Essay On PRE-Summary: Malcolm X Argument

In a debate about student sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement, Malcolm X argues that the passive approach of waiting for the white man to grant black people an opportunity for integration is useless. His attitude about integration is that it minimizes the reality of what black people in America truly needed, which was freedom, justice, and equality. Integration would not suffice to what is properly owed to the black citizens to become equal to the white citizens of America. Waiting for the white man to grant these rights to black people keeps the black people in a subordinate role of a slave asking the master for a favor. Rather than partaking in sit-ins for integration, Malcolm X urges black people to take a more forceful stance in demanding their own land to be governed solely by black people to serve the needs of black people. The white man could never adequately give black people honest freedom, justice, and equality because it would still remain under the paradigm of white America. The disconnect that has occurred for the black American as a result of slavery has left “the Negro” without an origin of their own. There is no specific country, culture, or language that the Negro belongs to. Even the word Negro is used only for black Americans who have to original ancestry to refer to considering the cruel circumstances of their arrival and history in America as slaves. Malcolm X argues that the only fight worth fighting was for black people to demand what is rightfully theirs as the white man has been able to do so for himself for centuries, while robbing black America of the ability to enjoy and participate in everyday rights that should belong to all humans.