Malcom X went through a couple of major philosophical shifts in his lifetime. However for the bulk of his activist career, X was essentially a militant purist. He believed (as the Nation of Islam professes) that Blacks should inter-marry, completely disavow drugs and alcohol, exercise, study and ultimately embody the master race that they are.
Malcom X believed and spoke hundreds of times about the fact that White people are the creation of Satan, not of God. He believed absolutely that white people are fundamentally, inherently evil. It is simply the nature of white man and woman. Indeed, his auotbiography discusses an event wherein he gave a speech and a young, blonde white woman was so moved she approached him afterward, tears in her eyes and asked how she could help.
"You can't. You're White. The only thing you could possibly do is kill yourself."
See, the absolute arrogance of people so utterly cloaked in their white privilege is that, despite a lifetime of advantage and opportunity not afforded to blacks, they can somehow offer fig leaves and "support" the plight of the downtrodded black man when in fact THEY PERSONALLY are manifestations of the very repression and subjugation placed upon blacks since the dawn of White people.
When you hold up a Black Lives Matter, you aren't being supportive. You are making a mockery of the sickening crimes you personally have perpetuated simply by existing. You, as a white person, are the absolute embodiement of wickedness and corruption and holding up a sign or handing out water or even tearing down a Target store in no way can expunge your soul from the vile wickedness that literally makes up your entire being.
Wave your flag if you must. But until you have burned down your home, destroyed all your possessions and then killed yourself, you've done nothing of significance to help blacks.
Full disclosure, as this doesn't tell the whole story.
I consider Malcolm X a hero. No...seriously.
Why? Because psychology and life tells us, most of us never change. NEVER. By the time we are 18-21, we are the people we are going to be at the core, spiritually, for the rest of our lives UNLESS we suffer some life changing event like the loss of a child or spouse or a near death experience. Overwhelmingly, people don't change.
As you point out, he did. Not once, but twice. That's why I consider him a hero. He changed and for the right reasons.
First, he was a street running thug in Boston. He was a crook and a hoodlum till he got caught and went to prison. Where he met a member of the Nation of Islam. He adopted the faith, read vociferously, adopted the regimens of the religion, and devoted himself to an entirely new life. He changed his core. He became a better man, a husband, a father, and a devoted follower of Elijah Muhhammad.
He worshiped the man. He lived and breathed the religion. He dedicated his life to the Nation. And yes, many of his preachings I don't agree with.
When he learned that Elijah was sleeping with women in the Nation and impregnating them, his second awakening began. He was disillusioned. He felt betrayed. He, Malcolm...was more devoted to the tenets of the faith than Elijah himself had been. Power struggles withstanding, he left the Nation. At his own peril. He was viewed as a threat and his departure essentially led to his assassination. He left the Nation in March 1964.
The next month, he took pilgrimage to Mecca, where he went through all of the Hajj rituals. He later said: "seeing Muslims of "all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans," interacting as equals led him to see Islam as a means by which racial problems could be overcome."
He said that for the first time in his life he had felt no racial antagonism toward whites nor had he sensed any antagonism on their part against him....The letter from Mecca, dated April 25, described how he had arrived at his new insights on race relations while on a pilgrimage.
'All Colors and Ranks'
“There are Muslims of all colors and ranks here in Mecca from all parts of this earth,” he wrote.
“During the past seven days of this holy pilgrimage, while undergoing the rituals of the hajj [pilgrimage], I have eaten from the same plate, drank from the same glass, slept on the same bed or rug, while praying to the same God—not only with some of this earth's most powerful kings, cabinet members, potentates and other forms of political and religious rulers —but also with fellow‐Muslims whose skin was the whitest of white, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, and whose hair was the blondest of blond—yet it was the first time in my life that I didn't see them as 'white' men. I could look into their faces and see that these didn't regard themselves as 'white.'
“Their belief in the Oneness of God (Allah) had actually removed the 'white' from their minds, which automatically their attitude and behavior toward people of other colors. Their belief in the Oneness of God has actually made them so different from Ameriican whites, their outer physical characteristics played no part at all in my mind during all my close associations with them.”
He described some of his reactions to Mecca this way: “I have never before witnessed such sincere hospitality and the practise of true brotherhood as I have seen and experienced during this pilgrimage here in Arabia.
“In fact, what I have seen and experienced on this pilgrimage has forced me to 'rearrange' much of my own thought‐pattern, and to toss aside some of my previous concluslons.”
In describing the people on the pilgrimage, he wrote: “Their sincere submission to the Oneness of God, and their true acceptance of all nonwhites as equals makes the so‐called 'whites' also acceptable as equals into the brotherhood of Islam with the 'nonwhites'. Color ceases to be a determining factor of a man's worth or value once he becomes a Muslim. I hope I am making this part very clear, because it is now very clear to me.
“If white Americans would accept the religion of Islam, if they would accept the Oneness of God (Allah), then they could also sincerely accept the Oneness of Man, and they would cease to measure others always in terms of their 'differences in color'.”
At another point he wrote: ”The American Negro should never be blamed for racial 'animosities,' because his are only reactions, or defense mechanisms which his subconscious intelligence has forced him to erect against the conscious racism practiced . . . by American whites.
“But as America's insane obsession with racism leads her up the suicidal path, nearer and nearer to the precipice that leads to the bottomless pits below, I do believe that whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, through their own young, less hampered intellect, will see the 'handwriting on the wall' and turn for spiritual salvation to the religion of Islam and force the older generation of American whites to turn with them.“
Mecca fundamentally changed him, or he changed, again.
While he didn't fully embrace people of all colors, he stopped believing all white men were evil. He believed any color of man that believed in Islam and God was a good person. That was a profound step.
I would have enjoyed seeing his further growth, had he not been so sadly assassinated.
Just pointing out that you stopped the Malcolm X story short. Yes he had once said you must kill yourself. He evolved from that notion. He grew. As we all must. His eyes were opened. As ours all need to be.
