Malcolm X Post II-RACISM

About after Chapter 12, you hear Malcolm constantly ragging and ranting on and about "integration crazy negroes". As I read Chapter 15, I came across a NY times article by Nicolas Kristof (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05kristof.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=racism&st=cse) and saw how closely this related to Malcolm's observations. Kristof in this article discusses the unconscious racism that occurs towards African Americans in today, the 21th century. In his article, he cites research from a professor at Yale, whose studies have shown that conscious racism has been on a low, but unconscious racism (or aversive racism) has not been diminished. Malcolm, in Chapter 15, saw this future for African American's, which I thought was amazing. Haley illustrated this point and foresight of Malcolm when Malcolm stated to the black Ph. D "Do you know what white racists call blacks Ph. D's...Nigger" (Haley 290). 

I think that this study perfectly demonstrates what is occurring in the world today. Many people don't realize they are being racist, and make unconscious racist judgements of people of another skin color or religious sect. This was actually the main storyline in a episode of Lie to Me in which the crime investigation team helped solve a crime by testing the repsonse time of both white and black candidates towards pictures in which candidates had to choose if the person in the pitcture was honorable or not. The greater the response time was, the bigger racist the person was. This experiment took advantage of the concept of aversive racism, discussed earlier in this blog.

While reading this book, I am mostly unbiased. I am neither black or white, nor Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Therefore, I don't really relate to Malcolm's whole discussion about racism. However, being "non-white", I do face a few stereotypes. These include that Indian's eat curry all the time, are always smart, and are good at mathematics. Even though these are all good things, it is never good to stereotype are is hurtful to people who do not fulfill these stereotypes (fortunately I do). However, there is the offensive word for Indians which is sometimes used by British people-Paki (as in Pakistani). This bears equal offense to the African American's offensive name N----r. I would feel equally as offended as Malcolm was offended when called a N----r if someone called me this.

Another interesting and funny thing I came across while reading Chapter 15 was his description of the "malignant white superiority complex". Malcolm stated that as long as a Negro leader kept assuring the white man that everything was under control a "situation which permitted Negro combustion to slowly build up to the revolution point , without the white man realizing it" (Haley 279). This highlighted Malcolm's belief that they were superior to all non-whites would eventually lead to their demise.