Marco Jeter

October 24, 2006

English 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

            In my section of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X bases his arguments on the white man’s morals and sex. In my essay I used direct quotes from the book to justify what I think the themes of this book is. The purposes of my section was to show the things white men and white women did to have sex, and the attraction that they had to the opposite sex, when it was shunned upon society.

            In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm speaks of a couple of types of arguments. The first one is an argument by authority. I think this is a strong argument. I see it as a strong opinion because he is saying what he himself has experienced. In the book, Malcolm said, “It was in this house what I learned more about women than I ever did in any other place.”(94) This is saying that he learned all of his ideas and views from the women in that house. In the book Malcolm also used argument by causation. I also think this was a strong argument. He said in the book, ”Domineering, complaining, demanding wives who had just about psychologically castrated their husbands were responsible for the early rush. These wives were so disagreeable and had their men so hence that they robbed them of the satisfaction of being a man.”(45) From this quote it makes me think that because all of the nagging of the wives the men turns away from their wives and come to the prostitutes and pay them for their needs.

            If you read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, you would recognize that there are a lot of assumptions in the book. Whether it is stated or unstated assumptions, Malcolm put it in there. One of the book’s stated assumptions are is when Malcolm says why men go to bed after their twenties. The book says. “The prostitutes had to make it their business to be the students of the men, they said that after most men pass their virile twenties, they went to bed mainly to satisfy their egos.”(95) I think that this is an assumption because that can be a reason but not the main reason. An unstated assumption for my section is that white people have bad morals. In the book, this assumption is backed up by when Malcolm says, “I got my first schooling about the cesspool morals of the white man from the best possible source, from his women.”(90) He does not say that white people have bad morals directly, but he implies it by the words he uses.

            Malcolm X says a lot of things in my section of the book. The type of evidence that I saw is logical evidence. He used this type of evidence a couple of times. I found this by using the A+B=C formula for logical evidence. In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, he says “These wives were so disagreeable mad had made their men so tense that they were robbed of the satisfaction of being men. To escape this tension and the chance of being ridiculed by his own wife, each of these men had gotten up early and come to a prostitute.” It says to me that the premise are the disagreeable women, and men being ridiculed by their women and the conclusion is the men coming to prostitutes is another type of argument which is anecdotal. In the book Malcolm says, “I got my first schooling about the cesspool morals of the white man from the best possible source, from his own women.” (94) To me this is anecdotal evidence because he is making a huge generalization about the morals of all white men’s morals based on the examples of only the white men in New York.

            In my section of Malcolm X, fallacies are found on a couple of the pages. The first fallacy is the appeal to pity fallacy. I think that in my section Malcolm is trying to attack the emotions of the readers by saying that the wives totally overwhelmed the men with nagging and stressing them out. The book says, “To escape this tension and the chance of being ridiculed by his own wife, each of these men had gotten up early and come to a prostitute.” (95)

            With all the things that Malcolm X says you start to question his credibility. A credible time in my section of the book is on Page 99 when it said, “the white women wanted to be comfortable, she wanted to be looked upon with favor by her own kind, but also she wanted to have her pleasure.” I see this credible because I think everyone would want to be comfortable and want to have his or her own pleasure. I think that Malcolm is not credible when he says,

            Malcolm X had a lot to say in my section of the book. According to the arguments that was in my section, there was a strong sexual attraction between blacks and whites, White women harassed their husbands and robbed them of the satisfaction of being men, which in turn, forced them to look for that missing element of their lives with the prostitutes. White women would sneak away from their husband or families to find a black man to satisfy their sexual needs or sexual fantasies. In my essay, I brought out the major points of my section and provided proficient support to determine the credibility of Malcolm X.