How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
My father was also belligerent toward all of the children, except me. [...] I actually believe that as anti-white as my father was, he was subconsciously so afflicted with the white man's brainwashing of Negroes that he inclined to favor the light ones, and I was his lightest child. Most Negro parents in those days would almost instinctively treat any lighter children better than they did the darker ones. (1.12)
How do you think this prejudicial treatment by their own parents makes darker skinned black children feel about themselves?
Quote #2
Thinking about it now, I feel definitely that just as my father favored me for being lighter than the other children, my mother gave me more hell for the same reason. [...] She went out of her way never to let me become afflicted with a sense of color-superiority. I am sure that she treated me this way partly because of how she came to be light herself. (1.24)
Malcolm's mom acts in the complete opposite way of his father. Why do you think she does this? How does prejudice negatively affect those even on the "positive" end of discrimination?
Quote #3
But I can distinctly remember hearing "crazy" applied to her by them when they learned that the Negro farmer who was in the next house down the road from us had offered to give us some butchered pork—a whole pig, maybe even two of them—and she had refused. We all heard them call my mother "crazy" to her face for refusing good meat. It meant nothing to them even when she explained that we had never eaten pork, that it was against her religion as a Seventh Day Adventist. (1.78)
While this may not seem racist at first, you have to look at the context. What does crazy mean? It means acting without rational motives. However, Malcolm X's mother was a Seventh Day Adventist and had food restrictions that prevented her from eating pork. So, was she crazy? Do you think they would have called her crazy if she were a white Jewish woman? We don't think so.