The purpose of a writing class is to develop a meaningful thesis, direct or implied, that will generate a compelling essay. Most importantly, a meaningful thesis will have a strong emotional connection between you and the material. In fact, if you don’t have a “fire in your belly” to write the paper, your essay will be nothing more than a limp document, a perfunctory exercise in futility. A successful thesis will also be intellectually challenging and afford a complexity worthy of college-level writing. Thirdly, the successful thesis will be demonstrable, which means it can be supported by examples and illustrations in a recognizable organizational design.
Other Website: http://herculodge.typepad.com/
One. Why is Martin J. Davidson mocked in the New York Times?
Because he is a man of poshlost (banal vulgarity trying to be grandiose), which means he is a person who aggrandizes himself by showing off his Juvenile Man Cave. His attempts at grandiosity, toys that signal he’s a predatory player, are actually expressions of bad taste, narcissism, ignorance, and personal degradation. All of these qualities point to the Russian term poshlost.
Examples of poshlost:
Gold trim on a Lexus
Any gold car
Puka shell necklace
A rich Anglo American who after a tour of Africa returns to the US wearing a dashiki
A diamond-studded doorknob
A dancing bear doing tricks at your birthday party
Two. What are the motives of acquiring possessions?
We look for signs of security, stability, and control.
Here’s an example of control: We outbid someone on eBay and see ourselves in a bidding war for an item that is less about our wanting it and more about “beating our competition” and feeling control over “our opponents.”
We resent communal cars and lawnmowers. “It has to be mine. It just feels funny sharing a car or lawnmower or jacket with a bunch of people.”
If someone smokes or stinks in a car I’m driving, I’m going to feel my personal sense of identity is insulted, violated even.
We buy things to show our dominance over other people or to compete with them. Studies show for example that people like big SUVs and trucks so they can bully smaller cars on the road.
“Potlatch” syndrome: showing signs of conspicuous waste and the burning of money as if to say, “There’s more where that came from!” In other words, show off to gloat in the presence of the human race whom you’ve reduced to “your competition.”
Our consumer demands are driven by two antithetical impulses, the cortex (reason, Prius) and the Inner Reptile (dominance and reproductive success, BMW M5).
We desire high social status and we desire to be spared the humiliation of low social status.
It hurts to see the valet pull up in a bunch of expensive cars, Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, at a restaurant and then everyone sees another valet approach ingloriously in your car, a beat-up Yaris.
I personally feel humiliated when I walk past the first-class airline passengers and make my way to coach. The first-class passengers are gloating at me and I have to resist the urge to say, “What are you looking at?”
We acquire scarcity as a sign of our rarified status.
Beyond status, we cherish possessions that inform others, and ourselves, of our identity (133).
Three. How is home décor a form of “personalization”?
Furniture embodies experience and memories. So do books, not Kindle or eReaders. A watch represents our self-image. Do we go for the “business look” or the “sporty man-who-climbs-and dives-look”?
Things embody the self. They are part of our “identity equipment.”
Apple represents the creative class. PC means you’re a poor farmer.
A Mini Cooper means you’re a hipster.
A Volvo station wagon means you’re a family person who eschews the trappings of bling.
A compost compacter in you’re kitchen means you care about the environment.
Having nothing of leather attire means you love animals. So what you don’t possess also defines you.
Essay Option for First Typed Research Paper
Reading the Signs, page 138
Adopting Kron's essay as a critical framework, analyze the consumption behavior of the two families profiled in John Verdant's "The Ables vs. the Bines" (p. 152).
One. What does it mean when someone says in a poor African-American neighborhood “you’re acting white”?
Doing schoolwork is mocked.
Some black kids coming home from private school get beat up for “acting white.”
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, a black player, has been accused by other black players of acting white. This means he “toadies up” to the team’s management.
A study shows, we read in paragraph 3, that “black children nationwide become less popular if their grade-point average rises above 3.5.”
To aspire to join the middle-class by imitating behaviors that associated with whiteness can set off the charge “you’re acting white.”
Two. How do some suburban whites use the “you’re acting white” phenomenon to “get off the hook too easily”?
They’ll say to black people: “Your lack of success is your own fault for not embracing the work ethic and proper codes of dress and behavior.”
But like most things in life, the situation is more complicated than that.
In fact, if we look at American history, it was whites, not blacks, who first accused blacks, during Jim Crow, of “acting white.”
We read, “As historian Leon Litwack points out, nineteenth-century whites sometimes ‘equated black success with ‘uppityness,’ ‘impudence,’ ‘getting out of place,’ and pretensions toward racial equality.”
We read in paragraph 10 that it wasn’t until desegregation in the 1960s that blacks accused other blacks of “acting white.” In these racially mixed schools, many black children saw their black friends “turning to the other side” to make it in school and this feeling of abandonment and of being betrayed led to the “you’re acting white” charge.
This idea is further reinforced by African-American Spelman College president Beverly Daniel Tatum who says that black youth have not always had contempt for academic achievement. This contempt is a “post-desegregation phenomenon.”
When black schools disappeared, black images of success disappeared as well as black youth had to find their way in what could be a very hostile environment, a “white school.”
We read, “After desegregation, many black children were taught by white teachers who disliked them, did not care about their success, underestimated their capabilities, or—at the opposite extreme—coddled them out of guilt. Even when the white teachers did everything right, the black schoolchildren still, for the first time, faced the possibility of seeing ‘school’ as a place where success equaled seeking the approval of whites.”
I can say I have had African-American students tell me the last 30 years that they have taken college classes where the professors ignored them when they raised their hands. A whole semester passed by and these students never had one opportunity to participate in class discussion.
Three. How did desegregation in the schools lead to blacks turning on blacks with the “acting white” charge?
Blacks felt abandoned in mostly white schools where some blacks, who performed well academically, were perceived to have joined the white ranks.
At these schools a function called “tracking” kept the “better-prepared white students in a separate class from the black students.” Thus whites were perceived as having superior privileges and entitlements. And any black who wanted to join their ranks was “acting white.”
When blacks behaved in ways that didn’t conform to the black status quo, they were judged as rejecting the mainstream behavior.
For example, I had a black student who was accused of acting white by black kids at his school and he hung out mostly with Latinos at his high school because they didn’t have the same expectations as the black kids.
Four. Where else did the idea of “acting white” come from?
Since slavery and Jim Crow, some blacks who ingratiated themselves with whites, have been called Uncle Toms because they “submitted more readily to white racism,” and “special venom is directed to the insider who breaks ranks and treats outsiders with respect.”
Writing Prompt
In an essay, support, defend, or complicate the persuasiveness of Buck's argument about the existence of "acting white."
Brainstorm for a thesis that addresses the above prompt.
“Working Class Whites” by Angeline F. Price (648)
One. What two stereotypes does America have of poor whites?
Either they are “white trash” or “good country folk.”
As usual, stereotypes are dehumanizing, condescending, and ignorant, and fail to see the complexity of humanity.
The “id” is the criminal white working class; the “superego” is the innocent religious white poor who “nostalgize and idealize the desire for a simpler life . . .”
Two. What underlying hostility can we identify in poor white stereotypes?
Our country appears to be less and less about race and more and more about money. We judge others on their income, and their conformity to the myth of the “self-made man,” the clever, resourceful businessperson or entrepreneur who knows how to make a quick buck.
People who fail to conform to the above ideal violate our hope in a narrative that through hard work we can embrace material success and the American dream.
Poverty in others is an all too sober reminder of where we could end up if we run out of talent and luck.
There's no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it's rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of.
Rest is a luxury for the rich. I get up at 6AM, go to school (I have a full courseload, but I only have to go to two in-person classes) then work, then I get the kids, then I pick up my husband, then I have half an hour to change and go to Job 2. I get home from that at around 1230AM, then I have the rest of my classes and work to tend to. I'm in bed by 3. This isn't every day, I have two days off a week from each of my obligations. I use that time to clean the house and soothe Mr. Martini and see the kids for longer than an hour and catch up on schoolwork. Those nights I'm in bed by midnight, but if I go to bed too early I won't be able to stay up the other nights because I'll fuck my pattern up, and I drive an hour home from Job 2 so I can't afford to be sleepy. I never get a day off from work unless I am fairly sick. It doesn't leave you much room to think about what you are doing, only to attend to the next thing and the next. Planning isn't in the mix.
When I was pregnant the first time, I was living in a weekly motel for some time. I had a minifridge with no freezer and a microwave. I was on WIC. I ate peanut butter from the jar and frozen burritos because they were 12/$2. Had I had a stove, I couldn't have made beef burritos that cheaply. And I needed the meat, I was pregnant. I might not have had any prenatal care, but I am intelligent enough to eat protein and iron whilst knocked up.
I know how to cook. I had to take Home Ec to graduate high school. Most people on my level didn't. Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick. We have learned not to try too hard to be middle-class. It never works out well and always makes you feel worse for having tried and failed yet again. Better not to try. It makes more sense to get food that you know will be palatable and cheap and that keeps well. Junk food is a pleasure that we are allowed to have; why would we give that up? We have very few of them.
The closest Planned Parenthood to me is three hours. That's a lot of money in gas. Lots of women can't afford that, and even if you live near one you probably don't want to be seen coming in and out in a lot of areas. We're aware that we are not "having kids," we're "breeding." We have kids for much the same reasons that I imagine rich people do. Urge to propagate and all. Nobody likes poor people procreating, but they judge abortion even harder.
Convenience food is just that. And we are not allowed many conveniences. Especially since the Patriot Act passed, it's hard to get a bank account. But without one, you spend a lot of time figuring out where to cash a check and get money orders to pay bills. Most motels now have a no-credit-card-no-room policy. I wandered around SF for five hours in the rain once with nearly a thousand dollars on me and could not rent a room even if I gave them a $500 cash deposit and surrendered my cell phone to the desk to hold as surety.
Nobody gives enough thought to depression. You have to understand that we know that we will never not feel tired. We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn't give us much reason to improve ourselves. We don't apply for jobs because we know we can't afford to look nice enough to hold them. I would make a super legal secretary, but I've been turned down more than once because I "don't fit the image of the firm," which is a nice way of saying "gtfo, pov." I am good enough to cook the food, hidden away in the kitchen, but my boss won't make me a server because I don't "fit the corporate image." I am not beautiful. I have missing teeth and skin that looks like it will when you live on b12 and coffee and nicotine and no sleep. Beauty is a thing you get when you can afford it, and that's how you get the job that you need in order to be beautiful. There isn't much point trying.
Cooking attracts roaches. Nobody realizes that. I've spent a lot of hours impaling roach bodies and leaving them out on toothpick pikes to discourage others from entering. It doesn't work, but is amusing.
"Free" only exists for rich people. It's great that there's a bowl of condoms at my school, but most poor people will never set foot on a college campus. We don't belong there. There's a clinic? Great! There's still a copay. We're not going. Besides, all they'll tell you at the clinic is that you need to see a specialist, which seriously? Might as well be located on Mars for how accessible it is. "Low-cost" and "sliding scale" sounds like "money you have to spend" to me, and they can't actually help you anyway.
I smoke. It's expensive. It's also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It's a stimulant. When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and I feel a little better, just for a minute. It is the only relaxation I am allowed. It is not a good decision, but it is the only one that I have access to. It is the only thing I have found that keeps me from collapsing or exploding.
I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don't pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It's not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn't that I blow five bucks at Wendy's. It's that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There's a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there's money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing.
Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It's why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long-term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.
I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what look from the outside like awful decisions. This is what our lives are like, and here are our defense mechanisms, and here is why we think differently. It's certainly self-defeating, but it's safer. That's all. I hope it helps make sense of it.
Update: The response to this piece is overwhelming. I have had a lot of people ask to use my work. Please do. Share it with the world if you found value in it. Please link back if you can. If you are teaching, I am happy to discuss this with or clarify for you, and you can freely use this piece in your classes. Please do let me know where you teach. You can reach me on Twitter, @killermartinis. I set up an email at killermartinisbook@ gmail as well.
This piece has gone fully viral. People have been asking me to write, and how they can help. After enough people tried to send me paypal money, I set up a gofundme. Find it here. It promptly went insane. I have raised my typical yearly income as of this update. I have no idea what to say except thank you. I am going to speak with some money people who will make sure that I can't fuck this up, and I will use it to do good things with.
I've also set up a blog, which I hope you will find here.
Understand that I wrote this as an example of the thought process that we struggle with. Most of us are clinically depressed, and we do not get therapy and medication and support. We get told to get over it. And we find ways to cope. I am not saying that people live without hope entirely; that is not human nature. But these are the thoughts that are never too far away, that creep up on us every chance they get, that prey on our better judgement when we are tired and stressed and weakened. We maintain a constant vigil against these thoughts, because we are afraid that if we speak them aloud or even articulate them in our heads they will become unmanageably real.
Thank you for reading. I am glad people find value in it. Because I am getting tired of people not reading this and then commenting anyway, I am making a few things clear: not all of this piece is about me. That is why I said that they were observations. And this piece is not all of me: that is why I said that they were random observations rather than complete ones. If you really have to urge me to abort or keep my knees closed or wonder whether I can fax you my citizenship documents or if I really in fact have been poor because I know multisyllabic words, I would like to ask that you read the comments and see whether anyone has made your point in the particular fashion you intend to. It is not that I mind trolls so much, it's that they're getting repetitive and if you have to say nothing I hope you can at least do it in an entertaining fashion.
If, however, you simply are curious about something and actually want to have a conversation, I do not mind repeating myself because those conversations are valuable and not actually repetitive. They tend to be very specific to the asker, and I am happy to shed any light I can. I do not mind honest questions. They are why I wrote this piece.
Thank you all, so much. I don't know what life will look like next week, and for once that's a good thing. And I have you to thank.
Car Ads Are Really About Self-Actualization, Independence, Freedom, and Purification
Escape the Banal Monotony of Your Wasted Existence by Buying a Land Rover
Another Message: You Will be Invincible and Safe Inside the Vehicle
Very common, as we read in today's essay, is the theme of connecting with pristine nature through the acquisition of the vehicle:
Alan Foljambe, "Car Advertising--Dominating Nature"
One. What is the oxymoron or irony of car advertising?
An oxymoron, or self-contradiction, is contained in the fact that cars are brutal toward our environment on one hand but are portrayed in ads as a benign and integral part of nature. They are "totems of freedom and interaction with the natural world" (para. 2).
There are two types of green ads: alleviation, or dark green, which appeal to those consumers who are sensitive to the environment; and there's domination, light green, customers who look at Earth as a thing to be conquered and consumed with reckless disregard.
Domination green appeals to a sense of privilege and entitlement and a need to "own" Earth by driving on its hostile terrain with a rugged SUV of some sort.
The domination car is more than a car; it's a status symbol of individual strength, courage, and initiative. We read that the desert is often a symbol of "purification and spirituality" (achieved in a Lexus).
Part of the ad's mirage or illusion in these domination car ads is its pristine image of nature as a backdrop to the rugged SUV, as if the vehicle does not pose a threat to nature when in fact it does.
Some domination ads evidence infantile, selfish narcissism: The driver is ruining nature, but who cares? He's here to have "fun, excitement, and self-fulfillment" and the hell with anyone who might try to stop him. "Nature is my doormat; I'll do with it as I please."
Brainstorm a Thesis
Car is a status symbol.
Car is not a machine but an opportunity for self-transformation, freedom, independence, distinction.
A car embodies narcissism: desiring admiration from people while having complete disregard for others (wanting to run them off the road in your superior vehicle).
Be in nature while you pollute it: Have your cake and eat it too.
Enjoy your dreams of omnipotence.
Ads sell dreams and fantasies for those who are stuck in a rut and think a consumer experience is the solution to their problems.
Car ads cater to narcissism, frustration, materialism, and an infantile notion of the "good life" based on having recreation at the expense of Planet Earth.
Why do car ads focus more on fantasy than car's content and performance?
Should I argue that content isn't enough to compete against cars? That fantasy is essential? And if so, why?
Gloria Steinem, "Sex, Lies, and Advertising"
One. What is Steinem's biggest complaint?
That the tentacles of the ad industry infiltrate everything, including magazine content, so that chosen subject matter and opinions are biased and influenced from the corporate sponsors who want their products in a "healthy ecosystem."
Could you have an article about the possible dangers of artificial sweetener, for example, of one of your sponsors is a company that makes saccharine?
Could you have a women's magazine address skin rashes and possible cancer from certain perfumes when your sponsor is Prada, Christian Dior, or Versace?
Two. What other complaints poured out in Steinem's diatribe?
1. The aforementioned sponsor effect on content; for example, they couldn't have negative film reviews because sponsors for the magazine feared the film would dump their ads.
2. The dumbing down effect evidenced by showing women how to put on lipstick or apply suntan lotion as lame filler.
3. The sameness effect:All the magazines are alike.
4. Working in an ad-dominant world was like working in a male-dominant world: Everything was fine as long as you did what you were told.
5. Too often the perception was that a women's magazine was really a shopping catalog and therefore couldn't be taken seriously as a work of journalism.
6. "Real" magazines like Time and Newsweek didn't have to write gushing praise of automobiles to get auto ads; however, women's magazines had to writing lavish articles about perfume, moisturizer, and such to get those ads. In other words, there was a double-standard.
7. Steinam wanted good car ads about the car's performance, but male ad people believed women wanted "cute colors."
8. Some computer and electronics companies don't think women are "tech" enough to be interested in their products.
9. By 1986, magazine costs rise 400 percent, but income from ads is flat. There's growing pressure for article "tie-ins" to product, so the magazine's integrity is threatened. Because of these pressures, many magazines become "one giant ad."
Three. What is most depressing about the article?
That a lack of demand for fiction, critical journalism, and independent thinking makes vital magazines almost an impossibility in the face commercial magazines, which shape the malleable, mindless consumer.
Mindless consumerism, lacking an appetite for heavy-hitting writing, is perhaps the most depressing point of the article.
We're talking about a small educated class that hungers for good writing and "the masses" who blindly consume ad copy while thinking they're enriching their "lifestyle."
Perhaps Just as Depressing
Women consumers are treated like superficial idiots who want fluff, beauty and diet aids, pink colors, etc., but they have no interest in real content. The advertisers have contempt for the female consumer.
Writing Prompt
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that "virtually all content in women's magazines is a disguised form of advertising."
Review Major Events of Malcolm X's Life from Autobiography of X, Modern Classics edition from Penguin.
In the Introduction, Paul Gilroy writes that the book shows Malcolm’s “mythic significance that is not always accurate in small details. These lapses do not, however, invalidate the motivated approach taken by the authors to undermine the larger claims to which their collaboration gives such eloquent and troubling voice” (4).
Do you agree, or not, that minor inaccuracies detract from the bold voice that informs Malcolm’s critique of America.
We further read that the Malcolm myth followed a certain template. As Gilroy writes: “Malcolm’s disturbing and exciting tale was orchestrated so that it corresponded to old patterns of story-telling in which pilgrims and sinners triumphed over adversity and acquired eventual redemption from unlikely sources. From this perspective, all the petty humiliation and routine brutality of American racial politics could detract from or even undermine The Autobiography’s universal story of conversion, betrayal and transcendent personal development.” We further read that the book was inspired by slave narratives (5).
In Alex Haley’s Foreword, we read that the collaboration was shaky from the beginning, informed by mutual mistrust and that all Malcolm did was spew religious clichés making it impossible for Haley to write the book. Only after observing Malcolm’s nervous scribbles on napkins could Haley tap into Malcolm’s unconscious and raise his childhood memories and get the story going.
It becomes apparent that Malcolm feels free to let loose his memories and treasures the exhausting time he spends with Haley because his life as a minister is a rigid role that makes him bottle his emotions up regarding his past.
Malcolm was like an angry, petulant adolescent with Haley in the beginning but warmed up and began to evolve as a human being, even seeing that white people could be good and black people, like his mentor, could be evil.
In his angry adolescent phase, Malcolm predictably was a misogynist who didn’t trust women.
We read on page 38 that Malcolm states that after his trip to Mecca he no longer believes in the racism. He also realized that his mentor and demigod Elijah Muhammad was the evil leader of a cult who had backstabbed him. Certainly, that affected his views on race and no longer could he see black as pure and white as contaminated.
In Chapter One, Nightmare, we read that Malcolm as a boy felt and witnessed some “kind of psychological deterioration hit our family circle and began to eat away our pride.” The accumulation of poverty, welfare, the violent loss of his father, the attacks of his house from the KKK with no police intervention, the loss of his mother to a mental institution—all these things taxed Malcolm’s mind and spirit and sent him into a depression. The flip side of depression is anger, which will come out as he grows older.
This loss of pride, dignity, and honor and a sense of growing self-hatred that attacked the spirit like a cancer made Malcolm consider the idea of feeling disgraced and this bottled-up rage against the evil religion of white supremacy, which was used to justify slavery, Jim Crow, and continued racism, would eventually become articulated when Malcolm discovered language in prison.
In Chapter Two, Mascot, we see this theme of disgrace and dehumanization continued as Malcolm describes white people casually calling him racial epithets like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
There’s a key passage in which his teacher Mr. Ostrowski gave him “advice” in the form of racist condescension. On page 118 we read the infamous passage in which his advisor told Malcolm to not purse “white man” jobs like being a lawyer but should pursue demeaning “black man” jobs, those that are tedious, menial, and often mindless.
His teacher advised the average white kids to pursue high-ambition jobs while Malcolm, who was at the top of the class, was advised to lower his expectations. His teacher said, Malcolm “needs to be realistic” based on who he is and what is skin color is in the context of calling Malcolm a racial epithet. And he did this kindly as if it were a gentle fact of life.
Malcolm explained his response: “The more I thought afterwards about what he said, the more uneasy it made me. It just kept treading around in my mind.” After seeing his teacher encourage the less intelligent white kids, Malcolm explained a change inside of him: “It was then that I began to change—inside.” Now there was a palpable hostility Malcolm’s ruffled feathers. He began to withdraw from the others at school and racial epithets, which he used to tolerate kindly, now made him agitated him with hostility. He was no longer the fun-loving “mascot.” He was an angry young man who had been injured by his teacher’s personal denigration.
After his new angry persona, we read on page 119, he was looked at as a problem and whisked away from the detention home to live with a new family.
As we read in Chapter Three, Homeboy, he moves to Boston to live with his half-sister Ella. In Boston, there are more black professionals and there is a different dynamic between whites and blacks. The latter are not conditioned to be so obsequious or subservient to white people as Malcolm had learned to be in Michigan.
In Roxbury, Malcolm met Shorty who taught Malcolm how to hustle, gamble, and be a hipster.
It was there that we read Malcolm tried to straighten his hair, in the aspiration toward “white beauty,” known as a conk (136). We read this is something that had a profound impact on him:
“How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking ‘white’, reflected in the mirror in Shorty’s room. . . . This was my first really big step toward self-degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh with lye, in order to cook my natural hair until it was limp, to have it look just like a white man’s hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are ‘inferior’—and white people ‘superior’-that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look ‘pretty’ by white standards.”
Malcolm’s overriding passion and purpose in life would be to purge black Americans of their self-hatred and bring dignity to their disgraced minds and souls.
In Chapter 5, Harlemite, we read that Malcolm’s half-sister kicked him out of Boston because she didn’t approve of his relationship with Sophia, his white girlfriend. He moves to Harlem where he still sees Sophia. It was 1942 and Malcolm was only 17, yet he was living the life of an adult.
Chapter 6, Detroit Red, is considered controversial because biographer Manning Marable asserts that Malcolm exaggerated his criminal life in this chapter to put heavier contours on his criminal-to-redeemed man narrative.
In this chapter, Malcolm accounted for his own moral depravity and observed even greater moral depravity in privileged white men who, bored, sought greater and greater sordid entertainments and debauchery.
This underbelly of white society provided Malcolm with a glaring contrast to the American Myth of Innocence informed by white supremacy, which painted whites as moral, God-fearing Christians who saved the African heathens.
In Chapter 7, Hustler, Malcolm described his growing criminality, including robberies, drug dealing, and burglaries.
Malcolm said, “Through all of this time of my life, I really was dead—mentally dead. I just didn’t know that I was” (216).
In Chapter 8, Trapped, Malcolm finally gets closer to getting arrested.
As the Chapter 9 title Caught indicates, Malcolm’s days as a free criminal are over. His half-sister is shocked at how nihilistic and demonic he has become. He is a professed atheist. He is full of rage and demons and he has no purpose to vent his passions. His brain is soaked with drugs.
His error is taking a stolen watch to a jewelry shop for repair.
In Chapter 10, Satan, we learn that Malcolm received a 10-year prison sentence.
Introduced to the Nation of Islam, a sect of Islam, Malcolm learned the doctrine: “The white man is of the devil.” This belief explained all his misery. He experienced what he believed was an epiphany.
Even if the narrative wasn’t literally true, the narrative about the white devil was metaphorically true. It was also undeniable.
We can understand why this doctrine would appeal to Malcolm and many men in his position.
Another powerful message from the Nation of Islam: “You don’t know who you are. The white man stripped you of your identity and gave you self-hatred in its place.”
We read on page 256 that the white man stole the black man’s culture, hid the black man’s history, his empires, his accomplishments, and told him he was a dumb animal.
There is an element of truth in this.
Of course there is no White Devil, a former black scientist, by the name of Mr. Yacub, but this cult resonates because the underpinnings of the belief system are largely true. See page 259 for more on this doctrine.
The Transforming Power of Literacy in Prison
On page 265, we read about Malcolm’s hunger for expressing himself, in particular to his mentor, Elijah Muhammad (who will later betray him). He started reading a dictionary from beginning to end.
In Chapter 12, Savior, Malcolm found a father figure in Elijah Muhammad who would betray Malcolm just as the white man did. This dual tragedy defines Malcolm’s life to this day.
Chapter 13, Minister Malcolm X, we read about Malcolm’s growing charisma as a religious and human rights leader under the umbrella of a religious sect or what some might call a cult.
In Chapter 14, Black Muslims, Malcolm explains how white America was terrified of this new religion, which was becoming more and more popular with black Americans.
In Chapter 15, Icarus, we read how Malcolm X addressed collective white guilt for the sins against black Americans.
In Chapter 16, we read how Malcolm’s growing popularity stirred jealousies with his mentor and worse his mentor’s scandals made Mr. Muhammad despise Malcolm who in his mentor’s compromised position would be the logical Alpha Leader of the group. Malcolm had to be expelled.
In Chapter 17, Mecca, Malcolm left the Nation of Islam sect to become a universal Muslim, now assessing people on their heart and soul, not their skin color. This caused a further rift with his old sect.
In Chapter 18, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Malcolm’s name change signified his new identity as a universal Muslim, no longer a “black Muslim.”
In Chapter 19, titled 1965, we read of Malcolm’s tragic assassination, by rival Black Muslims, which remains controversial to this day.
Two Counterargument and Rebuttal Examples
Malcolm X’s critics are eager to point out Malcolm’s infamous misogynistic quotes about women being vain nags who impede men from achieving their greatness. While this is a regrettable truth that captures Malcolm at an ignorant period of his life, we have to remember that Malcolm made these statements when he was beholden to the mind control of a misogynistic religious sect, a cult that Malcolm later renounced. While we can only speculate that Malcolm evolved beyond these misogynistic statements, we can offer concrete evidence that he offered black women a message of self-love, pride, and dignity to counteract the white supremacy fueled racism that would make them ashamed of their minds and bodies. Surely, we can mitigate charges of Malcolm’s misogyny when looked at the total evolution and message of his commitment to eradicating self-hating racism.
Detractors of Malcolm X point out that he was, contrary to his message of equal rights, a demagogic racist who spewed inflammatory remarks against whites for merely the color of their skin and Jews for unsubstantiated conspiratorial theories encouraged by Elijah Muhammad. However, we must again acknowledge that Malcolm had an anti-racist epiphany when he travelled to Mecca and Africa after which he renounced his racist views. Therefore, Malcolm’s detractors who fixate on one state of Malcolm’s psychological development show their ignorance of Malcolm’s evolution toward being a better person. As such, these critics lose much of their credibility.
While I concede that Malcolm X was a flawed man, vulnerable to the manipulations of Elijah Muhammad and prone to spewing misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and racist nonsense, when we examine the totality of Malcolm X’s evolution and human rights struggle, we are compelled to see him as an authentic voice for alleviating the nightmare of racism in America.
Conclusion Example as a Paraphrase of the Thesis That Includes the “So What Factor” (broader significance)
Of course Malcolm X was a flawed man. Of course Malcolm X put his foot in his mouth over and over. Of course Malcolm X delivered regrettable diatribes against people based on their gender, ethnicity, and skin color. However, no other black leader in the history of America addressed the internalized racism brought upon by 400 years of white supremacy. No other black leader boldly declared the crimes of white America against black Americans. No other black leader captured the hearts and minds of not only Americans but also people throughout the world to address the humanitarian nightmare of racism. We see this nightmare today as police are killing unarmed young black men and as entire black communities are being incarcerated in a form of segregation that that recalls the Jim Crow laws that oppressed Malcolm X in his time. We must therefore heed the warnings of Malcolm X’s speeches, which prove just as relevant today as they did during his time. We ignore his urgent message, and his greatness, at our own peril.
Work on one or more of the following for your partial draft due next meeting: