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The Autobiography Of Malcolm X Page 57 3 - 10 - 01 I am reading about the beginning of Malcolm Little s life. He was raised in Lansing, Michigan. His father was murdered and herself left his mother to take care of 5 kids. Malcolm tells about how he wasn t exactly making things easier for her mother by constantly getting into trouble every time she turned around.
His mother was very fair and could almost past for a white woman. To provide food on the table his mother worked as a maid. The people she worked for would find out she was black by seeing her kids and then she would be fired. Soon the family was living off of welfare. Malcolm s mother became mentally ill and his brothers and sisters were split up into foster homes around Michigan.
Malcolm has often clarified the use of the n word. Many of his white friends and classmates would say it around him as if it were no big deal. At the detention home he was sent to he heard it all the time. Often times when it was used the people didn t mean it in a derogatory manner. His teachers even addressed him with it. There was one point in the book where I could tell that at this point in time blacks were not considered on the same level as whites.
Malcolm told his teacher that he wanted to be a lawyer and he told him that it was not a reasonable goal for a n. He offered another option to him saying that blacks were good with their hands and that he should consider carpentry. I think the idea still stands today, the belief that a person of color can be a maid or carpenter. That they can be someone who is a yes mam or I ll get that for you type of individual. My mother s friend was at a restaurant and a white lady asked her what the special was as if my mother s friend was one of the staff that worked at the restaurant.
He describes working as a shoe shine boy at one of the jazz clubs. I can visualize the ballroom with all of the hip cats as he calls them. I can hear the music blaring of the Benny Goodman Band and Duke Ellington s Orchestra. I can infer from reading about his switch to living with his stepsister back east that he will notice 2 different worlds of blacks. The farther east he goes the more blacks succeed. The ones back east in the cities he notices have better jobs and better places to live in.
The Jim Crow laws still apply but not as strict. I wonder what changed Malcolm s perception on life and made he become less violent in his later years? I would like to know what became of his mother; he seems not to mention her much.
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