While Malcolm X shifts through many different polarized phases of his life, he expresses authentic devotion to each phase. Throughout the story, X works tirelessly to excel in the things that he values. In school, he “had grades among the highest in the school” (38). At the lindy-hopping dances, he instantly picked up the skill to “whirl girls so fast their skirts were snapping” (69). During his hustler phase, he “sold reefers like a mad man,” and after picking up robbery, he eventually “got it down to an exact science” (,166) In prison, when he “was unable to express what [he] wanted to convey in the letters [he] wrote, he read books almost obsessively “feigning sleep… until three or four in the morning,” teaching himself knowledge and literacy (200). He took his devotion to Islam extremely seriously, once even saying “no one ever prayed more sincerely to Allah” (215). Finally, as a public speaker, he “received more publicity than many world personages” (337). All of these examples are a testament to how vigorously X worked in not one, but all phases of his life. It is difficult therefore to argue that any one of his identities was inauthentic since he devoted so much effort into every single one of them.
Not only does X remain authentic in each phase of his life, he keeps bits of each phase in his identity, never abandoning his history. Evidence of his past self lies in every chapter with actions that utilize skills from his past. One of the earliest traits he describes is the cleverness he uses to catch everyone else’s rabbits as a kid. In chapter 9, he employs the same cleverness to trick the police into thinking he was an innocent confused man after one of his robberies. Furthermore, although he renounced his dishonest, sinful hustling practices, he uses his experiences from ghetto often for his preaching. With his experience in both ghetto and suburban society, he “could speak and understand the ghetto language” and “talk with the so-called middle class Negro and with the ghetto blacks (whom the others just talked about” (358). If he had completely forgotten his past, X never would have been able to fully understand some of his most crucial audience. Finally, X shows periodic love for the pursuit of knowledge. As mentioned before, he excels in school and reads literature voraciously in prison. Finally in the very end, he claims, “my greatest lack has been, I believe, that I don’t have the kind of academic education I wish I had been able to get” (437). All of these examples show that when X enters a new phase, be it from dancing to hustling, from jail to Islam or anything in between, he keeps parts of his old life. Just because he changes lifestyle never means that he loses his old character. Therefore, it would be inaccurate to declare him an indecisive flip-flopper, since he never completely changes his identity, but instead it evolves and carries bits and pieces of the past.
Just as X’s previous identities carry authenticity between his strong devotion and historical identity synthesis, his final resting identity as a Muslim human rights activist is equally, if not the most genuine. The Islamic part of his identity easily remains strong throughout every single chapter of the story from its beginnings in prison. As mentioned before, Malcolm is an extremely devout Muslim throughout the entire story, once claiming “no one ever prayed more sincerely to Allah.” Even after his hero Muhammad is ousted as a scandalous, hypocritical leader, Malcolm persists as a strong Muslim leader, establishing a new Mosque to regain those that left the nation of Islam. His belief in human rights spans even further, taking different forms throughout the book. X finds inequality almost immediately in Lansing, where blacks do the “menial jobs” and Malcolm, as one of the highest performers in his class, is told that he should simply become a carpenter (45). From this point on, X defies the cultural hegemony laid upon him, first by leaving Lansing, then by leaving prison and the ghettos, and finally preaching about the injustices towards blacks. Yet during his speeches, whether he preaches about how white men are the devil, or calls for voluntary separation, X’s underlying message is that blacks are being suppressed. X even proceeds one of his calls for separation by exclaiming, “Human rights! Respect as human beings! That’s what America’s black masses want” (313). In the end, X shows that these goals are authentic not just because he fights just as hard as usual for them, but because they remain consistent throughout the story. In the final chapter, he collects his various different calls for black rights under the conclusion that “we had to approach the black man’s struggle against the white man’s racism as a human problem” (432). Therefore, through its consistency in belief of human rights as a whole, the title “Malcolm X,” the man who “doesn’t mind shaking hands with human beings” perfectly, authentically epitomizes the book’s mysterious protagonist.
