Malcolm X Rhetorical Analysis

The 1965 Autobiography of Malcolm X is one man’s accounts of race relations in the United States. As a minister for the Nation of Islam, and a man deeply affected by white oppression of his race, X proposes separation as a suitable response to the racial crisis in America, rejecting suggestions of racial integration. His condemnation of integration includes oposition towards the integrated black man, as he believes the denial of racial identity to be an unhealthy and intolerable mentality holding back the progression of the black race. In his fight for black human rights, X’s attitude to whites in his speeches is patently racist, but he gais a deeper understanding of racial relations after his disengagement from the Nation of Islam. Despite his fierce, angry manner, Malcolm X is able to communicate his account of racial relations concisely and effectively. Malcolm X is accurate in his evaluation that white Americans are responsible for projecting an inferiority complex onto black Americans. In this sense his arguments against the integrated black man are persuasive, but his violent approach is disconcerting, as his anger develops into that which he so fiercely opposes, namely, racism.

However, his attitudes became more tolerant and inclusive as his understanding of Islam became more universal. During his prison term, X receives notice of the propaganda purported by the Nation of Islam, a religion which holds white people responsible for the state of black people. As a man mistreated and imprisoned by white Americans throughout his life, it is unsurprising that X accepted Elijah Muhammad’s teachings as the truth, for it allowed him a chance to absolve himself by blaming white