Research Paper 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, a self mired in 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 of racism, 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.
English 1A Final Research Paper Schedule for The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Fall of 2014
Our Objective
By November 27th, you want 4 pages of your 5-7-page essay completed. The further you are along in your draft, the greater probability you will have success at making your research paper meet all the benchmarks for English 1A. Our goal is for you to be as successful as possible at meeting the Student Learning Outcomes for your Final Paper.
November 17
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.
November 19
Work on preliminary or tentative thesis. I recommend you use a thesis with a concession clause as we’ve seen in earlier templates such as these two:
While Writer X makes a strong case that __________________, the preponderance of evidence points to _________________, _________________, ________________, and _____________________.
Although Writer X makes some good points regarding _________________, those points fail to address __________________, ___________________, ___________________, and _______________________.
November 24
Write your conclusion.
Restate your thesis with different wording and show the general, far-reaching importance of your claim. You may also return to an image, quote, or anecdote to raised in your introduction to give your essay the “full circle” effect.
November 26
Write two paragraphs of counterarguments to your thesis followed by your rebuttals to those counterarguments. These paragraphs will be used before your essay’s conclusion.
December 3
Bring me the first three pages of your essay and include your counterarguments. You should have close to four pages of your essay typed on this day. I will go over your drafts in class and identify content and organization areas that can be improved. I will also look for patterns of diction and grammar errors. You must all be in class this day as we do our draft consult. I urge you to come to my office hours before class if you want to spend more time with me going over your draft.
What Does It Mean to Say Malcolm X's Autobiography Relies on Myth?
I refer you to Linda Seger's "Creating the Myth," from her book Making a Good Script Great (1987).
Linda Seger, "Creating the Myth"
One. What is a myth?
It’s a universal story that connects with all of us; it tells us something about ourselves, either our past struggles or our future aspirations; it is based on all cultures, folk myths, religions, and legends.
Rites of passage or initiation rites are common myths. How did we transition from child to adult? How did we gain acceptance from the tribe, the clique, the community?
Seger writes that “The hero myth has specific story beats that occur in all hero stories.
Two. What is the hero myth?
We must begin with our hero mired in a world of banality; our hero is overcome with ennui on one hand and wanderlust on the other. “If only I could get out of his boring, monotonous hellhole.”
Then there’s a trigger event, a visitor, a crisis, some kind of catalyst that sets things in motion.
Sometimes the hero’s talents are called upon but he says, “Screw this, I’m going to stay in my apartment, drink beer, eat apple pie, and watch cartoons.” He is the archetype of the reluctant hero. In this case, the crisis escalates until the hero is forced to take on effective and urgent action.
When the hero embarks upon his quest, be it self-discovery, the conquering of evil, or whatever the case may be, he or she is often accompanied by a companion, a helper, which can take the form of a wise man, a witch, an elf, a homunculus, a mysterious visage, a ghost, a shadow figure, an officemate, a long-lost friend, a former enemy, etc. This person becomes a sort of mentor, helping deliver the hero from his tangle of confusion and unreason.
Then the hero must transport into a special world where he undergoes a radical transformation from ordinary to unordinary. He may become Other Worldly, Super Human, or remarkable in some other way.
However, the hero cannot undergo this transformation without being subjected to a series of greater and greater hurdles and obstacles that test his character.
Along the hero’s journey, he must hit rock bottom, languishing in despair, self-doubt, and perhaps outright nihilism, concluding that he is a loser and that the world is too evil a place to attempt to impose any meaning or goodness on it.
During this “black moment,” however, the hero finds a spark that “gets him off his butt.” He somehow finds his special power, perhaps with the help of his mentor, that resurrects him from his spiritual death and with his rebirth and can now “seize the treasure,” whatever that treasure may be. (Before we go on, let us recognize that this hero motif informs every folk legend, myth, and religious fable known to the human race because the hero motif is universal.)
Once the hero acquires the treasure, whatever that might be, he must now return home, but not without a chase from his opposition. In movies, this is often the third-act chase scene.
At the conclusion of the hero story, we must see that our hero is a changed person, wiser, smarter, and stronger than before. Along with this transformation, we find our hero is now re-integrated into society.
Three. What is the healing myth?
We begin with our hero crushed by a broken spirit. He is a broken person. He may want to die or at least he has lost the will to live and the will to assert whatever talents cause him to flourish in this world.
Then the hero suffers some kind of outer or existential wound that incapacitates him and forces him to confront his brokenness in a radically different way. I once spoke to a student from the Caribbean who said they have a folk story that says this: We are going along in our life on auto pilot, not really examining what we are doing, but eventually we get a surprise visit from the bald muscle giant who ambushes us and forces us into a wrestling match. We come away from the wrestling match with some kind of limp or injury, but in nursing our injury we rebuild our life in a way that makes it superior to the life we had before we had our encounter with the giant. Only when we try to heal from our wound, which has become so life defining that we can no longer ignore it, do we begin the process of transformation and healing.
Two Book Reviews
What camp you belong to depends on what you want to emphasize more, Malcolm’s myth-making or Malcolm’s positive impact on society.
The book of record that argues that Malcolm X's biography is fabricated to conform to a vision of American myth of the hard-working individual who transforms his life through self-help and education is Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable.
One of the best reviews is by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times: "Peeling Away Multiple Masks."
He was a master of reinvention who had as many names as he did identities: Malcolm Little, Homeboy, Jack Carlton, Detroit Red, Big Red, Satan, Malachi Shabazz, Malik Shabazz, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and, most famously, Malcolm X. A country bumpkin who became a zoot-suited entertainer who became a petty criminal who became a self-taught intellectual who became a white-hating black nationalist who became a follower of orthodox Islam who became an international figure championing “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people.”
This volume does not provide much psychological insight into why Malcolm X became such a protean figure (or why he needed to distance “his inner self from the outside world”), and it lacks the urgency and fierce eloquence of Malcolm X’s own “Autobiography.” Still, Mr. Marable artfully strips away the layers and layers of myth that have been lacquered onto his subject’s life — first by Malcolm himself in that famous memoir, and later by both supporters and opponents after his assassination in 1965 at the age of 39.
Mr. Marable argues that Malcolm X was a gifted performer, adept at presenting himself to black audiences “as the embodiment of the two central figures of African-American folk culture, simultaneously the hustler/trickster and the preacher/minister.” He also suggests that Malcolm exaggerated his criminal youth in his “Autobiography” to create “an allegory documenting the destructive consequences of racism within the U.S. criminal justice and penal system,” and to underscore the transformative power that the Nation of Islam brought to his own life while in prison.
As Mr. Marable sees it, the “Autobiography,” which was written with Alex Haley (later of “Roots” fame), was in some respects “more Haley’s than its author’s.” Because Malcolm X died in February 1965, Mr. Marable writes, “he had no opportunity to revise major elements of what would become known as his political testament.” Haley, “a liberal Republican,” in Mr. Marable’s words, made the finished book read like a work in “the tradition of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography” rather than “a manifesto for black insurrection” — which perhaps explains its widespread popularity and prominent place in high school and college curriculums.
One of the many achievements of this biography is that Mr. Marable manages to situate Malcolm X within the context of 20th-century racial politics in America without losing focus on his central character, as Taylor Branch sometimes did in his monumental, three-volume chronicle of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. At the same time Mr. Marable provides a compelling account of Malcolm X’s split with the Nation of Islam as he moved away from that sect’s black nationalism and radical separatist politics, and as personal tensions between him and the Nation leader Elijah Muhammad escalated further after Muhammad impregnated a woman who had had a longtime romantic relationship with Malcolm X.
Along the way Mr. Marable lays out a harrowing picture of Nation members’ determination to do away with the charismatic Malcolm X, who after being exiled from the sect had struck out on his own, forming a new group and alliances with orthodox Islamic groups abroad. When surveillance records become fully available, Mr. Marable asserts, “it would not be entirely surprising if an F.B.I. transcript surfaced documenting a telephone call from Elijah Muhammad to a subordinate, authorizing Malcolm’s murder,” but he does not come up with a smoking gun on that count in these pages.
It is Mr. Marable’s contention that while two of the three men convicted of the murder had alibis, the man who actually fired “the kill shot, the blow that executed Malcolm X” went free, only to serve prison time later for other crimes. He says this man is one Willie Bradley, who was later inducted into the Newark Athletic Hall of Fame for his high school baseball achievements and briefly appeared in a campaign video, promoting the re-election of Newark’s mayor, Cory A. Booker. (The Star-Ledger of Newark published an article about a man it says is Mr. Bradley, but his family denies any connection to the shooting.)
Mr. Marable speculates that Mr. Bradley “and possibly other Newark mosque members may have actively collaborated on the shooting with local law enforcement and/or the F.B.I.,” but fails to provide any hard evidence concerning this allegation either. In addition he argues that law enforcement agencies did not actively investigate threats on Malcolm X’s life, but instead “stood back, almost waiting for a crime to happen.”
In the course of this volume Mr. Marable corrects some popular assumptions: for instance, Malcolm X was introduced to the Nation of Islam not by a fellow prisoner — as depicted in Spike Lee’s 1992 movie “Malcolm X” — but by family members. Somewhat more enigmatic and sharper-elbowed than the man in the movie, Mr. Marable’s Malcolm is a passionate, conflicted and guarded man, filled with contradictions — charming and charismatic with audiences and the press but detached, even chilly with his wife, Betty, whom he frequently treated with misogynistic disdain. Some people quoted in this volume depict Malcolm X as being fatalistic in the last days of his life, telling one former associate that “the males in his family didn’t die a natural death.”
As a young man in prison Malcolm steeped himself not just in black history, Mr. Marable writes, but in “Herodotus, Kant, Nietzsche, and other historians and philosophers of Western civilization.” His hungry intellect and gift for oratory would make him a magnetic proselytizer for the Nation of Islam, and later, after his split from the Nation, for his own more pluralistic vision, which would align him more closely with the civil rights movement and Dr. King, whom he had once denounced as an Uncle Tom.
There is one ill-considered effort in these pages to rationalize Malcolm X’s violent rhetoric in his Nation of Islam days. “In retrospect,” Mr. Marable writes, “many of Malcolm’s most outrageous statements about the necessity of extremism in the achievement of political freedom and liberty were not unlike the views expressed by the 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who declared that ‘extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.’ ”
This hardly seems an apt comparison given Malcolm X’s description of a 1962 airplane crash, killing more than a hundred well-to-do white residents of Atlanta, as “a very beautiful thing,” proof that God answers prayers. Or his description of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as an instance of “the chickens coming home to roost” — to which he added that “being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.”
For the most part in this book, however, Mr. Marable takes a methodical approach to deconstructing Malcolm X’s complex legacy: his articulation of the “frustrations of the black poor and working class” and his message of “black pride, self-respect, and an awareness of one’s heritage.” As for the incendiary actions Malcolm X sometimes took as a member of the Nation of Islam, these are duly chronicled here as well.
After a 1962 police raid on a Nation of Islam mosque in Los Angeles (in which more than a half-dozen Muslims were shot), Mr. Marable asserts, Malcolm X began to recruit members for an assassination team to target officers from the Los Angeles Police Department. The year before, Mr. Marable says, Malcolm and another Nation leader met with representatives of the Ku Klux Klan, assuring those white racists, according to F.B.I. surveillance, that “his people wanted complete segregation from the white race.”
Spiritual and political growth was the one constant in Malcolm X’s restless and peripatetic life. During a 1964 trip to Mecca he was treated with kindness by white Muslims and was moved by the sight of thousands of people of different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds praying in unison to the same God. This would lead to his embrace of a kind of internationalist humanism, separating himself not just from Nation of Islam’s leadership but from its angry, separatist theology too. After Mecca, Malcolm began reaching out to the civil rights establishment and came to recognize, in Mr. Marable’s words, that “blacks indeed could achieve representation and even power under America’s constitutional system.”
Toward the end of his “Autobiography” Malcolm X wrote: “The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities — he is only reacting to 400 years of the conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth — the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.”
***
We would also be well served to read the LA Times book review.
A key to understanding Malcolm X is at the end of the review in which Erin Aubrey Kaplan, the reviewer, writes:
Sara Mitchell of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, one of two groups Malcolm formed after he left the Nation of Islam, said that "underlying {his} efforts was his still unfulfilled and paramount ambition: the redemption of the 'disgraced' manhood of the African American male. That was the spur piercing him; it would not let him stop or even rest." To this day, he does not.
***
To understand Malcolm X's Autobiography, we must grasp its heart, which is the notion of a "disgraced manhood" and the redemption of that manhood.
Here's an essay from Stanford that refutes Marable's book.
Prewriting by Looking at Different Thesis Points of View
Thesis Against Malcolm X
While McMahon makes good points about the positive role Malcolm X had on changing black consciousness for the better in racist society that disgraced black humanity, Malcolm X cannot be an exalted figure when we look at the inexcusable lies, fabrications, half-truths, myth-making, and violence-causing demagoguery, all of which taint Malcolm X’s legacy.
Thesis Defending Malcolm X
While I concede that Malcolm relied on myth-making and exaggerated self-promotion, taking poetic license here and there to carve a dramatic narrative of redemption, the mythologies that festoon and embellish the facts of his existence do not diminish the enormous, positive impact he had on not only black America but all of America when we consider __________________, _______________________, _________________________, and ________________________.
Another Thesis That Calls the Book a Fraud:
We can acknowledge that Malcolm X was a great leader and psychological healer on the one hand while at the same time dissect his so-called "autobiography" for what it is, a fabrication, a myth, and, yes, ultimately a fraud.
A Thesis That Defends Malcolm X
While I concede that much of Malcolm X's autobiography is molded by mythical narratives of redemption and other fabrications, the essential character arc of his life is provided in the autobiography to make it a rewarding and authentic contribution to what I would call "redemption literature."
Lead Amazon review of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable:
Whether you're just getting to know this giant and enigmatic figure of the civil rights "movement" - or in Malcolm's case revolution - or you were on the street in the day, Manning Marable's biography is worth your valuable time. In addition to being a wide and deep examination of how Malcolm Little became Malcolm X and how Malcom X became a universal advocate for the oppressed, especially of African heritage, Marable fills in gaps with his singular access to records and sources, as well as his sustained effort over a decade in producing this biography. But, perhaps most importantly, the voice that Malcolm X raised in defense of those being oppressed carries a message especially important in our time. We should listen.
Marable examines Malcolm's life from many angles, in many contexts, which are necessary given that he manifested himself in appearances that ranged from hustler and angry voice from the ghetto to social activist and pragmatist willing to work within the American "system." And this broad appeal largely defines Malcolm X's appeal according to Marable: "Malcolm's journey of reinvention was in many ways centered on his lifelong quest to discern the meaning and substance of faith. As a prisoner, he embraced an antiwhite quasi-Islamic sect that nevertheless validated his fragmented sense of humanity and ethnic identity. But as he traveled across the world...Malcolm came to adopt true Islam's universalism, and its belief that all could find Allah's grace regardless of race." (p.12)
To black audiences, "what made him truly original was that he presented himself as the embodiment of the two central figures of African-American folk culture, simultaneously the hustler/trickster and the preacher/minister...the trickster is unpredictable and capable of outrageous transgressions; the minister saves souls, redeems shattered lives, and promises a new world." I might add that I suspect this appeal is not limited to just black audiences.
This journey involves doing time for small time crime, developing his thoughts and voice while incarcerated, taking Elijah Muhammad as a mentor, but perhaps the greatest advancement came as a result of Malcolm's haj, after which his thinking and voice, while still strongly advocating for the oppressed, became more inclusive and more compassionate. As noted in at least one other review here, Marable's work is distinguished for understanding how the experience of the haj profoundly advanced Malcolm's thinking and his voice. It may not be too strong to say that this experience liberated him.
Marable's book also stands out for filling in gaps around Malcolm's assassination. Complicity on the part of federal and state authorities, as well as the Nation of Islam, from which Malcolm broke about a year before his death, is indicated. Ultimately, though, a conclusive picture can not be drawn from the records to which he had access.
An especially valuable context is Marable's view of Malcolm in a larger context that includes Martin Luther King. "one great gift of such remarkable individuals is the ability to seize their time, to speak to their unique moment in history. Both Martin and Malcolm were such leaders, but they expressed their pragmatic visions in different ways. King embodied the historic struggles waged by generations of African Americans for full equality...King never pitted blacks against whites, or used the atrocities committed by white extremists as a justification for condemning all whites. By contrast, throughout most of his public career Malcolm sought to place whites on the defensive in their relationship with African Americans...His constant message was black pride, self-respect, and an awareness of one's heritage."
Malcolm's influence over Eldridge Cleaver and Black Power advocates was obvious. And while it scared the hell out of many, Marable presents Malcolm as an important voice in the chorus against racial oppression. Advocating force on behalf of those slammed away in ghettos has its place.
Malcolm's voice, according to the actor Ossie Davis and quoted by Marable, was that of a "black shining prince," in his eulogy. Prince, because Malcolm's assassination did not allow him to achieve the maturity of becoming a king. Following his death, Malcolm "was pilloried and sterotyped for his racial extremism," especially in the white community. In the black community, Malcolm, in death, was seen as "an icon of black encouragement, who fearlessly challenged racism wherever he found it."
Marable notes that "Malcolm's revolutionary vision also challenged white America to think and talk differently about race...Malcolm challenged whites to examine the policies and practices of racial discrimination."
Beyond being a wonderful biography, I hope that Marable's effort here acts to amplify Malcolm's voice to make aware those too young to remember Malcolm, to reaffirm those who sympathized with his struggle, and to expand the understanding of those who were with Malcolm in the day.
***
The above review speaks to the complexity of the prophet who doubles as the trickster. Can we venerate prophets who have duality and complexity? Does this complexity inform the complete humanity of a prophet or diminish such a figure?
You should consider these questions as you develop your argument.
Research Links in Addition to the Two Above (read the first one in its entirety)
The Real Malcolm X? is a critical examination from a conservative magazine. In a key passage the article's author, commenting on Manning Marable's biography Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, writes:
According to Marable, the Malcolm X character was effective as “the embodiment of the two central figures of African-American folk culture, simultaneously the hustler/trickster and the preacher/minister.”
In the same passage, Marable writes that Malcolm exaggerated his criminal past as “Detroit Red” in order to present “an allegory documenting the destructive consequences of racism within the U.S. criminal justice and penal system. Self invention was an effective way for him to reach the most marginalized sectors of the black community, giving justification to their hopes.”
The problem with that lofty justification is that Malcolm Little exaggerated his criminal past while he was still openly a huckster in order to gain street cred in the lawless world he inhabited.
Lifetime's Assassination of Malcolm X Review
In a key passage by the article's author Michael Muhammed Knight we read:
In Betty & Coretta, however, King’s chief accusation of violence falls upon Malcolm X. King even blames Malcolm for Malcolm’s own assassination, as “Nothing good ever comes out of preaching violence.” The Lifetime movie preserves the image of Malcolm as a bloodthirsty radical while seeking to rehabilitate him of what it treats as his past fanaticism.
This strangely requires that Malcolm be depicted as both more and less “extreme” than he was, based on a division of the man into two distinct and diametrically opposed characters: Early Malcolm and Real Malcolm. Neither Early Malcolm nor Real Malcolm are “real.” They are both fabrications that serve to oversimplify a complex human being. Early Malcolm was the Nation of Islam minister who apparently made all kinds of irresponsible statements and espoused violence. Real Malcolm is the later version, having gone to Mecca and disavowed all the militant things that we are told he said. When Early Malcolm finally learned to love white people, he matured into Real Malcolm. Unfortunately, as Betty tells us, Real Malcolm did not live long enough to communicate his new ideas or escape the shadow of Early Malcolm. In the film, Betty complains of “radicals” who misappropriate Early Malcolm in the name of revolution, specifically mentioning the Black Panthers.
We further read that
It’s not that the film is exactly wrong in highlighting the importance of education in Malcolm’s public mission or his own biography. After all, Malcolm’s transformation from a convicted burglar into an international icon of the freedom struggle began with a transformation of consciousness, famously illustrated in his narrative of copying out an entire dictionary by hand and straining his eyes to read in poor prison lighting. The problem is that Betty & Coretta leaves out the political consequences of Malcolm’s self-education. Malcolm did have ideas, as we are told in the film, but the film has no interest in treating them as meaningful. We are only instructed to ignore Early Malcolm and look instead to Real Malcolm, the Malcolm of education and knowledge and empowerment and pride.
How the New York Times Distorted Malcolm X's Views on Self-Defense
NYTimes Book Review of Manning Marable's Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention--Here's a Key Passage:
As Mr. Marable sees it, the “Autobiography,” which was written with Alex Haley (later of “Roots” fame), was in some respects “more Haley’s than its author’s.” Because Malcolm X died in February 1965, Mr. Marable writes, “he had no opportunity to revise major elements of what would become known as his political testament.” Haley, “a liberal Republican,” in Mr. Marable’s words, made the finished book read like a work in “the tradition of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography” rather than “a manifesto for black insurrection” — which perhaps explains its widespread popularity and prominent place in high school and college curriculums.
Study Questions from Moraine Valley Community College
Malcolm X had to fight the false religion, white supremacy, that was used to justify the slave engine economy of United States.
Autobiography of Malcolm X Lesson One, 79-139: Chapters 1-3
Study Questions, Chapters 1-3
One. Who were the Klu Klux Klan and why were they threatening Malcolm’s family when he was a little boy?
They were white supremacists who formed after the Civil War to enforce the rules of white supremacy, a religion that said white people were God’s chosen, superior people born with the entitlement to use the other races for the white man’s pleasure, riches, conveniences, and whims.
White supremacy was an invention to prevent the formation of natural guilt and conscience for the evils of slavery.
A white sociopath didn’t need the false religion to enforce slavery; he did evil for its own pleasure, but only 4% of the population is sociopaths, according to Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door.
But the other 96% needed to assuage their conscience by drinking the Kool-Aid of white supremacy, which told them it was “God-approved” to enslave people of color. This “mass psychosis,” as it has been called, was the false religion that drove the slave trade and created America’s wealth.
When one talks about the foundation of America, one cannot separate it from the evil liquid that white Americans consumed and this evil potion is called white supremacy.
White supremacy was a religion that relied on several factors:
Quasi-religion, referring to gross interpretations of the Bible to justify slavery and see white people as “God’s children.”
Racist iconography: cartoons, toys, billboards, illustrations, figurines, minstrel shows all representations of black people were subhuman, grotesque, dumb, and “well suited” for slavery.
Conflating white supremacy with the “Great Frontier,” the idea that national expansion and success what a sign of piety, God-fearing white Christians obeying their God and achieving virtue.
Psychosis: To have slave blood’s on your clothes upon returning home and reading bedtime stories to your children and praising God for the bounty he has given you and your family shows a disconnect from reality and when the disconnect from reality (slaves’ blood on your clothes) is this extreme the only appropriate word for such a mental condition is psychosis. Historians of slavery have used the expression “mass psychosis” to characterize the white state of mind during this period.
What’s most compelling about The Autobiography of Malcolm X is that he saw the root of white psychosis and Malcolm devoted his whole life to destroying the false religion of white supremacy as a psychosis that not only affected white people but also was internalized in black people. For Malcolm X, black people could not be saved until they purged the poison of white supremacy from their minds, hearts, and souls. This poison dehumanized and degraded blacks in general and especially black men who were humiliated and prohibited from "being men." They suffered from "disgraced manhood" and Malcolm X wanted to redeem black men from the disgrace of being a black man in America.
After the Civil War, the US government tried to give some recompense to black people for all the suffering they went through during slavery but white supremacists, mostly poor white farmers, resented black people being “on the same plane as us” and they terrorized black people so that life could be restored to “the good old days.”
The KKK and their sympathizers lynched black men as part of their terror campaign. Between the Civil War and the 1930s, over five thousand black men were lynched (often hanged from trees) with no arrests, leading some black people to say, “It’s open season on us.”
The KKK was terrorizing Malcolm X’s family because Malcolm’s father, the Reverend Earl Little, was a disciple of Marcus Garvey who believed black people would never be treated fairly in America, that they too were brainwashed by white supremacy, believing they were inferior to white people (evidenced by favoring their lighter skinned brothers and sisters and emulating “white” hair styles) and that the only solution for black people was to return to Africa and find their “banner of black-race purity.”
Clearly, Marcus Garvey, Earl Little, and later Malcolm X, became impassioned about reversing the catastrophic effects of white supremacy on the psyche of black America, the self-hatred and sense of disgrace and humiliation.
To understand Malcolm X, we have to understand the sick, cancerous religion of white supremacy because Malcolm’s life and ideas were a reaction to white supremacy, an effort to kill this poison that resided in the psyches of black people.
Not until the end of his life did Malcolm believe there were decent white people who were free from the poison of white supremacy.
And this belief could have very well been the reason Malcolm was assassinated. He was no longer drinking the Kool-Aid of The Nation of Islam, which had its own supremacy doctrine.
Two. What painful irony does Malcolm witness in his father?
His father, dedicated to fighting white supremacy, was so brainwashed by it that he didn’t punish his son Malcolm as much as his other children because Malcolm was light-skinned, “nearer to white and therefore ‘better’” (83).
No doubt witnessing his father’s favoritism, made Malcolm see how insidious and far-reaching the effects of white supremacy.
His own father, who hated white racism, unconsciously favored his "white" skinned son over his darker skinned children.
Three. Why was Malcolm so hostile against whites and blacks integrating and living in harmony?
Because he believed that blacks would always be subjugated to white supremacy, that it would be blacks who’d compromise to accommodate white people, that white supremacy was so ubiquitous, so deeply engrained, and so insidious that it was a Faustian Bargain (deal with the devil) for black people who’d get the bad end of the bargain. Relations with whites were built on white supremacy, a religion that had brainwashed both white and black people.
It wasn’t until Malcolm visited Mecca during the latter stage of his life that he saw men of all skin colors connected through the same faith that he could separate an evil religion, white supremacy, from a human being and as a result Malcolm became open to the new vision that it was bad ideologies, not skin color, that determined if a person was good or bad.
Born in Jim Crow (pre-Civil Rights) America in 1925, Malcolm grew up around white people who had consumed the Kool-Aid of white supremacy so he had no hope for white people until much later in his life.
Four. On page 16 of the Foreword, Alex Haley reveals one of Malcolm X’s napkin scribbles in which he writes, “Only persons really changed history [were] those who changed men’s thinking about themselves.” He then lists historical figures attributed to both good and evil, Hitler, Jesus, Buddha, among others. Does Malcolm fit on this list?
The monumental change of black image by purging the disease of white supremacy makes Malcolm X one of the greatest figures in American history. Not having to go through life shackled to the internalization of white supremacy and its self-hatred and the compulsion to be apologetic about one’s existence is not something to be taken for granted when one considers the foundation of America, its economy, its power, its myth of greatness, was fueled by white supremacy.
Malcolm's genius was describing in ways no one had before the poison of white supremacy and the manner in which it disgraced black Americans.
White supremacy is so long-lasting that to this day it is argued to be the fuel of the America’s prison system as argued in Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which I teach in my Critical Thinking class, English 1C.
Five. How does the American history we learn in The Autobiography of Malcolm X differ from the American history we learn in high school?
I can only speak about myself and the people I’ve talked to and my impression is that there are huge differences between public school American history and Malcolm X’s American history.
In public school, we learn that slavery and racism were “unfortunate” and a horrible glitch in America’s glorious history of freedom and democracy. Additionally, for the most part America has gotten over these terrible hurdles.
In contrast, Malcolm X teaches us a different, and I would say a far more accurate, American history in terms of slavery and racism’s root cause, slavery and racism’s massive scale, and slavery and racism’s pernicious influence that persists, sometimes explicitly, sometimes insidiously, to this day.
Because America’s economic foundation was slavery and slavery could only be fueled by the 96% of Americans through an ideology that would allow them to commit the cruelty of slavery with a clear conscience and this ideology had to be powerful, as powerful as the evil it supported. This ideology was the poison religion of white supremacy.
Malcolm X wants American to reckon with white supremacy, an ugly religion that has been swept under the carpet in fawning, flattering, mythical conceptions of American history. He wants white America to be accountable for it and he wants black Americans to see its self-hating effects inside themselves.
What’s impressive about Malcolm X’s account is that his history is imbued with his personal story of struggle against white supremacy.
He saw the effects of white supremacy on everyone, including white children who called him racist epithets every day at school and what’s remarkable is that the white kids didn’t see what they were doing as insulting; it seemed “natural” to them to call the black kids denigrating names, so powerful is white supremacy (87).
In addition to insults, he saw violence affect his family including the brutal murder of his father at the hands of white people, a KKK splinter group called The Black Legion (89).
Six. Why does Malcolm X show contempt for the black middle class?
See pages 83 and 84. He sees the black middle class as materialistic, faddish, trendy, superficial, and worst of all aspiring to emulate “whiteness,” the condition of being uppity, supercilious and vain.
During the 1960s, Malcolm X saw a black America that aspired to be middle class by emulating white lifestyles, a source that brought upon black self-hatred and black self-abnegation, black self-erasure. For Malcolm X, this was a horrible sin.
He also scoffed at the black middle class’ faith in integrating in white America. For Malcolm America was a poker game in which the white man knew how to cheat, owned the casino, and ruled all the cards and so of course he made up all the rules to serve him (96).
Seven. What was the humiliation of welfare and how did it influence Malcolm X’s belief in self-reliance?
On page 92 we read the Welfare agency people acted “as if they owned us.” This was an affront to Malcolm’s pride and his mother’s.
On 93, Malcolm says his family surrendered to the destitution of welfare and lost their dignity.
Malcolm felt that white handouts fed the white supremacist belief that whites were superior to blacks and this was a form of humiliation that for Malcolm was unacceptable.
Eight. What humiliation does Malcolm experience at the end of Chapter 1?
He and his siblings are given over to the white man (they become wards of the state) after his mother has a nervous breakdown and Malcolm writes this was “legal, modern slavery” (101).
The Welfare state destroyed Malcolm’s family and he saw this happen to hundreds of black families (102).
Nine. In Chapter 2, Malcolm writes about white people who use racial epithets, specifically the N Word, “innocently” (107). What does this say about white supremacy?
When one has consumed the Kool-Aid of white supremacy, one behaves out of habit, out of the unconscious, out of reflex with no thought, no reflection, and no free will. White supremacy is so ubiquitous (everywhere) that it absorbs into the consciousness and becomes a form of brainwashing, especially for those with less than exceptional intelligence. The white people “never did really see me” (107). Malcolm writes the white people may have “opened the door” to black people but the condescension, the unconscious belief in their superiority and their inability to see the humanity of black Americans spoke to the power of that evil religion, white supremacy.
So pernicious is white supremacy, Malcolm observes, that even well-intentioned whites cannot reach out to black Americans without this condescension, this patronizing, this self-congratulatory “see how good I am! I like black people!” vanity.
No matter how nice whites were to Malcolm, he believed that when a crisis occurred they could not be counted on because in that moment of crisis that would rally back to “their kind” and show their true colors, tribalists of the tribe white supremacy (108).
Tribalism is a primitive impulse, which says “Us Vs. Them.”
Tribalism is narcissistic. White history is 999 pages in a high school textbook; “black history,” Malcolm discovers, is only one paragraph (110). And it’s a horrendous paragraph: We were slaves; then we were freed; we’re lazy and dumb. The end. And to add to insult, the teacher laughed when he read the paragraph (110).
Ten. Why is racial tribalism weaker in much of America today, especially big cities like Los Angeles?
Malcolm didn’t see the mixing of races in his lifetime that exists today. Now there is so much mixing that it becomes absurd to identify people of a particular race. People today are a diverse blend that defies easy race categorization.
In contrast, during Malcolm’s time, mixing was prohibited and often considered a scandal. There was mixing, we read on page 112, but it was white men and black women; however, a black man going out with a white woman could result in that man’s death.
However, he does see in Boston white and black couples, so he does live at the beginning of the miscegenation age (116).
Eleven. How does social class in Boston, which affects both white and black people, affect Malcolm and how does he act upon returning to Lansing?
Malcolm gets a taste of dignity and of no longer playing the dumb mascot and his Lansing associates find him “different” and perhaps a bit supercilious and “uppity.” See page 117.
And this leads to a “turning point” in Malcolm’s life. His English teacher Mr. Ostrowski discusses Malcolm’s career and when Malcolm says he wants to be a lawyer, his teacher tries to put him in “his place” by telling him to lower his sights, something more “appropriate for someone in his station in life” like a labor job, a mule job, something that doesn’t require brain power. Malcolm knew he was smarter than the white kids, many of whom were encouraged to pursue high-minded professions and this injustice cut Malcolm and made him hate all the more the religion of white supremacy (119).
From being affectionately called the N Word (the word used to “slip off his back” whereas now it stiffens him into a hostile posture), now Malcolm is inquired, “What’s wrong?” And it was evident that he was no longer “happy,” that is willing to play their game.
He persuades his half-sister Ella to take him into her Boston home and he praises Allah for getting out of Lansing where he would have been a “brainwashed black Christian, “meaning a docile robot living a life of obedience to white supremacy (120).
Twelve. What class distinctions does Malcolm see in Boston?
On page 122, we see that Malcolm scorned the haughty, educated class of black people who thought they were better than the lower class blacks. For him, blacks had to be united in the fight against white supremacy and the “brainwashed” upper class blacks were still in the jaws of the white man’s game. Many of them wore “white hair,” a conk.
Defying Ella’s encouragement to hang out with the “nice people,” Malcolm is drawn to the ghetto and its “cool cats” and hipsters (125). He soon meets Shorty who explains that the hipster brothers can’t stand the uppity Hill brothers.
Malcolm learns the “hip code,” which is to not overtly show affection (135).
While white supremacy might be on the decline in many ways today (but not the prison system according to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow), there is in America another supremacy game, that of social class, which affects people of all races. There is a stigma, for example, in not having a college degree unless the person is super rich.
Thirteen. What was Malcolm’s “first step in self-degradation”?
He got a white man’s hairdo, a conk, with the help of his friend and mentor Shorty. Being hip and cool couldn’t save a black man from the self-hatred that would make him aspire to have white hair and this left a lifelong impression on Malcolm.
And he hated the upper class blacks for having conks. They should have known better. Malcolm saw the conk as an emblem of shame and lost identity.
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