obling the victims was one way of showing how pernicious the institution itself might be. As a consequence, two opposing conceptions developed in Europe:
Henceforward, Europeans would be increasingly divided into two opposed views: one, the traditional, tending to hold that Africa had never possessed cultures that were worthy of respect or even of serious investigation; the other, the scientific, tending to argue the reverse (Davidson 100).
American society developed its own racist attitudes in response to the black population freed after the Civil War. The position of blacks in America today remains an issue that is much argued. After almost four decades of the Civil Rights movement, the degree of change in the black community, while real and noticeable, also remains inadequate. Blacks have achieved positions of power, are less subject to institutional racism than in the past, and have redress in the courts and even in the court of public opinion that was once denied them. Yet, the black community remains disproportionately poor, uneducated or undereducated, and unemployed. Education is seen as the key to success in America, and every immigrant and ethnic group has eventually come to the conclusion that education for the next generation will give that generation a leg up on the ladder of success in American life. This attitude is seen in all three of the works under discussion. The role of family is also seen in all three works, from the complete lack of family structure in the life of Malcolm X to the extended family of The Godfather. Malcolm sees the disintegration of the black family as the result of a deliberate policy on the part of white society to break up the black family, a policy that started in slavery as families were divided and then continued after Emancipation.
The vital importance of education is emphasized again and again in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as is the need for a better understanding...