Malcolm X Attempt #2

When you teach a man to hate his lips, the lips that God gave him, the shape of the nose that God gave him, the texture of the hair that God gave him, the color of the skin that God gave him, you've committed the worst crime that a race of people can commit. And this is the crime that you've committed.

- Malcolm X, Our Hair! (http://www.endarkenment.com/hair/essays/malcolm/index.htm)

Racial prejudice is an insidious moral and social disease affecting peoples and populations all over the world. The outbreak hysteria of racism occurred in mid-twentieth century, targeting African-Americans mostly. Institutionalized racial segregation was ended as an official practice by the efforts of civil rights activists such as Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, known as Malcolm X.

Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 in New York City while giving a speech, Our Hair!. He was a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. Malcolm X offered an insightful perspective on the freedom of Black people. In the historical tradition of Black educators, he was undeniably committed to "uplifting the race" by encouraging Black people to become cognizant of their consignment in the American social order, and then proposing the necessary steps to rectify these conditions. Based on my analysis, Malcolm X’s piked coherence and constructive statement offered two different kinds of audience.

At the beginning of the essay, Malcolm X targeted to the plain folks with the bulleted points of what white Americans had made us to do. He connected between the black people’s actions and white people’s responses to catch the plain black folks' eyes first. Later in the essay, Malcolm X mentioned lot about the foreign affairs going on between other countries and USA. This time, he targeted the highly-educated people about the affairs for which most Americans wouldn't have understood it. So the way he could get everybody involved with his essay. Rather than relying on theoretical and philosophical abstractions, Malcolm X used his life and experiences as a basis for his critique.

Since Malcolm X did not leave a body of writings per se that addressed significant radical issues, the diction and sentence tools that Malcolm X used helped to create his voice in the speech even on paper. In his or her head, the reader can almost hear Malcolm X dramatically giving the speech. He had a very strong, confident, persuasive voice. A writer or speaker who has control of his language has control of his audience. Charismatic, articulate and statuesque, Malcolm X was able to persuade people how repulsive the word "hate" could become. He stated,

"We hated the African characteristics.

We hated our hair...

We hated our nose, the shape of our nose, and the shape of our lips, the color of our skin. Yes we did. And it was you who taught us to hate ourselves simply by shrewdly maneuvering us into hating the land of our forefathers and the people on that continent."

One thing Malcolm X lacked in his essay was the evidences to support his reason of the hate. He did not brace his evidences of black people of the distant regions who actually hated themselves. By the power of his charisma, he was capable to layer up the evidences with his emotional appeals which were ethos to make his argument reasonable. It is a moot question whether Malcolm X made any contributions to the Negro’s struggle for freedom, whether he was a catalyst to the cause or just a loud and strident voice crying in some personal wilderness foreign to the real needs and aspirations of the nation’s Negroes. By the speech of Our Hair, he bridged everybody's emotions no matter how complicated or simple it was.