Malcolm X Dialect Journals 11-30

11. pg. 20 "Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business-- you know they're doing something that you aren't."
To be the best, you have to do everything you can. You have to stand up, and make a change, for there to be a change. You have to find the strategy that works best for you, and helps you succeed. There were many people trying to fix racism, but Malcolm rose above them all and made a difference. 

12. Pg. 22 "Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight."

Malcolm felt as if that they took his mother for no reason, that she was just a statistic. He thinks that society put her in pain, and then forced her to be in a home. 

13. pg. 39 "I looked like Li'l Abner."
The allusion to Li'l Abner is from a comic strip that appered in many newspapers. He thought he looked like Abner because both of there pants showed a lot of sock, and a hick hair cut.

14. pg. 43 "I had never tasted a sip of liquor, never smoked a cigarette, and here I saw little black children...shooting craps, playing cards, fighting..."
It is ironic how he went from not doing anything bad, to being a hustler, a drug dealer, also a thief. He thought it was strange seeing young 12 and 11 year olds doing things that even him as a adult wasn't yet doing. Going from one town to the next, going through different societies and how balck people act and are treated.

15. Pg 43 ""Stud" and "cat" and "chick" and "cool" and "hip.""
Those were all considered slang words. They were usually said by uneducated persons. Then black people didn't really get a good education, and so those "slang" words were usually said by them. It was a sign of being hip.

16. pg. 48 "Some hustles you're too new for. Cats will ask you for liquor, some will want reefers. But you don't need to have nothing except rubbers-until you can dig who's a cop."
As Malcolm develops into becoming a real hustler he has to learn the ropes. They are not going to just give him some liquor and tell him to go, they want to make sure he knows who is a cop or not. So it is safe if he just sticks with selling legal rubbers until he has learned all that there is to leanr.

17. pg. 52 "Shorty soon decided that my hair was finally long enough to be conked."
Conking your hair is a social status. It shows you are a high class man or in with the "hip crowd." All of the pain and burning that goes into conking is worth it in the end for them. It makes there hair looked slicked back and look more like the whites.

18. pg. 54 "How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking like "white,""
Malcolm is  finally realizing, that being able to look like a white isn't worth it. Why would he want to force himself to look like the people that have tortured them there whole lives, and is still discriminating the minorities. He felt stupid to fall for the trap.

19. pg. 57 "Having spent so much time in Mason's white environment, I had always believed and feared that dancing involved a certain order or pattern of specific steps as dancing is done by whites..."
Always watching the whites dance he always thought that it had to be in a pattern and with a partner. When he started going to the clubs, he noticed how all the blacks just flowed freely with the music. They were able to express themselves, in what ever way they wanted.

20. pg. 15 "Whites have always hidden or justified all of the guilts they could by ridiculing or blaming Negroes. 
All the stories you hear are of the Black kids getting in trouble. The whites would blame the black kids for the mischievous things they did. And people would believe them because it was a stereo type that the black people got. They would cause trouble and the white people were angels.

21. "The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."
While in jail he read tons of books including the dictionary. Being stuck in jail he had to do something with his time. This is where his love for reading and then writing came. He then was able to write his persuasive speeches about making a difference to change racism. Doing what he loved finally came out

22. pg. 67 "I paraded her. The negro men loved her...she said she had dates with white fellows just for the looks of things..."
Again, this shows how much the Black men used the white women for looks. Sophia stated that she didn't like white men, just used them to look good. White women used the black men, because once they were in public they would pretend they don't know who the men are. Even thought the black men wanted to use them as a social status, where the women just use them as a tool.

23. pg. 68 "The next time I saw her, she was a wreck of a woman...I blame myself for all of this..."
After ditching Laura, a sweet, young, black, girl, for sophia, a crazy white woman. This, once again, goes back to Black men wanting the white woman as a high social rank. I think the black men, after everyone thinking of them lower, having a white person think of them as a prize, boosts their confidence. Laura then, who had never had a drink, turned into a prostitute, then was a lesbian, because of all the hate she has got from men.

24. pg. 73 "Every negro I'd ever known had made a point of flashing whatever money he had. But these Harlem Negros quietly laid there bill on the bar."
If a black man had money, they want to flaunt it. Back then it wasn't a common thing for them to have a lot of money where Malcolm was first from. When he got to Harlem, they were all "high class." Everyone knew who they were, they didn't have to flaunt what they had. It is almost the same now. A lot of people flaunt they money they have to make them seem like they are better than everyone else.

25. pg. 163 "The ‘Negro’ was taught to worship an alien God having the same blond hair, pale skin and blue eyes as the slave master. "
Part of what Malcolm was trying to get away from was not having to be forced to be under the white christian god. In the book, Conversations With God, it states that you believe what your parents believe and so on. When the African Americans were brought over, they were forced to change their belief just because the white man told you too. 

26. pg. 81 "Today, All these same immigrants descendants are running as hard as they can to escape the descendants of the negroes who helped to unload the immigrant ships."
This is stating that now, the white men are scared of the black men. Since their fathers were the ones that brought the african americans over to America. They are realizing the wrong they did but do not want to admit it. 

27. pg. 83 "My ears soaked it up like sponges...I was thus schooled well, by experts in such hustles as the numbers, pimping, con games of many kinds, peddling dope, and thievery of all sorts, including armed robbery."

After hearing all the stories, and tricks from the old guys, it all kind of went down hill. Everything he learned in school was gone, and all of these things were stuck in his head. This is where the "hustling" Malcolm comes in. I think if he wouldn't have heard these stories, he wouldn't have been as interested in the hustling world. 

28. “It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come. ”

After Malcolm was in prison, and saw everybody trapped in there no matter the race, or what they did. They have no freedom. Even though Malcolm is suffering through racisim, at least he is free. He can do almost anything he wants, unlike being stuck in jail.  

29. Pg. 340 "America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem."

Racism will always be a problem in a lot of countries. But it was especially tough in ours. Malcolm wants America to be more like Islam, where you can be any race and there wont be any discrimination. Even though he was criticized for it, he still wanted his dreams to come true. 

30. ch. 6 "In one sense, we were huddled in there, bonded together in seeking security and warmth and comfort from each other, and we didn’t know it. All of us—who might have probed space, or cured cancer, or built industries—were, instead, black victims of the white man’s American social system." 

They were all in the harlem night club as a family. They were all victims of racism. They felt like in there they were able to hid away from all the negativity and be able to be whom they want. It has become a home for them.