I am re-reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X for the first time

[Ladyhawk]

since college.

Have you ever had a book that completely changed your life for all time? The Autobiography of Malcolm X did that to me. At the time I read it, I was still very right-wing. In Malcolm's descriptions of how white people feel about black folks, I saw myself. I have never been overtly racist. In fact, I got my family to re-think interracial relationships when I was in high school.

But Malcolm said that deep inside, white people can't help but see black people as different and that all white people think they are superior to all black people. Malcolm was right...at least about me. I felt great shame that this should be so because cognitively, I saw that black people are not inferior to white people. Somehow, the idea had been crammed into my impressionable young mind by my bigoted grandparents and parents.

I still find I have trouble with this almost unconscious way of thinking and seeing the world. I don't want to think or feel this way. I don't want to be afraid of black men because of the stereotype of black men as offenders. It doesn't help that the first black person I ever saw sexually molested me. But of course, I should not extrapolate the actions of a single person to implicate his entire race. That would be unconscionable.

I think I will always have to battle this unconscious way of thinking and hope that the black people I meet along the way understand that I am trying to change myself. I really do wish we could all be brothers and sisters and it pisses me off that I was fed bigotry while still at the breast. I imagine most white Americans were.

It also doesn't help that I almost never interact with black people in real life since I moved back to my hick white town. When I lived in Fresno, at least I knew African-Americans on campus.

Damn. :(

Will the race problem ever go away? Will we ever have a generation of people who aren't fed a line of racist bullshit? Will African Americans ever be able to trust white people and vice versa?

I can try to eradicate those negative feelings in myself, but I wonder how many people won't even own up to having those feelings? If I were to have a child (pretty late for that now, eh?), would I pass my unconscious feelings on, or would I be able to tell him that I'm trying to rid myself of these feelings and that he should not buy into the idea that certain races are inferior?

As I re-read Malcolm's words for the first time since the late eighties, I'm struck by the sense of betrayal and isolation he felt living among whites in Lansing, Michigan. He never said anything about how he felt while he was living it. Funny thing is, I feel the same way living among fundamentalists who knew me when I, too, was a fundamentalist. They don't accept me now. They cannot accept me now.

Maybe it's time to move to a place where people are more open-minded, where I can work on my issues in a less white, less Republican, less fundy venue.

(I wasn't sure if this belonged here or in the lounge. It is kind of personal, but it's political, too. Mods, please move it if it's lounge material.)

[Catherine Vincent]

1. You shouldn't leave.

If all the open minded liberals leave the small conservative towns and head to the more liberal towns, then to me the problem won't be solved. You guys need to stay where you are to spread your open mindness liberally.:)

[OKDem08]

2. I've been thinking about these issues recently, too

I am in the process of reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. I can't get past this quote: "well, boy, whom do you belong to?"

[applegrove]

3. I read it after I had read some contemporary African Literature. The whole

genre is amazing & eye-opening. And yes - that was a good book. Don't know exactly how true it was. But very, very hopeful book - makes you weep that we didn't get to see the metamorphosis Malcolm went through in the 5th decade of his life - since he seemed to take a "huge leap" every decade. And was murdered before the three most productive decades of any great person's life.

[roguevalley]

4. I wish he had lived. He was finding a way to see how to live, both

sides together. He was a powerful moral force and much missed, like MLK, one of my heroes.