All professional writers engage in prewriting. People who work in the entertainment industry, advertising, and academia use prewriting. Novelists and short story writers use prewriting.
Experiment with several tentative thesis statements until you find one that you are confident about intellectually and passionate about.
While critics of Malcolm X make accurate assessments of Malcolm X’s and Alex Haley’s myth-making to express their views and biases in their interpretation of Malcolm X’s life, their criticisms do not diminish Malcolm X’s place as the greatest of all black American prophets evidenced by ______________, ______________, _______________, and ___________________.
While many of Malcolm X’s criticisms of American hypocrisy and racism are on target, the portrayal of him in the Autobiography does not capture his real life but fabricates his myth evidenced by __________________, _________________, _______________, and _______________________.
Work on introduction. I recommend you choose one of the following:
One. Since we read Jeff Henderson’s Cooked, you could summarize Jeff Henderson’s hitting rock bottom in prison and how this fall led to his epiphany and transformation and then transition to Malcolm X.
Two. Begin with Malcolm X quote and expound on it as a way to get the reader’s attention. Here's a link of Malcolm X quotes. And another. And another.
Three. Begin with a concise summary of Malcolm X’s life and death and explain how he remains controversial today.
Four. Show both sides of the Malcolm X controversy described in the essay assignment. Explain why one camp venerates Malcolm X as a vital voice for human rights. Then explain why another camp refutes Malcolm X as a fraud and a hate-monger whose fabricated Autobiography mostly negates his alleged humanitarian role.
Example of an Introduction That Begins with a Quote:
Controversial civil rights and black activist Malcolm X once said, "Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks." These words can be interpreted as either common sense advice for a people that have been under violent siege and oppression for three centuries or as the violent-provoking demagoguery of an angry young man. In fact, a close look at these remarks show that the truth is a bit of both. Malcolm X in fact did provide a more “by any means necessary” approach to civil rights for black people, but during his final years on Earth he became a wiser humanitarian who saw evil not as whiteness but as white supremacy. Therefore, we cannot take the above quotes out of context and label Malcolm as a violent demagogue but as a vital human rights leader evidenced by his ____________, ________________, ______________, and ___________________.
"The Gulf That Divides Us"--Racism Today
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