The Four Stages Of Malcolm X's Racial Identity Development

Race is a social construct. This construct of race is forced on everyone, be it if they are White, Black, Latino, Asian, or American Indian. Society is set up to teach everyone their place in the world. For white people they are inadvertently or intentionally taught that they are systemically the best. The other people groups are pushed to the side to do their best to survive in a country set up against them. Malcolm X went through this process, like a lot of people. He tried many ways to fit in and each of his attempts were a step in his racial identity development.

For the dominant group in society, there are six stages of development, contact, disintegration, reintegration, pseudo-independent, immersion, and autonomy. As a teenage white male, I think I’m in the pseudo-independent portion. As a child, I was in the contact group. I was naive to any racial prejudices, and I wasn’t exposed to many different cultures. Oddly though my best friend for many years is black and I haven't really seen any outstanding examples of me getting better treatment than him, but he definitely is an outlier. More recently I have been exposed to different cultures. I spent a week on a reservation, where the Native Americans there showed their culture as an
He was a strong leader, and people wanted to help his cause. He at one point told a white woman who had gone to him seeking a way to help his cause. He told he he didn’t want her help, and held the belief that that white people couldn’t help with his cause. He eventually changed his mind, after going on his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he partook in activities there with all different complexions, and he realized that coexistence was possible, and what he decided he wanted to strive for. Malcolm went through the stages of Internalization and Commitment. He worked closely with people of his own race, and eventually was willing to work with everyone to solve the