False Things You Believe About Malcolm X

Publish date: 2024-05-09

One of the most persistent — and most destructive — myths about Malcolm X is that he was a racist who hated white people. The truth is much more complicated.

As the Black Muslim website Sapelo Square notes, it's true that one of the most famous quotes associated with Malcolm X is the blunt statement, "The white man is the devil." That would seem, on its face, to be a pretty racist statement, and certainly, the Nation of Islam is and has always been an explicitly racist organization preaching an innate superiority of Black people over white people, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. And Malcolm X probably was racist when he said it. But people can change.

After he traveled to Mecca and spent several months studying and worshiping there, Malcolm X changed. As The New York Times reported, he returned from this experience with a completely new perspective — and explicitly and forcefully rejected his prior racism. He wrote, "I totally reject Elijah Muhammad's racist philosophy, which he has labeled 'Islam' only to fool and misuse gullible people, as he fooled and misused me." Malcolm X went on to write, "I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) — while praying to the same God — with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white," making his change of heart very clear.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunB%2BkW9qb2lfm66tv8Rmq6GhnpzAbsXOrmSbnZyesrexjJqZqK2kYrqiuMKoo6ZlqGQ%3D