Isaac's Reviews > The Autobiography of Malcolm X

This book counts for a lot. Cornel West says that one of the deepest fears for black America is that Malcolm X was fundamentally right, that the political system here is incapable of being changed through traditional means in order to serve the black community what they are due. "What are they due?" asks the conservative... A share in the incredible wealth of the country that they have labored to build for hundreds of years, often against their own will, answers the REALIST... self-actualization, in whatever form that may take, answers Malcolm. Malcolm X scares the hell out of people even today because of his refusal to accept the current democratic system as a way for African-Americans to address their genuine bitterness towards a country that has screwed them over time and again. He also refutes racist claims of white intellectual superiority, absorbing the whole canon of European philosophy while in prison, and responding to it with fierce criticism. And he was a busboy in some of the greatest New York clubs that ever existed. I dunno. I'm another middle class white boy in the U.S. who has absorbed from a young age dramatic pictures of black culture - mostly negative - that don't so much reflect the culture so much as reflect the fears imposed on it by the elite. Malcolm X, along with Molefi Asante, Cornel West, Ishmael Reed, Zora Neal Hurston, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison... all help to correct that skewed viewpoint.