Villain
When Malcolm speaks about the governmental institutions, they are always portrayed in a negative light and imagines as being the villain of the story. This image is set even from the first chapter of the novel when after Malcolm’s father’s death; Malcolm is taken away from his mother because she refused to accept free pork. Another instance when the society is seen as the villain is when the narrator remembers how the state refused to pay the family money after Malcolm’s father was killed, insisting that it wasn’t a murder and rather it was a suicide.
Good for nothing
While slavery was no longer something accepted, the society still had extremist ideas about what black people should do with their lives. Black children attended schools but their capacity was underestimated and even when a black child was at the top of his class, it was deemed unacceptable for the child to wish for a position of authority. This is seen in Malcolm’s case who despite being smart and having the desire to be a lawyer, his teachers didn’t believed that he could become what he wanted because he was black and urged him to choose a more "suitable" carrier, namely to be a carpenter. Slowly this type of thinking is adopted by Malcolm as well and he starts to see himself as someone who will not be able to achieve great things in his life because of his skin color.
Impostors
Soon after Malcolm moves to Boston, he begins to notice that there are two categories of blacks; one that tries to imitate the white people by dressing in the same way the whites did and aspiring to have the same jobs as them and another category, a poorer one that while they do suffer hardship, they are perceived as being true to who they really are and are looked up to. The image portrayed here is that of the black community that is not able to fit. On one side, we have the whites who can’t accept the blacks not matter how hard they try to fit in and on the other side there are the black who consider the blacks trying to adapt into the white community as being impostors and regarded in a negative light.
Experiment gone wrong
During his time in prison, Malcolm becomes a Muslim after he finds about the principles promoted by a group called the Nation of Islam. The image the Nation of Islam has about white people is what eventually convinces Malcolm to become a member and it is in many ways similar to the derogatory image the white people had about black people. The Nation of Islam believed that in the beginning all men where black and lived in harmony under Allah’s rule. Things changed when a mad scientist created the white race, an evil race that had the sole purpose of enslaving the black people and destroying their culture and peaceful nature. The image promoted by the Nation of Islam was that of a white nation seen as a parasite, something unnatural trying to suppress something good, a nation created by Allah himself.
