The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

“Do you know why the white man really hates you? It’s because every time he sees your face, he sees a mirror of his crime—and his guilty conscience can’t bear to face it!

“Now, just imagine that! This good, hard-working, Christian-believing black woman, she’s paid her money, she’s in her seat. Just because she’s black, she’s asked to get up! I mean, sometimes even for me it’s hard to believe the white man’s arrogance!”

I never really trust the kind of white people who are always so anxious to hang around Negroes, or to hang around in Negro communities. I don’t trust the kind of whites who love having Negroes always hanging around them.

I think that an objective reader may see how in the society to which I was exposed as a black youth here in America, for me to wind up in a prison was really just about inevitable. It happens to so many thousands of black youth. I think that an objective reader may see how when I heard “The white man is the devil,” when I played back what had been my own experiences, it was inevitable that I would respond positively; then the next twelve years of my life were devoted and dedicated to propagating that phrase among the black people. I think, I hope, that the objective reader, in following my life—the life of only one ghetto-created Negro—may gain a better picture and understanding than he has previously had of the black ghettoes which are shaping the lives and the thinking of almost all of the 22 million Negroes who live in America.