Malcolm X Reaction Paper

She was no older than 10, but she remembers how the man was portrayed; he was dangerous, a man to be feared. When she became an adult she no longer saw him how she was conditioned to as a child. Anyone who made the effort to learn about this man, could see he was special. He was charismatic, honest and righteous in his quest to open the eyes of Black Americans, to the deception they had so long believed; that integration meant equality. He was Malcolm X and he frightened white Americans; this irrational fear was not based on evidence shown in Malcolm X’s behavior or history, it was an idea spread through mass media and internalized by society.

CRITICAL CULTURAL THEORY Mass Communication: Living in a Media World explains that
(25) When Malcolm was six years old, vigilantes killed his father because of the ideas he preached and as a man Malcolm would vigorously preach similar ideas. It is my belief that Malcolm X strived to be as his father was to him, for black America. In this quest he was successful as evidenced in the epilogue of his autobiography written by Alex Hailey. “No man in our time aroused fear and hatred in the white man as did Malcolm, because in him the white man sensed an implacable foe who could not be had for any price a man unreservedly committed to the cause of liberating the black man in American society rather than integrating the black man into that society.” (9)
SOCIALIZATION OF MALCOLM X Socialization, the lifelong process of acquiring one’s personal identity; when we interact within the four agents of socialization—family, school, media, and peer groups—we internalize norms, values, behavior, and social