Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver Essay

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Total Length: 958 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 3

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Reading Response

Malcolm X, Audre Lorde and Eldridge Cleaver all were examples of activism against the mainstream culture of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) ideology. Each in their own way represented a voice of opposition to the aggression and oppression that the mainstream culture demonstrated in its various facets—whether it was in the crackdown of the black population through the unjust use of law enforcement, as Cleaver saw, or in the case of racist groups violently threatening and attacking the black population, as Malcolm X witnessed and experienced, or in the cultural misdirection that Lorde felt. This paper will show how The Autobiography of Malcolm X, “Power” and “Poetry is Not a Luxury” by Lorde, and Soul on Ice by Cleaver represent ways in which African Americans protested against the mainstream culture.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X shows how African Americans protested against the mainstream culture by relating the stories of Malcolm X’s own life—from the time when he was still in his mother’s womb and the Ku Klux Klan showed up at their house to harass and destroy their property to the time that Malcolm found Allah and began to develop a new Black Nationalism in opposition to the WASP Nationalism that was set in opposition to the African American community. This opposition was not limited to the shores of America, either. As Malcolm X says directly, “Let us face reality. We can see in the United Nations a new world order being shaped, along color lines—an alliance among the non-white nations….

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A ‘skin game’ is being played….[but] who in the world’s history ever has played a worse ‘skin game’ than the white man?” (580). Malcolm X was not afraid to voice his sense of the order of the world in no uncertain terms. The Autobiography thus represents a direct counter-attack on the mainstream culture that sought to marginalize and oppress African Americans.

Malcolm X offer used a rhetorical and logical line in setting his stance against the mainstream culture. His approach was wholly centered on rational discourse, though he did not oppose violence in response to violence (he was not a pacifist). For instance, because of his love of reason, he states, “I know this is the reason I have come to really like, as individuals, some of the hosts of radio or television panel programs I have been on, and to respect their minds—because even if they have been almost steadily in disagreement with me on the race issue, they still have kept their minds open and objective about the truths of things happening in the world” (586). For Malcolm X, his opposition to the mainstream culture was rooted in his sense of truth and this sense is presented rationally and logically in The Autobiography.

Lorde’s poetry and essays were less….....

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