Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

2.1 A Stateless People:Then and Today: DuBois,Mandela,Malcolm X,Ellison,Hughes

  2.         A martyr for social justice, Malcolm X witnessed inequality and discrimination from his early years. As a youth he realized how difficult to keep his family together  because of unfair practices  of "Welfare, the courts, and their doctor" (22). He was forced to fight as a young man just to retain a small semblance of respect (25). As early as the seventh grade, however, Malcolm realized the futility of his efforts to integrate (33). A trip to Boston, however, changed his life. For the first time, he became aware of the truly destructive nature of discrimination (38). Subsequently, taking a job as a shoeshine boy in a music hall, Malcolm met black celebrities Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Lionel Hampton and began living the fast life  smoking reefers, drinking liquor, and learning to hustle (48-54).  His lifestyle exerted a deteriorating effect upon him, inducing in him a feeling of  self-disgust , as   his "conked" which "made him wonder if the Negro has completely lost his sense of identity , lost touch with himself" (57). Malcolm witnessed black poverty  and Washington, D.C. and Harlem, and consequently undergoes his second emotional transformation as a hustler, much like Rinehart in Ellison's The Invisible Man (78-79). Penniless in New York, he waits tables and becomes "schooled well" in crimes of various sorts (85-86). Angry and cynical, Malcolm realizes that instead of being professionals like the whites, all blacks were "victims of the white man's American social system" (93). Ironically, it is his boss' wife who teaches him the truth about the American social, political and economic system" (119). He then  bitterly concludes that he had been "dead but didn't [even] know it" (128).   Malcolm next resorts to opportunism, as did Bledsoe in The Invisible Man. After operating a "successful" burglary business, he refuses to kill a detective Slack , and as a result , he is  sentenced to ten years in prison (152-153).  

3.            Ironically, it is in prison that Malcolm learns about Islam. There, he changes his habits, quits smoking, and eating pork (158-159). It is here also that he first hears the white man described as a "devil" (162). Nevertheless, Malcolm humbled himself spiritually for the first time. This phase denotes the most significant change in his lifetime. While incarcerated, he begins studying (174) and even copying the dictionary (175). His thirst for knowledge and answers is unquenchable. He reads histories by Will Durant, H. G. Wells, and Toynbee (178-179), and also reaches the profound conclusion that there exist a vast difference between a Christian and  those who use the institution for their own benefit; one is a sacrificial life "meek, humble, and Christ-like," and the other is an means through which, as Niebuhr suggests, one protects his own interests (180). Beyond this point, he focuses on ideas of philosophy such as Schopenhauer. Kant, Nietzsche, and Spinoza  (183).  After much reading and understanding,   Malcolm learns the true meaning and motives underlying the concept of exploitation (197). Changing his name to Malcolm X  symbolizes the next major stage of his development, a phase which represented his new identity as a member of the Islamic faith (203) , a faith under which he subsequently served as a minister to his people. Speaking out against white supremacy (259), he sadly yet courageously recognized the possibility of his own martyrdom (270), as Mr. Muhammad had earlier expressed (270).  Malcolm X's struggle was much like Nelson Mandela's in South Africa. Mandela's wife Winifred quoted her grandmother who aptly described the racial conflict in her country thus: "When the white people came, we had the land and they had the Bible. Now we have the Bible and they have the land" (Mandela, in Denenberg 59). From the ideas expressed in his autobiography, Malcolm X's sentiments appear very similar to  Robert Sobukwe in South African, in a speech before his graduating class: "We have been accused of blood thirstiness because we preach 'noncollaboration.' I wish to state here tonight that it is the only choice open to use. History has taught us that a group in power has never voluntarily relinquished its position. It has always been forced to do so. And we do not expect miracles to happen in South Africa" (Sobukwe, in Denenberg 67).