The Autobiography of Malcolm X: An Analysis

Although Malcolm X was able to demonstrate how the average Negro was brainwashed into conformity throughout The Autobiography of Malcolm X, he did not believe he was brainwashed after his conversion to the Nation of Islam, which caused him to be hypocritical. “The devil white man cut these black people off from all knowledge of their own kind and cut them off from any knowledge of their own language, religion, and past culture, until the black man in America was the earth’s only race of people who had absolutely no knowledge of his true identity” (162). X explained the physical and mental destruction of the Negro’s culture due to the “devil white man” whom extracted African Americans from their native land. The brainwashed Negro experienced psychological and physical pain which caused them to conform to the white man’s religion, conk (perm), and lifestyles. This destruction of the Negro mind and family was significant to Malcolm even as a child when the Ku Klux Klan killed his father, which led to his family’s separation once the state Welfare officials attacked his mother’s sanity and peace of mind.
Though X was accurately able to explain how and why others were brainwashed, he does not believe he was brainwashed after he converted to the Nation of Islam. “They prided themselves on being incomparably more “cultured”, “cultivated”, “dignified,” and better off than their black brethren down in the ghetto, which was no further away than you could throw a rock” is how he explained the Hill Negro (40). Being a Hill Negro was associated with one’s attempt to conform to the white man’s society, to be cultured or more educated, and to live in a lavish neighborhood on the hill in order to illustrate supremacy; thus, as an attempt to replicate the white man due to self-hatred. Consequently, Malcolm X never gave the individual Negro the benefit of the doubt that one simply wanted a better life for one’s family.
Earlier in the autobiography, X learned a life