Teaching Malcolm X: From the perspective of a white, 21st century educator

Ten years ago, when I first began teaching in the Philadelphia School District, I asked my department head to order a class set of The Autobiography of Malcolm X so I could use it with my English classes. Without hesitating, she gave me the following advice: Stay away from Malcolm X. When I asked her why, she told me he was too difficult a subject, and that if I wanted to do an autobiography of an important African American, I should instead try Gifted Hands, the remarkable story of neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

Although I never taught Gifted Hands, I stayed away from Malcolm X. I knew from studying him in college that his autobiography was filled with challenging subject matter, and as a white teacher educating a multi-racial class of students, I didn’t want to butcher the material; I was afraid of sounding either too bleeding-heart or too insensitive.

As time passed, however, and I gained confidence in the classroom, my fascination with Malcolm X took hold once again; it wasn’t long before I began experimenting with his autobiography in class—teaching it in bits and pieces—tinkering with lessons in a trial-and-error sort of way.

Today I have enough familiarity with his autobiography that I teach it from start to finish—from the Forward by Malcolm’s daughter Attallah Shabazz to the Epilogue by Alex Haley. Because I believe Malcolm’s life story is as inspiring to white students as it is to black ones—I’m sharing five tips I’ve learned to better teach Malcolm X to a 21st century, multicultural class of high school students.

TIP ONE: EXPLORE THE FOUR PHASES OF MALCOLM’S LIFE EQUALLY

Malcolm X’s life was one defined by an incredible amount of growth and change. He went from a wayward youth living a life of drugs and crime, to a militant Black Muslim who preached racial separatism, to an enlightened, more humanitarian champion of human rights. Traditionally, educators have broken Malcolm’s life down into four phases:
1. The Malcolm Little Phase (his childhood).
2. The Detroit Red Phase (his life as a hustler).
3. The Malcolm X Phase (his stint with the Nation of Islam).
4. The El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Phase (his period of enlightenment).

When doing his autobiography, explore all four phases of Malcolm’s life equally. Political correctness dictates that we teach primarily about the Malcolm X who returned from the Middle East enlightened, and that we tip-toe around the man who believed that blacks should separate from the white devil and form their own nation outside the U.S.

Teaching Malcolm X this way is a big mistake. Educators who ignore Phase #3 of Malcolm’s life are missing out on the best opportunities to discuss real life issues that matter—specifically the issue of racism, and the fact that it is an equal opportunity employer.

When I do The Autobiography of Malcolm X with my classes, I let them know up front that for at least 12 years of his life, Malcolm was a racist. I let them know that during the 1950’s and 1960’s the Nation of Islam preached that all white people were devils, and that they believed that a mad scientist named Mr. Yacub genetically grafted white people from an original race of black people. As Malcolm attests in his autobiography, “Though he was a black man, Mr. Yacub, embittered toward Allah now, decided, as revenge, to create upon the earth a devil race—a bleached-out white race of people.”

Whenever Malcolm speaks of “white devils,” we as teachers must stop and explain why this kind of ideology is wrong. We as teachers can not ignore or justify this kind of thinking, even if it served as a defense against a very bigoted and prejudiced white America; doing so only sends our students a mixed message.

TIP TWO: BALANCE THE THEME OF PRIDE WITH THE THEME OF HUMILTY

Traditionally, pride is a major theme of Malcolm X’s autobiography. Pride is one of the reasons why Malcolm X changed the lives of so many people; he gave people hope by making them feel good about themselves. But in the 21st century, pride has a way of getting our young people into trouble. Many times, our youth are so proud that they don’t listen to their parents; they are so proud that they don’t heed the advice of teachers and police officers; they are so proud that they rather pull the trigger of a gun than swallow their pride.

What our students really need today is humility. Our students need to learn that it takes a stronger person to walk away from a confrontation than to engage in one. The ironic part is that it was Malcolm X’s humility—not his pride—that saved him. He wasn’t able to let Allah into his life until he first humbled himself—got down on his knees and prayed for forgiveness. In his autobiography he states, “The hardest test I ever faced in my life was praying. . . . bending me knees to pray—that act—well, that took me a week. You know what my life had been. Picking a lock to rob someone’s house was the only way my knees had ever been bent before. I had to force myself to bend my knees. And waves of shame and embarrassment would force me back up.”

TIP THREE: BALANCE THE THEME OF SELF-EXPRESSION WITH THE THEME OF DIGNITY

Another traditional theme of The Autobiography of Malcolm X is self-expression. But just like with pride, I don’t believe our youth are short on self-expression. Take a look at the way they dress, the way they wear their hair. I’m not singling out any particular culture or style, I’m just making a reference as a whole: Our youth don’t lack self-expression.

Fancy tattoos and elaborate piercings cover their bodies. So do rings, headbands, do-rags and necklaces. Teens dye their hair every color of the spectrum, from pink to purple to neon orange. With Britney Spears dominating the headlines, it’s a wonder any of our young ladies come to school wearing any panties.

And where does dignity factor into self-expression? Let’s look at Malcolm’s life for the answer: he was never able to truly express himself until he first got back his dignity. He got his dignity back by shedding all the props and gimmicks of the popular culture, by no longer conking his hair or wearing that god-awful zoot suit; according to Malcolm, a zoot suit was “a killer-diller coat with a drape shape, reet pleats and shoulders padded like a lunatic’s cell.”

TIP FOUR: BALANCE THE THEME OF REVOLUTION WITH THE THEME OF RESPONSIBILTY

It’s interesting how many teens associate Malcolm X with the phrase “by any means necessary”. But those who’ve studied Malcolm X closely will understand he never advocated violence. As Attallah Shabazz wrote so eloquently in the forward to the current edition of her father’s autobiography, “Malcolm X never advocated violence. He was an advocate of cultural and social reconstruction—until a balance of equality was shared, ‘by any means necessary.’ Generally, this phrase of his was misused, even by those who were his supporters. . . . ‘By any means necessary’ meant examine the obstacles, determine the vision, find the resolve, and explore the alternatives toward dissolving the obstacles.”

Teaching the life of Malcolm X should not be a means of encouraging revolution, even of the “creative” kind proposed by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. Just as with pride and self-expression, teens today have no problem rebelling against authority. As teachers, we don’t need to whet their appetites for civil disobedience. We don’t need to get them any angrier than they already are. If anything, we must find ways to dispel their anger and replace it with tolerance and compassion; we must teach them that taking responsibility for an unpleasant circumstance or situation—not resisting it—is the best way to go about changing it.

TIP FIVE: STRESS EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION

We all know the impact education had on Malcolm X’s life (even if it was a homegrown one in prison). A whole world opened-up to him when he taught himself to read and think critically: “Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies. . . . I saw that the best thing that I could do was get hold of a dictionary—to study, to learn some words. . . . I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized so many words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying . . .”

Starting with the word aardvark, Malcolm copied out the entire dictionary, word-by-word. It took him years to do so. And as a result, he went from an uneducated prison thug, to an intelligent, impassioned civil rights activist who changed the lives of tens of thousands of people.

IN CONCLUSION

America today is more diverse than it’s ever been. Teachers and students alike are of many races and cultural backgrounds. In order to tackle the treacherous terrain of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, we must explore the material with an open mind and non-biased eye, and balance our lessons with humility, dignity and responsibility.