Reflection On Learning To Read By Malcolm X

There is a moment in all of our lives when you are working on something and you just can't seem to get it. And then all of the sudden it clicks, just like that. I can't remember the first time I could read words out of a book, but I remember I suddenly loved to read, and when this happened I was pretty young. Malcolm X on the other hand was older when he finally took an interest in reading, but no matter what it is, and at what age you are, that you finally get it, it’s one of the best things you can accomplish. You can do anything.
In Malcolm X's autobiography “Learning to Read,” published in 1965, Malcolm X, a street hustler that was sentenced to seven years in prison, and went on to become a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, talks about how
I first tried to think back on when I learned to read, but I realized I don't remember anything from my childhood until I look at pictures. So like I said, I don't really remember anything. I then thought of him being imprisoned. I of course have never been to prison but I can relate to this in a way. High School for me was a sort of prison. It was the same routine everyday, same people, same story over and over. I could leave at the end of the day, but I as well spent hours on end reading alone in my room. The last thing I thought about after reading this, has probably affected me the deepest. He talk about the sufferings we put on all the other races of the world. And most of the time we don't think about stuff like that, because it happened so long ago that it doesn't even seem real. Even when this was being written Malcolm X states “ The world's most monstrous crime, the sin and the blood on the white man's hands, are almost impossible to believe”.(3) This made me upset because I can't imagine why someone would ever do this, or how we could do this. It makes me think we had no morals, and even now with racism, it seems like we have a mind set that we are better than