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How Did Malcolm X Change

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Malcolm X is to be considered one of the more famous radicals during the civil rights movement in the United States. In the book The Autobiography of Malcolm X As Told to Alex Haley, the life story of Malcolm X is told and how difficult his life was. Malcolm is the only major character in this book, yes there are other characters and events that contribute to his hatred towards white people. Although Malcolm always on some level hated white people he frequently changes his views during his lifetime. Each different point of life he goes by a different name such as Malcolm Little, Detroit Red, Satan, Malcolm X, and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Each time Malcolm changed his name his changed his persona as well and each event either was an example of systemic oppression or separation v. integration. …show more content…

Malcolm silently just sits back and watches as his childhood is slowly being taken away from him. Not only was his childhood taken away because of the color of his skin but he also lost his father because of how bad the racism was, even his mother who was white was even taken away from her kids. However what really opens Malcolm's eyes to how awful people were to each other just because of the color of their skin, is when Malcolm told his junior high school teacher he wanted to be a lawyer. If Malcolm was white his teacher would have supported him however because he was colored he told Malcolm "be realistic... a negro can't be a lawyer...why don't you plan on carpentry?" (page 38, chpt. 2). Even though some white people were nice to colored people they still thought lesser of them. This is a perfect example of systemic oppression. These events that occurred during his early life later play a major part of the reason why Malcolm becomes so obsessed with racial politics in

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