The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

It has never ceased to amaze me how so many Negroes, then and now, could stand the indignity of that kind of self-delusion.

Over 115 million African blacks—close to the 1930’s population of the United States—were murdered or enslaved during the slave trade. And I read how when the slave market was glutted, the cannibalistic white powers of Europe next carved up, as their colonies, the richest areas of the black continent. And Europe’s chancelleries for the next century played a chess game of naked exploitation and power from Cape Horn to Cairo.

I listen today to the radio, and watch television, and read the headlines about the collective white man’s fear and tension concerning China. When the white man professes ignorance about why the Chinese hate him so, my mind can’t help flashing back to what I read, there in prison, about how the blood forebears of this same white man raped China at a time when China was trusting and helpless.

Those original white “Christian traders” sent into China millions of pounds of opium. By 1839, so many of the Chinese were addicts that China’s desperate government destroyed twenty thousand chests of opium. The first Opium War was promptly declared by the white man. Imagine! Declaring war upon someone who objects to being narcotized! The Chinese were severely beaten, with Chinese-invented gunpowder.

America’s U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson complained not long ago that in the United Nations “a skin game” was being played. He was right. He was facing reality. A “skin game” is being played. But Ambassador Stevenson sounded like Jesse James accusing the marshal of carrying a gun. Because who in the world’s history ever has played a worse “skin game” than the white man?

When I discovered philosophy, I tried to touch all the landmarks of philosophical development. Gradually, I read most of the old philosophers, Occidental and Oriental. The Oriental philosophers were the ones I came to prefer; finally, my impression was that most Occidental philosophy had largely been borrowed from the Oriental thinkers. Socrates, for instance, traveled in Egypt.

I don’t think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than I did. In fact, prison enabled me to study far more intensively than I would have if my life had gone differently and I had attended some college. I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that. Where else but in a prison could I have attacked my ignorance by being able to study intensely sometimes as much as fifteen hours a day?

Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche, naturally, I read all of those. I don’t respect them; I am just trying to remember some of those whose theories I soaked up in those years. These three, it’s said, laid the groundwork on which the Fascist and Nazi philosophy was built. I don’t respect them because it seems to me that most of their time was spent arguing about things that are not really important. They remind me of so many of the Negro “intellectuals,” so-called, with whom I have come in contact—they are always arguing about something useless.

I’ll tell you something. The whole stream of Western philosophy has now wound up in a cul-de-sac. The white man has perpetrated upon himself, as well as upon the black man, so gigantic a fraud that he has put himself into a crack. He did it through his elaborate, neurotic necessity to hide the black man’s true role in history.

History has been so “whitened” by the white man that even the black professors have known little more than the most ignorant black man about the talents and rich civilizations and cultures of the black man of millenniums ago.

I have lectured in Negro colleges and some of these brainwashed black Ph.D.’s, with their suspenders dragging the ground with degrees, have run to the white man’s newspapers calling me a “black fanatic.”

If I were president of one of these black colleges, I’d hock the campus if I had to, to send a bunch of black students off digging in Africa for more, more and more proof of the black race’s historical greatness. The white man now is in Africa digging and searching. An African elephant can’t stumble without falling on some white man with a shovel. Practically every week, we read about some great new find from Africa’s lost civilizations. All that’s new is wh...

This is probably as big a single worry as the American prison system has today—the way the Muslim teachings, circulated among all Negroes in the country, are converting new Muslims among black men in prison, and black men are in prison in far greater numbers than their proportion in the population. The reason is that among all Negroes the black convict is the most perfectly preconditioned to hear the words, “the white man is the devil.” You tell that to any Negro. Except for those relatively few “integration”-mad so-called “intellectuals,” and those black men who are otherwise fat, happy, and deaf, dumb, and blinded, with their crumbs from the white man’s rich table, you have struck a nerve center in the American black man.

And, as I say, above all Negroes, the black prisoner. Here is a black man caged behind bars, probably for years, put there by the white man. Usually the convict comes from among those bottom-of-the-pile Negroes, the Negroes who through their entire lives have been kicked about, treated like children—Negroes who never have met one white man who didn’t either take something from them or do something to them.

“For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, ‘Do you hate me?’ The white man is in no moral position to accuse anyone else of hate! “Why, when all of my ancestors are snake-bitten, and I’m snake-bitten, and I warn my children to avoid snakes, what does that snake sound like accusing me of hate-teaching?”

“No! We reject segregation even more militantly than you say you do! We want separation, which is not the same! The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that segregation is when your life and liberty are controlled, regulated, by someone else. To segregate means to control. Segregation is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. But separation is that which is done voluntarily, by two equals—for the good of both!

The white man was barred from attendance—the first time the American black man had ever dreamed of such a thing. And that brought us new attacks from the white man and his black puppets. “Black segregationists…racists!” Accusing us of segregation! Across America, whites barring blacks was standard.

“Your slavemaster, he brought you over here, and of your past everything was destroyed. Today, you do not know your true language. What tribe are you from? You would not recognize your tribe’s name if you heard it. You don’t know nothing about your true culture. You don’t even know your family’s real name. You are wearing a white man’s name! The white slavemaster, who hates you!

“You are the planet Earth’s only group of people ignorant of yourself, ignorant of your own kind, of your true history, ignorant of your enemy! You know nothing at all but what your white slavemaster has chosen to tell you. And he has told you only that which will benefit himself, and his own kind. He

“The ignorance we of the black race here in America have, and the self-hatred we have, they are fine examples of what the white slavemaster has seen fit to teach to us. Do we show the plain common sense, like every other people on this planet Earth, to unite among ourselves? No! We are humbling ourselves, sitting-in, and begging-in, trying to unite with the slavemaster! I don’t seem able to imagine any more ridiculous sight. A thousand ways every day, the white man is telling you ‘You can’t live here, you can’t enter here, you can’t eat here, drink here, walk here, work here, you can’t ride here, you can’t play here, you can’t study here.’ Haven’t we yet seen enough to see that he has no plan to unite with you?

“You have tilled his fields! Cooked his food! Washed his clothes! You have cared for his wife and children when he was away. In many cases, you have even suckled him at your breast! You have been far and away better Christians than this slavemaster who taught you his Christianity! “You have sweated blood to help him build a country so rich that he can today afford to give away millions—even to his enemies! And when those enemies have gotten enough from him to then be able to attack him, you have been his brave soldiers, dying for him. And you have been always his most faithful servant during the so-called ‘peaceful’ times— “And, still, this Christian American white man has not got it in him to find the human decency, and enough sense of justice, to recognize us, and accept us, the black people who have done so much for him, as fellow human beings!”

“He has left such a little black in us,” Mr. Muhammad would go on, “that now he despises us so bad—meaning he despises himself, for what he has done to us—that he tells us that legally if we have got one drop of black blood in us, that means you are all-black as far as his laws are concerned! Well, if that’s all we’ve got left, we want to reclaim that one drop!”

But in the arena of dealing with human beings, the white man’s working intelligence is hobbled. His intelligence will fail him altogether if the humans happen to be non-white. The white man’s emotions superseded his intelligence. He will commit against non-whites the most incredible spontaneous emotional acts, so psyche-deep is his “white superiority” complex. Where was the A-bomb dropped…“to save American lives”? Can the white man be so naive as to think the clear import of this ever will be lost upon the non-white two-thirds of the earth’s population? Before that bomb was dropped—right over here in the United States, what about the one hundred thousand loyal naturalized and native-born Japanese-American citizens who were herded into camps, behind barbed wire? But how many German-born naturalized Americans were herded behind barbed wire? They were white! Historically, the non-white complexion has evoked and exposed the “devil” in the very nature of the white man. What else but a controlling emotional “devil” so blinded American white intelligence that it couldn’t foresee that millions of black slaves, “freed,” then permitted even limited education, would one day rise up as a terrifying monster within white America’s midst?

“I can’t turn around without hearing about some ‘civil rights advance’! White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting ‘hallelujah’! Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man’s back—and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man’s supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it’s still going to leave a scar!”

super relevant

But I want to tell you something. This pattern, this “system” that the white man created, of teaching Negroes to hide the truth from him behind a façade of grinning, “yessir-bossing,” foot-shuffling and head-scratching—that system has done the American white man more harm than an invading army would do to him. Why do I say this? Because all this has steadily helped this American white man to build up, deep in his psyche, absolute conviction that he is “superior.”

Today we are seeing this revolution of the non-white peoples, who just a few years ago would have frozen in horror if the mighty white nations so much as lifted an eyebrow. What it is, simply, is that black and brown and red and yellow peoples have, after hundreds of years of exploitation and imposed “inferiority” and general misuse, become, finally, do-or-die sick and tired of the white man’s heel on their necks. How can the white American government figure on selling “democracy” and “brotherhood” to non-white peoples—if they read and hear every day what’s going on right here in America, and see the better-than-a-thousand-words photographs of the American white man denying “democracy” and “brotherhood” even to America’s native-born non-whites? The world’s non-whites know how this Negro here has loved the American white man, and slaved for him, tended to him, nursed him. This Negro has jumped into uniform and gone off and died when this America was attacked by enemies both white and non-white. Such a faithful, loyal non-white as this—and still America bombs him, and sets dogs on him, and turns fire hoses on him, and jails him by the thousands, and beats him bloody, and inflicts upon him all manner of other crimes.

Only a few thousands of Negroes, relatively a very tiny number, are taking any part in “integration.” Here, again, it is those few bourgeois Negroes, rushing to throw away their little money in the white man’s luxury hotels, his swanky nightclubs, and big, fine, exclusive restaurants. The white people patronizing those places can afford it. But these Negroes you see in those places can’t afford it, certainly most of them can’t. Why, what does some Negro one installment payment away from disaster look like somewhere downtown out to dine, grinning at some headwaiter who has more money than the Negro? Those bourgeois Negroes out draping big tablecloth-sized napkins over their knees and ordering quail under glass and stewed snails—why, Negroes don’t even like snails! What they’re doing is proving they’re integrated.

“Integration” is called “assimilation” if white ethnic groups alone are involved: it’s fought against tooth and nail by those who want their heritage preserved. Look at how the Irish threw the English out of Ireland. The Irish knew the English would engulf them. Look at the French-Canadians, fanatically fighting to keep their identity. In fact, history’s most tragic result of a mixed, therefore diluted and weakened, ethnic identity has been experienced by a white ethnic group—the Jew in Germany. He had made greater contributions to Germany than Germans themselves had. Jews had won over half of Germany’s Nobel Prizes. Every culture in Germany was led by the Jew; he published the greatest newspaper. Jews were the greatest artists, the greatest poets, composers, stage directors. But those Jews made a fatal mistake—assimilating.

“Gentlemen, I finished the eighth grade in Mason, Michigan. My high school was the black ghetto of Roxbury, Massachusetts. My college was in the streets of Harlem, and my master’s was taken in prison. Mr. Muhammad has taught me that I never need fear any man’s intellect who tries to defend or to justify the white man’s criminal record against the non-white man—especially the white man and the black man here in North America.”

never fear a man's intellect - imposter syndrome

My clue to the Jew’s question and challenges is that among all other ethnic groups, his expressed thinking, his expressed concerns, are the most subjective. And the Jew is usually hypersensitive. I mean, you can’t even say “Jew” without him accusing you of anti-Semitism. I don’t care what a Jew is professionally, doctor, merchant, housewife, student, or whatever—first he, or she, thinks Jew. Now, of course I can understand the Jew’s hypersensitivity. For two thousand years, religious and personal prejudices against Jews have been vented and exercised, as strong as white prejudices against the non-white. But I know that America’s five and a half million Jews (two million of them are concentrated in New York) look at it very practically, whether they know it or not: that all of the bigotry and hatred focused upon the black man keeps off the Jew a lot of heat that would be on him otherwise.

supporting Palestine is considered antisemitism

“America is subsidizing what is left of the prestige and strength of the once mighty Britain. The sun has set forever on that monocled, pith-helmeted resident colonialist, sipping tea with his delicate lady in the non-white colonies being systematically robbed of every valuable resource. Britain’s superfluous royalty and nobility now exist by charging tourists to inspect the once baronial castles, and by selling memoirs, perfumes, autographs, titles, and even themselves.

“The whole world knows that the white man cannot survive another war. If either of the two giant white nations pushes the button, white civilization will die!

Characteristically, as always, the devilish white man lacks the moral strength and courage to cast off his arrogance. He wants, today, to ‘buy’ friends among the non-whites. He tries, characteristically, to cover up his past record. He does not possess the humility to admit his guilt, to try and atone for his crimes.

The death talk was not my fear. Every second of my twelve years with Mr. Muhammad, I had been ready to lay down my life for him. The thing to me worse than death was the betrayal. I could conceive death. I couldn’t conceive betrayal—not of the loyalty which I had given to the Nation of Islam, and to Mr. Muhammad. During the previous twelve years, if Mr. Muhammad had committed any civil crime punishable by death, I would have said and tried to prove that I did it—to save him—and I would have gone to the electric chair, as Mr. Muhammad’s servant.

Mr. Muhammad, instead of facing what he had done before his followers, as a human weakness or as fulfillment of prophecy—which I sincerely believe that Muslims would have understood, or at least they would have accepted—Mr. Muhammad had, instead, been willing to hide, to cover up what he had done.

That was how I first began to realize that I had believed in Mr. Muhammad more than he believed in himself. And that was how, after twelve years of never thinking for as much as five minutes about myself, I became able finally to muster the nerve, and the strength, to start facing the facts, to think for myself.

What Sonny Liston was about to meet, in fact, was one of the most awesome frights that ever can confront any person—one who worships Allah, and who is completely without fear.

The secret of one of fight history’s greatest upsets was that months before that night, Clay had out-thought Liston. There probably never has been as quiet a new-champion party. The boyish king of the ring came over to my motel. He ate ice cream, drank milk, talked with football star Jimmy Brown and other friends, and some reporters. Sleepy, Cassius took a quick nap on my bed, then he went back home.

Cassius calmly made the announcement which burst into international headlines that he was a “Black Muslim.” But let me tell you something about that. Cassius never announced himself a member of any “Black Muslims.” The press reporters made that out of what he told them, which was this: “I believe in the religion of Islam, which means I believe there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Apostle.

This first direct death-order was how, finally, I began to arrive at my psychological divorce from the Nation of Islam. I began to see, wherever I went—on the streets, in business places, on elevators, sidewalks, in passing cars—the faces of Muslims whom I knew, and I knew that any of them might be waiting the opportunity to try and put a bullet into me.

What was I going to do? My life was inseparably committed to the American black man’s struggle. I was generally regarded as a “leader.” For years, I had attacked so many so-called “black leaders” for their shortcomings. Now, I had to honestly ask myself what I could offer, how I was genuinely qualified to help the black people win their struggle for human rights. I had enough experience to know that in order to be a good organizer of anything which you expect to succeed—including yourself—you must almost mathematically analyze cold facts.

I knew that in any society, a true leader is one who earns and deserves the following he enjoys. True followers are bestowed by themselves, out of their own volition and emotions. I knew that the great lack of most of the big-named “Negro leaders” was their lack of any true rapport with the ghetto Negroes. How could they have rapport when they spent most of their time “integrating” with white people? I knew that the ghetto people knew that I never left the ghetto in spirit, and I never left it physically any more than I had to.

The point I am making is that, as a “leader,” I could talk over the ABC, CBS, or NBC microphones, at Harvard or at Tuskegee; I could talk with the so-called “middle class” Negro and with the ghetto blacks (whom all the other leaders just talked about).

The ghetto hustler is internally restrained by nothing. He has no religion, no concept of morality, no civic responsibility, no fear—nothing. To survive, he is out there constantly preying upon others, probing for any human weakness like a ferret. The ghetto hustler is forever frustrated, restless, and anxious for some “action.” Whatever he undertakes, he commits himself to it fully, absolutely.

This was when it began being said that I was America’s only Negro who “could stop a race riot—or start one.” I don’t know if I could do either one. But I know one thing: it had taught me in a very few minutes to have a whole lot of respect for the human combustion that is packed among the hustlers and their young admirers who live in the ghettoes where the Northern white man has sealed-off the Negro—away from whites—for a hundred years. The “long hot

You let Washington, D.C.’s festering blacks head down Pennsylvania Avenue. Detroit has already seen a peaceful massing of more than a hundred thousands blacks—think about that. You name the city. Black social dynamite is in Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles…the black man’s anger is there, fermenting.

I’ve strayed off onto some of the incidents and situations which have taught me to respect the danger in the ghettoes. I had been trying to explain how I honestly evaluated my own qualifications to be worthy of presenting myself as an independent “leader” among black men. In the end, I reasoned that the decision already had been made for me. The ghetto masses already had entrusted me with an image of leadership among them. I knew the ghetto instinctively extends that trust only to one who had demonstrated that he would never sell them out to the white man. I not only had no such intention—to sell out was not even in my nature.

The black man in North America was economically sick and that was evident in one simple fact: as a consumer, he got less than his share, and as a producer gave least. The black American today shows us the perfect parasite image—the black tick under the delusion that he is progressing because he rides on the udder of the fat, three-stomached cow that is white America.

The black man in North America was sickest of all politically. He let the white man divide him into such foolishness as considering himself a black “Democrat,” a black “Republican,” a black “Conservative,” or a black “Liberal”…when a ten-million black vote bloc could be the deciding balance of power in American politics, because the white man’s vote is almost always evenly divided.

The farmer, through his lobby, is the most government-subsidized special-interest group in America today, because a million farmers vote, not as Democrats, or Republicans, liberals, conservatives, but as farmers.