Thoughts on X

White: not intended to cause harm, favorable, fortunate.
Black: thoroughly sinister or evil, dirty or soiled.

While reading Chapter 10 Satan, Malcolm X goes to explain how he copied every word in the dictionary and improved his penmanship and extended his vocabulary. After he explained this, he went into detail about what Elijah Mohammad and the Nation of Islam preached about. They said that the "white man is evil." During class a few days ago, we looked up the definitions of white and black , besides pointing out the obvious (pigmentation and colors) we discovered that even in Webster's dictionary there was evil, pureness, harmless and harmful associated with the definition. White is not intended to cause harm, it is favorable and fortunate while black represents dirty, soil, being sinister, being evil. This fact got me thinking that perhaps the reason they argued for the evilness of the white man was to have something to fall on, a way to disprove what was common knowledge. If the black man managed to disprove the dictionary and conventional definitions then maybe what they preached and spread out was true. If people began to question the stated definition people would be less skeptical of this new way of thinking.
After reading the definitions I realized that I wasn't shocked at seeing these connotations to the words, they were things than I had heard around and were even thought to me. People with white skin can be horrendous but just because they are white people are less distrustful of them. A person with a darker skin tone is often looked at with caution and brings up a feeling of distrust. While coming home one day I was looking at how people behaved at the train station. When the station was empty with a few people waiting for their respective trains, women and anyone really, tended to drift towards white men. Standing near them or around them while they moved away from any young black men I saw at the station. I had never put much thought into this before until I remembered the class's conversation. Maybe subconsciously people behave this way because they do associate the colors and coloration of peoples skins with the basic understanding that white is good and black is evil.
Although we are in a more open society there are still those views ingrained in a majority of people. I believe it is wrong, that evil can come in a variety of shapes and colors and it is not something that can be easily defined. I do not agree with the Nation of Islam and their views towards whites. And I do not agree with the white's opinions of colored people. I also do not agree with how people react to skin color but sadly and realistically speaking that won't ever change and it is not only blacks now that are seen as 'evil' and 'dangerous' but middle eastern people and many others who are not 'white' or Caucasian.