Response Essay for "A Homemade Education" Malcom X's "A Homemade Education" tells a story of how he gained knowledge by himself and how it guided his thoughts and ideas. Reading also molded his political views. Although Malcom X is a very outspoken person about racism in America, and throughout the world, I find that he has a right to be angry, but goes a little overboard on blaming whites.The story begins when Malcom is in jail and is given a book that he cannot understand because he can't read. This angered him a little and sparked a fire inside of him to learn how to read and write. Soon thereafter he went to the library in the jail and checked out a dictionary. He began to copy the whole dictionary learning word after word that he wrote. Upon completion of the dictionary, he started to read anything he could get his hands on. No matter what time it was, Malcom was reading. Despite being in jail, he felt as free as he ever could be. Reading and the ability to learn is what made him feel this way. After becoming a more educated man, he began to study the teachings of Muhammad. Muhammad's teachings told Malcom, " . . .how history had been 'whitened' - when white men had written history books, the black man simply had been left out." (Malcom X p. 79) After becoming quite educated, Malcom became interested political views of blacks and wanted to change people's minds. He usually became angry because white authors and Europeans "bleached" whatever they wrote to make it sound better in their behalf. Another thing that really affected him was slavery. He hated slavery more than anything on the face of the world. Over 115 million African American blacks-close to the 1930s population of the United States-were murdered or enslaved during the slave trade. And I read how when the slave market was glutted, the cannibalistic white powers of Europe carved up next, as their colonies, the richest areas of the black continent. And ...
