ortunity and upward social mobility in a racially oppressive society. Such gestures also dramatize blacks' disdain for their situation of reduced sociopolitical status that is tied to the shame surrounding slavery. One would then feel hard pressed to blame blacks for such superficiality. But, to Malcolm X, it was best that blacks be themselves rather than live a lie.
Interestingly, Malcolm X, by his own admission, is a victim of the process of the white "brainwashing" and degrading of blacks. Malcolm X went to great lengths to get his hair straightened and limp with lye so it would resemble the general texture of whites' hair. Malcolm X still mastered the strength to advise strongly against such acts by blacks:
that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are "inferior" and white people "superior" that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look "pretty" by white standards . . . Straightening of hair (the conk) was the emblem of his [the black's] shame that he is black (Malcolm X, 1965, pp. 108-109).
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