...Leroy Taylor Sociology 1101 Tues/Thurs. Malcolm X Malcolm Little, known as Malcolm X later on in his life, was born on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. Earl and Louis Norton Little, his parents, worked hard to support their children of eight. Malcolm’s mother was a homemaker and his father was a Baptist minister and a supporter of the Black National leader, Marcus Garvey. As a result Malcolm’s father received many death threats from white supremacist. They were forced to move to many different places. Malcolm X and black people faced enormous amounts of discrimination from the whites and found it very difficult to achieve civil rights. Malcolm X came from an underprivileged home, where he and his seven brothers and sisters struggled to survive in their family structure and barely surviving in their ascribed status. He like many other blacks was born into a cultural war between colored people like themselves and white people who considered themselves the master status. Whites thought of themselves as the educated elite group and prohibited achievement of blacks. This was seen in the class room with Malcolm and his teacher. “Malcolm” told his teacher that he wanted to be a lawyer and the teacher said, “That’s not a job for a Negro, but a carpenter job is a Negro job.” Malcolm in his early years was thinking of social mobility. He knew that education and a job as a lawyer would bring him money but his teacher’s negative comment was to keep him from achieving the same social status...
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...instead he chose until he got into jail to try to do it all because that's all he had left to do with life. Malxom X stated "I went to school far beyond the eight grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies." When i read that one little part of the text I new right then and there that Malcom X must have dropped out of school at the eight grade and when he realized that his life way over he tried something that he never got a chance to do before. 4. Discuss the significance of Malcom X's narrative and , byimplication, the significance of learning to read and write. What lessons does his experience teach us about the power of reading and writing? The importance of his narrative is that it is good to learn how to read and write. Malcomx ex says that he is not an very educated man but he is trying to better himself behind bars. He didnt feel sorry but instead he accepted it. The lesson taught is that it is important for adults to know how to read and...
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...Petersen1 Natalie Petersen S. Feldman English 1A T/TH 5:00PM December 6, 2012 The Art of Being Educated In life we all tend to be confined by our own beliefs and the beliefs of others. Our personal development depends so urgently on our sense of self. To be educated means living with an open mind and having a strong sense of self, for when we live with an open mind we are no longer confined by our beliefs nor are we confined by the beliefs of others. There are numerous opportunities available to us everyday and if we don’t expose ourselves to possible changes then we can never truly grasp true education. “In fact, a green banana is waiting for all of you who leave your own centers of the world in order to experience other places”(Batchelder). Batchelder wants us to understand when we are finally in a position to open ourselves up to change we are susceptible to successes we may never of imagined. Furthermore, letting go of old habits can be a necessary change, because by doing so we open ourselves up to life supporting us more fully in ways it can best do so. If only we all could decipher Lopez’s true message in his excerpt “ I could see the sheen where I’d sat for years,” and relate to the epiphany he had when he realized “there was no reason to sit where I was”(Lopez). We would grasp being truly educated means being able to make the choice in life to move in a different direction even if it means jumping out of our comfort zones. Now and again our comfort zones are...
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