Ostracized
Malcolm’s mother, Louise can be considered as being privileged because of her skin color. She is light enough to pass as being a white person but she still is considered as being a member of the black community. While her skin should make her life easier, it actually makes it a lot harder. Just because Louise appears to be white, when her employers find about her true heritage, they fire her immediately. The black community also considers her as being an outsider because she doesn’t look like the others from the black community. Ironically, the trait that was supposed to help her made her an outsider to both sides.
The best and yet the least equipped
After Malcolm moves with his foster family, he starts attending school regularly with other white children. Malcolm quickly stands out as being a smart young man and is chose to be class president. Ironically, despite his good results, the teachers claim that Malcolm will never be able to achieve something great in his life because he has the wrong skin color. This proves that those results were not relevant when it came to skin color.
Bad example
Soon after Malcolm moved to Boston, he noticed that some blacks were trying to imitate the white people and he resented them for being willing to lie to them just to gain their peers approval. Ironically, Malcolm begins dating a white girl knowing really well that he does it only because dating a white girl offered him a special status among his black peers.
Different type of racism
One thing that is clear is that Malcolm opposes racism. Being affected all his life by the racism, he resents those who have racist ideas. But thing change after Malcolm becomes a member of the Nation of Islam. The ideas promoted by the Nation of Islam are also stereotypical and racist but this time the racism is aimed towards white people. Gradually, Malcolm also accepts these ideas and begins to think that everyone who is white is bad by default and he forgets the times when he was treated with kindness and dignity by white men. This is seen as something ironic because Malcolm, who resented racism above everything else, began to promote racist ideas.
