DJs 1-10

DJ 1. “So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.” Pg. 8

This sentence is foreshadowing what Malcolm X will do later in his life. By saying he learned this lesson early in life sets up the story to show that he will become someone who “makes some noise” for equal rights and no segregation. You can also connect this to Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” where he says that if you feel something is morally wrong to you that you need to do something about it.

DJ 2. “When something is about to happen, I can feel something, sense something. I never have known something to happen that has caught me completely off guard—except once.”

This is another example of foreshadow. He hints at the fact that Elijah Muhammad would come to upset him, after he respected him so much. This also alludes to his father’s death. Not that the death caught his off guard but he had a feeling something bad was going to happen.

DJ 3. “It’s like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time. He’s a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck.” Pg. 16

This can be connected to prejudice. It suggests that black people have always gotten the short end of the stick. They were taken out of their own countries to be shipped to American in disease, just to become slaves. After the civil war, they may have become free, but they were not equal. Black people may be free, but they are still lesser people.

DJ 4.  “All I had done was improve their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life- that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business- you know they are doing something that you aren’t”

Another example of foreshadow, this statement is another example of who Malcolm X becomes in his adult life. This statement talks about his being able to adjust to situations. It is part of how he becomes such an influence because of the things he learned when he was little.  

DJ 5. “A white man in charge of a white man’s children! Nothing but legal, modern slavery—however kindly intentioned.”

I found this interesting because of the truth of the statement. I feel like back then white people utilized black people for physical labor and for the jobs no one wanted, such as shoe shiner.

DJ. 6 “And knowing that my mother in there was a statistic that didn’t have to be, that existed because of a society’s failure, hypocrisy, greed, and lack of mercy and compassion. Hence mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people and penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.” Pg. 22

I think that this is one of the reasons Malcolm X had his downward spiral. He was a handful for him mom, and once his dad died, I think it all blew up in her face, and made her go crazy, as it would many people. But the fact that Louise was black and a woman also played into that fact that all of her kids got taken away. If he were a white man, than I think they would not have been separated.

DJ 7. “But it has historically been the cade with white people, in their regard for black people, that even though we might be with them, we aren’t considered of them. Even thought they appeared to have an open door, it was still closed. Thus they never did really see me.” Pg. 27

This statement has to do with the fact that white people didn’t think of back people as their equals, even though they weren’t they’re slaves anymore. In many ways, black people were just slaves that got paid minimum wage. They still had to do the dirty work that white people didn’t want to, they couldn’t disrespect a white man in any way, and they were all treat like children. I think that those stereotypes have carried on today still. In was that black people are still look at some blacks and think of them as criminals.

DJ 8. “ He may stand with you through thin, but never thick; when the chips are down, you’ll find that as fixed in as his bone structure is his sometimes subconscious conviction that he’s better than anybody black.” Pg. 27

This statement talks about how blacks can’t trust white people one hundred percent. Although black people were becoming more accepted into society, they were still not equal to white people. So if a white man had to throw a black man under the bus to save himself, he would do it in a heart beat.

DJ 9. “The only difference was that the ones in Boston had been brainwashed even more thoroughly. They prided themselves on being incomparably more “cultured,” “civilized,” “dignified,” and better off than their black brethren down in the Ghetto, which was no further away than you could throw a rock.” Pg. 40

When African Americans became free from slavery, they divided into two different groups. The people who know where they stood to white people, and the people who thought they stood on the same social level as white. Malcolm X refers to the second group as “brainwashed.” Really, black people just wanted to be accepted, to the pressure they were getting form society was that they need to be just like white people. What he is trying to get at here is that all of the blacks in society were all still thought as lesser individuals. Blacks who thought they were so much better, were only delusional.

DJ. 10 “It was shocking to me that in town, especially after dark, you’d occasionally see a white girl and a Negro man strolling arm in arm along the sidewalk, and mixed couples drinking in the neon-lighted bars – no slipping off to some dark corner, as in Lansing. Pg. 43

This shows that the progress that black had made in society, although not very significant, in different states. Boston had become more advanced as far as acceptance to blacks was. Mixed relationships were frowned upon in some places, like Lansing, and more common in places like Boston.