First Time Watching Malcom X

I just finished watching Malcolm X for the first time ever and I think I had my brain rewired in real time. A few years back I watched Judas and the Black Messiah starring Kaluuya and Stanfield that really shows us what the Black Panthers were really about and how the CIA brainwashed all of us to think they were some evil corrupt terrorist organization. I bring that up because as I was watching this movie I was thinking back to high school and how little we knew about Malcolm X and it was just kind of a gut punch to realize what we've been missing out on. Kind of like Killers of the Flower Moon, this is such an important piece of American history that's kind of just been thrown away and we've been told to forget about it. For context, where I grew up and I feel like the majority of Americans grew up, Malcolm X is essentially a few sentences in one history textbook. The curriculum does not really touch up on Malcolm X and his beliefs. No bullshit and I hope I'm remembering correctly but this is all I knew of Malcolm X in high school. He butted heads and was kind of rivals with MLK Jr and his big methodology was change through violence. With about 20 minutes left in this movie I was left shell shocked and honestly starting to choke up because I realized how much of history we have lost and I personally have not been taught. And please, don't get it twisted, if you haven't seen this movie do not assume that it is Malcolm X propaganda. This is a flawed man that Spike Lee portrays as a flawed man. A flawed man that redeems himself, who learns and grows over time but was a brilliant speaker throughout that entire time, a great influential figure throughout that time. Perspective is everything and whether you were pro or anti Malcolm X or somewhere in the middle, this movie does a great job of highlighting your stance but telling Malcolm X's full life story so you can understand it from every angle. More importantly, you can understand Malcolm's stance in each stage of his life. There were two points in this movie where I kind of got like uncomfortable because shocker, I'm a white man and some of the things that were said I just I couldn't believe it. Malcolm binded into the notion that all white men are the devil, that was the first one. But when you sit back and think about it, it kind of makes sense. One, he was following a corrupt leader in Elijah Muhammad who was pushing that idea. And two, we get so many flashbacks to Malcolm's youth when he is fucked over by evil racist people. For starters, the Ku Klux Klan comes over to his house, lights his house on fire, the dad comes outside, shoots at their feet to scare them off, not killing them when he had the opportunity. The KKK comes back, kills his dad, bashes him in the head and lets him get run over by a train. And then after this clear injustice, you see the systemic racism start to pile on. You see how the Black man and the Black family was kept down for so long. After his father is murdered, his mother can't even collect the insurance money because the police report filed the death as suicide so she didn't get any of that claim. Oh, and then because she doesn't have a job and now no money, the government comes and takes her kids. Malcolm is shipped off, doesn't get to see his brothers and sisters again, shipped off to a middle of nowhere white town where everyone just calls him the N-word and it's just normalcy to him. He's the top student in his class and has aspirations to do big things with his career and his teacher shuts him down and tells him, nah, that that's not what Black people do. You should be a carpenter, that that's a good job for your kind. Semi-quoting Malcolm X here but if this happened to me, I would be fucking pissed too. So again, whether or not you agree with the statement, I obviously don't think that all white men are the devil and Malcolm X eventually agrees that all white men aren't the devil. We'll get there. You can understand his anger and his hatred and why he is trying to save Black people because of what happened to him when he was a child. Now the second eye-popping thing that Malcolm says is that JFK got what was coming when he got murdered, assassinated. Yeah, this one's basically impossible to defend but the movie does a good job of one, not defending him for saying that, but two, showing us his anger and why he lashed out in that moment. There's a big heart-wrenching reveal that the honorable Elijah Muhammad and Brother Baines who brought him up from the bottom are frauds, that this is a hustle to them. They are doing it for the money and the clout where Malcolm is truly doing it because he believes in the religion. He believes in the words that he is preaching. Now that Malcolm has all the power, they want nothing to do with him anymore. He had his heart broken by his two idols, his two father figures after his father died. There is no coincidence that those awful things that he says about Kennedy happened right after this betrayal. Again, perspective and understanding is everything. And this is the tragedy of Malcolm X because after he makes those comments about JFK, his ticking time bomb starts right there. The CIA and FBI were probably after him the entire time but definitely after him after those comments. But now the Nation of Islam is also after him because he is speaking against the honorable Elijah Muhammad. He sees through the lies and the bullshit but a lot of Elijah's followers do not, so now he's built a new enemy. He's created a rivalry, a violent rivalry between Black people, the exact opposite of what he wanted. By the time he escapes Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam and retaps him with his faith and travels the world, it's too late. He no longer thinks the white man is the devil. He no longer thinks John F. Kennedy got what was coming and he realizes the danger of his words and wants to work with Martin Luther King and other Black activists. When reporters ask him about guns and protecting his people and frankly just holding police accountable for their bullshit, reporters and honestly the majority of America just pounces on him because of things that he said in his past, mistakes that he made in his past during his anger and frustration. Malcolm X never wanted violence, he wanted to end violence. Malcolm X never wanted revenge on the white man. Malcolm X didn't want Black supremacy, he wanted Black intelligence. Malcolm X wanted Black people to follow Allah. He wanted them to unite and educate themselves and build the world that the white man had built for themselves. They wanted them to be equal. I wish I had known these things sooner, I wish I had been taught these things sooner. This movie moved me in a powerful way, a way I haven't been moved in a long time. Between Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X, Spike is on an absolute heater.