Author:: Alex Haley
Tags: malcom x autobiography race social justice#media/book
- Themes themes
- Notes: notes
- “The impoverished Negroes respected Malcolm in the way that wayward children respect the grandfather image… Here was a man who had come form the lower depths which they still inhabited, who had triumphed over his own criminality and his own ignorance to become a forceful leader and spokesman, an uncompromising champion of his people” xxviii quote
- “I was the lightest child in our family. (Out in the world later on, in Boston and New York, I as among the millions of Negroes who were insane enough to feel that it was some kind of status symbol to be light-complexioned—that one was actually fortunate to be born thus. But, still later, I learned to hate every drop of that white rapist’s blood that is in me.)” nightmare p3 quote
- Father beating him way less than others: “It came directly from the slavery tradition that the “mulatto,” because he was visibly nearer to white, was therefore “better"" smallthings symbols status
- all the small things became huge symbols
- Soon, nearly everywhere my father went, Black Legionnaires were reviling him as an “uppity nigger” for wanting to own a store, for … spreading unrest and dissention among “the good niggers” nightmare p3 quote
- tension of full integration vs. full separation
- “He was the type who would never have been associated with Africa, until the fad of havnig African friends became a status-symbol for ‘middle-class’ negroes” nightmare p5 status quote
- Honor in having the menial jobs: “Mr. Lyons had been a famous football star at Mason High School, was highly thought of in Mason, and consequently he now worked around that town in menial jobs.” nightmare p7 quote
- giving small bits to encourage obedience
- artificially defining what is “high status”
- “I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.” nightmare p8 speaking out quote
- whined to mom to get biscuits
- “The white kids didn’t make any great thing about us, either. They called us ‘nigger’ and ‘darkie’ and ‘Rastus’ so much we thought those were our natural names. But they didn’t think of it as an insult; it was just the way they thought about us” nightmare p9 quote
- normalized hate, what is normal has a lot of power
- “We were ‘state children,’ court wards; he had the full say-so over us. A white man in charger of a black man’s children. Nothing but legal, modern slavery—however kindly intentioned.” nightmare p21 quote
- Poor Economics example of assumptions about the poor of not being able to do anything for themselves. same with black people
- We like to hold these assumptions that people are inferior to us in order to have more power over them and feel good doing it
- act of charity to decide for them: taking the burden off of them
- assumptions #Dunning-Kruger effect
- “And knowing that my mother in there was a statistic that didn’t have to be, that existed because of a society’s failure, hypocrisy, greed, and lack of mercy and compassion. Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight” nightmare p22 quote
- start of malcom x’s crusade against the state
- On moving to New York: “I was going to become one of the most depraved parasitical hustlers among New York’s eight million people—four million of whom work, and the other four million of whom live off them.” harlemite p78 quote
- Parasite the poor preying off the poor never banding together to fix the societal issues caused by the rich
- exactly what oppressors want to happen, infighting
- Irony in black people taking advantage of white people’s innate assumption of black people being dumb: “We were in that world of Negroes who are both servants and psychologists, aware that white people are so obsessed with their own importance that they will pay liberally, even dearly, for the impression of being catered to and entertained.” harlemite p78 quote
- white people who are lower in the status chain and can’t get validation from other white people have a safe way to do some from black people because they are “better’ than them and have no worries about losing in a comparison
- always need an outlet of social validation
- vicious cycle of crime: “Full-time hustlers never can relax to appraise what they are doing and where they are bound. As is the case in any jungle, the hustler’s every waking hour is lived with both the practical and the subconscious knowledge that if he ever relaxes, if he ever slows down, the other hungry, restless foxes, ferrets, wolves, and vultures out there with him won’t hesitate to make him their prey.” hustler p112 quote
- “It’s impossible to dream, or to see, or to have a vision fo someone whom you never have seen before—and to see him exactly as he is. To see someone, and to see him exactly as he looks, is to have a pre-vision.” saved p193 quote
- don’t be fooled that you know someone when you haven’t seen them before
- in fact even if you have seen them very easy to trick you, hard to trust strangers Talking with Strangers
- Learning how to convert: “One day, I remember, a dirty glass of water was on a counter and Mr. Muhammad put a clean glass of water beside it. “You want to know how to spread my teachings?” he said, and he pointed to the glasses of water. “Don’t condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water,” he said, “Just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won’t have to say that yours is better.” savior p209 quote
- letting people come to their own realization is way better than telling them something
- how to convince people
- although malcolm did not really follow this, something for the person that lays everything out in the open and speaks the truth no matter how hard it hurts
- awe to the point of fear: “My adoration of Mr. Muhammad grew, in the sense of the Latin root wore adorare. It means that my worship of him was so awesome that he was the first man who I had ever feared—not fear such as of a man with a gun, but the fear such as one has of the power of the sun” Minister Malcolm X p216 quote
- an unhealthy level of worship for another person
- association with divinity as opposed to humanity
- Education and formality as a means of obscuring the actual problem and not contributing anything useful: “Which of us, I wonder, knew more about that Harlem ghetto “sub-culture”? I, who had hustled for years in those streets, or that black snob status-symbol-educated social worker… For generations, the so-called “educated” Negroes have “led” their black brothers by echoing the white man’s thinking—which naturally has been to the exploitive white man’s advantage.” icarus p272 quote
- words are the means to an end not the end in of themselves. They are just a tool for achieving something, if it’s not effective to the people then it’s not effective.
- parallels between the black revolution of mid 1900s and the alt-right white revolution of present day. Has always been an underlying problem how did we not know it was coming? ^LC5x-Z0mG
- icarus p279 ”… what has been the true pattern of “communications” between the “local white of good-will” and the local Negroes. It has been a pattern created by domineering, ego-ridden whites. Its characteristic design permitted the white man to feel “noble” about throwing crumbs to the black man, instead of feeling guilty about the local community’s system of cruelly exploiting Negroes.” quote
- in black revolution: white man and society imposed unfair and racist conditions on the black man and society
- in white revolution: modern society and futurism imposing equal rights and the concept of privilege and trying to ensure everyone has equal opportunity and the fact that some jobs are no longer “needed” and there is a certain right way of doing things to move into the futuer
- lots of parallels but in this one it’s more imposing something that is morally right and should be upheld.
- clearly the first part (modern society and equal rights) is only threatening to the identity of a minority (or at least not a majority) of people in the US. The second one seems to be more credible as the cause for why Trump won in 2016 from the factory workers, automated jobs people, etc.
- #ideas on expounding on Andrew Yang’s automation and employment thoughts and using this parallel lens to compare black revolution vs white underemployed revolution with CTA to tech people to focus less on efficiency and more on the people and working together with affected populations
- part of the problem is things aren’t out in the open
- view that changing peoples views has to be brutal, direct, and aggressive
- can’t do kumbaya like the civil rights movement and people like MLK did
- “It had become an outing, a picnic.” icarus p286 quote
- “In a subsequent press poll, not one Congressman or Senator with a previous record of opposition to civil rights said he had changed his views. What did anyone expect? How was a one-day “integrated” picnic going to counter-influence these representatives of prejudice rooted deep in the psyche of the American white man for four hundred years?” p287 icarus quote
- have to understand all sides of the spectrum
- “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). And because I had been a hustler, I knew better than all whites knew, and better than nearly all of the black “leaders” knew, that actually the most dangerous black man in America was the ghetto hustler” out p317 quote
- “the black American today shows 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” out p320 quote
- “New York white youth were killing victims; that was a “sociological” problem. But when black youth killed somebody, the power structure was looking to hang somebody” El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz p368 quote
- “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”#1965 p373 quote
- “I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man’s problem—just to avoid violence. I don’t go for non-violence if it also means a delayed solution. To me a delayed solution is a non-solution.”#1965 p374 quote
- “Mankind’s history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power, anxieties are created”#1965 p376 quote
- spiritual appeals are something that unites people while power just gives the illusion of obedience
- Don’t blame the individual, blame the design
- A turn towards unity, separation but also unification: “Let sincere whites go and teach non-violence to white people! … We will meanwhile be working aong our own kind, in our own black communities—showing and teaching black men in ways that only other black men can—that the black man has got to help himself. Working separately, the sincere white people and sincere black people actually will be working together.”#1965 p384 quote
- “anything I do today, I regard as urgent. No man is given but so much time to accomplish whatever is his life’s work.”#1965 p385 quote
- rushing to do as much as he can for the goal he loves so dearly
- a fierce passion to affect good change
- “You watch. I will be labeled as, at best, an ‘irresponsible’ black man. I have always felt about this accusation that the black ‘leader’ whom white men consider to be ‘responsible’ is invariable the black ‘leader’ who never gets any results. You only get action as a black man if you are regarded by the white man as ‘irresponsible.’ In fact, this much I had learned when I was just a little boy.”#1965 p389 quote
- wears the negative badges as marks of honor
- If people are riled up, it means you are saying something that is important to talk about
- provocativeness as a measure of how important an issue needs to be uncombed
- “Yes, I have cherished my ‘demagogue’ role.”#1965 p389 quote
- self-awareness around how extreme he seems and embracing it as necessary
- sometimes you need to push the extreme to push the normal
- “once when he said, ‘Aristotle shocked people. Charles Darwin outraged people. Aldous Huxley scandalized millions!‘” quote
- no censor, outrage and provocative as tools to push towards rightness
- provocativeness as a measure of how important an issue needs to be uncombed
- “The white man is afraid of truth. The truth takes the white man’s breath and drains his strength—you just watch his face get red anytime you tell him a little truth.” epilogue p404 quote
- is this the best way though?
- do you confront head on or do you try to understand first?
- two extremes what are the effectiveness of each
- confront vs. listen and understand
- The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political “football game” that is constantly raging between the white liberals and white conservatives. ^kMmDbeQoZ