The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley is the story of Malcolm's continuously changing life from a young boy to a full grown man. One major changing point in his life is told in the seventeenth chapter titled: Mecca. In this chapter Malcolm receives money from his half-sister, Ella, to make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca which Malcolm states is mandatory for every Muslim. In Mecca, Malcolm eats, sleeps, and prays among st fellow Muslims of different cultures, and races in what he describes as "a spirit of unity and brotherhood..." From this experience Malcolm reaches the conclusion that it's not the white man who are the problem with American society but it is racism that plagues America like an "incurable cancer," and that Islam is the solution.
When you change your perspectives on something due to a strong, impacting life experience that made you see the world in a new way, you usually don't transition back to your old one which one would expect from Malcolm who had underwent such a huge transformation at Mecca. He even changes his name to El-Hajj El-Shabazz to represent that. During his trip at Mecca, Malcolm accepts a new insight about the white man when he receives kindness from a man of Islam named Dr. Azzam whom Malcolm states,"... would've been considered 'white' in America." From this incident Malcolm understands that it isn't the white man who are the problem with American society but racism itself. His new goal after Mecca is the integration in America through Islam just like how it was in Mecca. Through Mecca Malcolm, has finally accepted the white man and now strives for goal of integration in America.
But yet ,despite discovering new outlooks such as the problem of racism in American society, and goals of integration in America from Mecca, Malcolm seems to have returned back to his old perspective. Malcolm later states on page 40, within the chapter "Mascot",“I've often thought that if Mr. Ostrowski had encouraged me to become a lawyer, I would today probably be among some city's professional black bourgeoisie, sipping cocktails and palming myself off as a community spokesman for and leader of the suffering black masses, while my primary concern would be to grab a few more crumbs from the groaning board of the two-faced whites with whom they're begging to ‘integrate.'" Within the quote Malcolm seems to criticize the thought of integration despite his support for it in Mecca where he seemed to have desired the same integration. Malcolm presents the idea in this quote that efforts for integration are the attempts of the black bourgeoisie to receive prestige, money and favors ("crumbs") from what he describes as, "the two-faced whites," which is completely opposite from his new outlook that he claims to have undergone in Mecca. Not only that but he still refers to whites as "two-faced" when that is the exact opposite of the treatment he received from Dr. Azzam who Malcolm himself says would've been considered white in America. It's as if Malcolm's new outlook never happened, as if he never went to Mecca or have met the variety of races that he did. The point is that Malcolm claims to have changed since Mecca but continues to make derogatory statements about the white population as well as completely forget his goal of integration in America. The sudden change seems way too contradictory... almost two-faced.
If Malcolm had changed his mindset on the white population and had desired the integration of races in America after Mecca, what had made Malcolm return to his old perspectives? One way to think about it is that possibly Malcolm never really wanted integration or had realized that it wasn't the whites who were wrong with American society. But even I'm not satisfied with that answer.
