22 million black people so relatively few have been lucky enough to attend a college-and here
was one of those who had been lucky. Here was, to my way of thinking, one of those "educated"
Negroes who never had understood the true intent, or purpose, or application of education. Here
was one of those stagnant educations, never used except for parading a lot of big words.
Do you realize this is one of the major reasons why America's white man has so easily contained
and oppressed America's black man? Because until just lately, among the few educated Negroes
scarcely any applied their education, as I am forced to say the white man does-in searching and
creative thinking, to
further themselves and their own kind in this competitive, materialistic, dog-eat-dog white man's
world. For generations, the so-called "educated" Negroes have "led" their black brothers by
echoing the white man's thinking-which naturally has been to the exploitive white man's
advantage.
The white man-give him his due-has an extraordinary intelligence, an extraordinary cleverness.
His world is full of proof of it. You can't name a thing the white man can't make. You can hardly
name a scientific problem he can't solve. Here he is now solving the problems of sending men
exploring into outer space-and returning them safely to earth.
But in the arena of dealing with human beings, the white man's working intelligence is hobbled.
His intelligence will fail him altogether if the humans happen to be non-white. The white man's
emotions superseded his intelligence. He will commit against non-whites the most incredible
spontaneous emotional acts, so psyche-deep is his "white superiority" complex.
Where was the A-bomb dropped.. ."to save American lives"? Can the white man be so naive as
to think the clear import of this ever will be lost upon the non-white two-thirds of the earth's
population?
Before that bomb was dropped-right over here in the United States, what about the one hundred
thousand loyal naturalized and native-born Japanese-American citizens who were herded into
camps, behind barbed wire? But how many German-born naturalized Americans were herded
behind barbed wire? They were white!
Historically, the non-white complexion has evoked and exposed the "devil" in the very nature of
the white man.
What else but a controlling emotional "devil" so blinded American white intelligence that it couldn't
foresee that millions of black slaves, "freed," then permitted even limited education, would one
day rise up as a terrifying monster within white America's midst?
The white man's brains that today explore space should have told the slavemaster that any slave,
if he is educated, will no longer fear his master. History shows that an educated slave always
begins to ask, and next demand, equality with his master.
Today, in many ways the black man sees the collective white man in America better than that
white man can see himself. And the 22 million blacks realize increasingly that physically,
politically, economically, and even to some degree socially, the aroused black man can create a
turmoil in white America's vitals-not to mention America's international image.
I had not intended to stray off. I had been telling how in 1963, I was trying to cope with the white
newspaper, radio, and television reporters who were determined to defeat Mr. Muhammad's
teachings.
I developed a mental image of reporters as human ferrets-steadily sniffing, darting, probing for
some way to trick me, somehow to corner me in our interview exchanges.
Let some civil rights "leader" make some statement, displeasing to the white public power
structure, and the reporters, in an effort to whip him back into line, would try to use me. I'll give an
example. I'd get a question like this: "Mr. Malcolm X, you've often gone on record as disapproving
of the sit-ins and similar Negro protest actions-what is your opinion of the Montgomery boycott
that Dr. King is leading?"
Now my feeling was that although the civil rights "leaders" kept attacking us Muslims, still they
were black people, still they were our own kind, and Iwould be most foolish to let the white man
maneuver me against the civil rights movement.