Examples Of Racial Injustice In Learning To Read By Malcolm X

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Throughout a person's life they will experience racial injustices. How one perceives these injustices can determine how they overcome and combat them. In “Learning to Read” a young Malcolm X writes about teaching himself to read and write while in prison. While Malcolm is reading he finds many books about the history of racial injustices throughout the world and finds the common oppressor to primarily the white man. Malcolm X uses his new found knowledge and discoveries to begin documenting the texts and the importance of ending racial injustices by combating the white man's power. In “Letter for Birmingham Jail” an older Martin Luther King Jr. writes about how racial oppression has gone on for far too long and we must come to an agreement …show more content…
“In Learning to Read”,He writes, “Four hundred years of black blood and sweat invested here in America, and the white man still has the black man begging for what every immigrant fresh off the ship can take for granted the minute he walks down the gang-plank” (266). In this quote, Malcolm X explains that the unfairness of other races gaining the most basic human rights and taking those for granted is an outrage due to how long blacks have waited for the exact same rights. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail” King also writes of this issue stating “We have waited more than 340 years for our constitutional and god-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter” (207). In this quote, King contrasts other nation’s advances and achievements to that of America’s and explains that the slow pace to gain even the simplest of respect is an outrage. King and Malcolm X viewed the slow process towards change as wrong because of how they perceived the history of oppression and injustice in other
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