“in all my years in the streets, I’d been looking at the exploitation that for the first time I really saw and understood”
The time Malcolm spend in prison helped him grow and thus his ideas about racism and the way he viewed whites before being incarcerated changed drastically. Before being sent to prison, Malcolm’s ideas about race and about who is good or bad were straightforward; whites were seen as bad and blacks were seen as good. For him, there was no middle ground and when someone white did something good it was seen as something done out of interest and when a black person did something wrong was seen as something that the white oppressive society did. When Malcolm is released, his ideas change. Men are seen as being good or bad based on their actions and no longer something determined solely by a person’s skin color.
America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem.
Malcolm believed that racism could be eradicated through Islam, the religion that he saw as being able to make everyone equal. This quote shows the idealistic way in which Malcolm thought about Islam. For him, nothing could be compared with the religion that he thought to be ideal. Because of this idea, Malcolm feels compelled to try and convince as many people as he can to join the faith that he thought will save everyone. The idea that Islamism is the ideal faith is born after Malcolm visits Mecca. During his trip, Malcolm is able to see that whites and blacks can live in peace in harmony and concludes that the American society is the one to blame for the racism existing in the USA.
“Yes! Yes, that raping, red-headed devil was my grandfather! That close, yes! My mother’s father! She didn’t like to speak of it, can you blame her? She said she never laid eyes on him! She was glad for that! I’m glad for her! If I could drain away his blood that pollutes my body, and pollutes my complexion, I’d do it! Because I hate every drop of the rapist’s blood that’s in me!”
Through this quote, Malcolm reveals the way white people looked at white people and the way in which they were treated. Malcolm’s own mother was the result of rape and while Malcolm’s lighter skin helped him in life, he resented his white ancestor because he represented racism and the idea that black people were worthless in comparison to white people. This quote also reveals Malcolm’s desire for purity. Just like white men considered sexual relationships between black and whites as something unnatural, Malcolm also believes that the black people should not be tainted by white blood, something impure and unnatural according to the Nation of Islam’s views.
