Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver

Reading Response
Malcolm X, Audre Lorde and Eldridge Cleaver all were examples of activism against the mainstream culture of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) ideology. Each in their own way represented a voice of opposition to the aggression and oppression that the mainstream culture demonstrated in its various facets—whether it was in the crackdown of the black population through the unjust use of law enforcement, as Cleaver saw, or in the case of racist groups violently threatening and attacking the black population, as Malcolm X witnessed and experienced, or in the cultural misdirection that Lorde felt. This paper will show how The Autobiography of Malcolm X, “Power” and “Poetry is Not a Luxury” by Lorde, and Soul on Ice by Cleaver represent ways in which African Americans protested against the mainstream culture.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X shows how African Americans protested against the mainstream culture by relating the stories of Malcolm X’s own life—from the time when he was still in his mother’s womb and the Ku Klux Klan showed up at their house to harass and destroy their property to the time that Malcolm found Allah and began to develop a new Black Nationalism in opposition to the WASP Nationalism that was set in opposition to the African American community. This opposition was not limited to the shores of America, either. As Malcolm X says directly, “Let us face reality. We can see in the United Nations a new world order being shaped, along color lines—an alliance among the non-white nations….A ‘skin game’ is being played….[but] who in the world’s history ever has played a worse ‘skin game’ than the white man?” (580). Malcolm X was not afraid to voice his sense of the order of the world in no uncertain terms. The Autobiography thus represents a direct counter-attack on the mainstream culture that sought to marginalize and oppress African Americans.
Malcolm X offer used a rhetorical and logical line in setting his stance against the mainstream culture. His approach was wholly centered on rational discourse, though he did not oppose violence in response to violence (he was not a pacifist). For instance, because of his love of reason, he states, “I know this is the reason I have come to really like, as individuals, some of the hosts of radio or television panel programs I have been on, and to respect their minds—because even if they have been almost steadily in disagreement with me on the race issue, they still have kept their minds open and objective about the truths of things happening in the world” (586). For Malcolm X, his opposition to the mainstream culture was rooted in his sense of truth and this sense is presented rationally and logically in The Autobiography.
Lorde’s poetry and essays were less direct in their rhetoric and more symbolic in their presentation of opposition. For instance, Lorder’s poem “Power” states: “I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds / and a dead child dragging his shattered / black face off the edge of my sleep”—a symbolic representation of Lorde’s sense of isolation in a WASP culture that seeks to destroy the African American presence. Likewise, in “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” Lorde writes, “the quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live” (643). This means, in its use of symbolism, that the way in which one interprets one’s life and actions and meaning depends upon the way in which one has access to an appropriate lens or framework or theory that can illuminate the facts and help them to make sense to one’s mind. The “light” that Lorde seeks is like the light of truth that Malcolm X advocates and promotes in The Autobiography. Instead of being direct and using rational discourse as a means of supporting the light of truth in the face of the deceptive mainstream culture of hate, Lorde takes a symbolic and poetic approach to the issue.
Cleaver, on the other hand, represents the visceral, dramatic opposition to the mainstream culture. His words are filled with energy and imagery so that they nearly drip with passion and feeling, inflaming in the reader a sense of the powerful animosity that Cleaver felt towards the WASP civilization and its mainstream culture. Cleaver’s words describe his opposition in forceful, vociferous terms: “If the separation of the black and white people in America along the color line had the effect, in terms of social imagery, of separating the Mind from the Body—the oppressor whites usurping sovereignty by monopolizing the Mind, abdicating the Body and becoming bodiless Omnipotent Administrators and Ultrafeminines…” The sentence goes on for many more lines—so that the reader has no time to catch a breath—but the terms that Cleaver uses are instrumental in striking chords in the reader’s mind: words like “monopoloy,” “mind,” “body, “omnipotent” and “ultrafeminine” are all decidedly chosen to show clear opposition to the mainstream order and its dislocation from reality.
In conclusion, Malcolm X’s autobiography, Lorde’s poetry and essays and Cleaver’s Soul on Ice all manifest opposition to the mainstream culture of WASP ideology though each does so in its own way. The Autobiography of Malcolm X tells the story of a man coming to reason his way to opposing the culture of the WASPS; Lorde’s writings use symbolism to convey this opposition; and Cleaver’s book uses visceral rhetoric and a hypnotic, almost-sermon-like type of oration to convey an attitude of opposition.
Works Cited
All Excerpts from The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Malcolm X) 
“Power;” “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” (Audre Lorde)
Excerpt from Soul on Ice (Eldridge Cleaver)