Exploratory Draft for Malcolm X

            I am writing about Malcolm’s relationship with Reginald in comparison to his relationship with Elijah Muhammad. Reginald is Malcolm’s blood brother, and the one out of all of his siblings (not including his half-sister Ella) that meant the most to him. Elijah Muhammad is, for a while at least, Malcolm’s closest friend and respected leader. Reginald and Elijah Muhammad have something else in common other than being close with Malcolm and being associated with The Nation of Islam – they both faced accusations of adultery. It’s troubling that Malcolm stands by Elijah Muhammad longer than Reginald, Reginald whom he’s known and loved his whole life, even when the evidence against Elijah Muhammad is greater than the evidence against Reginald.

            This is confusing because Elijah Muhammad is Malcolm’s friend but Reginald is his brother. Reginald is the little brother with hernia that Malcolm looked after and nurtured in childhood. That’s what a lot of the text in Nightmare talks about; Malcolm’s love for his brother. And Malcolm, at his Detroit Red stage took Reginald under his wing and offered to show him the ropes. They had a bond, those two! How did Malcolm give him up so quickly?

            Elijah Muhammad he first heard about in prison. Elijah Muhammad he learned everything from, everything that ended up being false, but nevertheless was a monumental part of Malcolm’s chronology of changes. Why did Malcolm stick by him longer? Why did he forsake Reginald? Was it because Reginald, at the time of the adulterous charges, turned on The Nation of Islam? But why would Malcolm feel more loyalty to The Nation of Islam, something he had just learned about, than to his blood brother? It doesn’t make sense. However, the moment Malcolm heard about The Nation of Islam, he was hooked. He read many books, he lectured the other inmates and tried to convert them, even though he’d only recently been converted himself. Malcolm wasn’t the type to wait, to double-check. He was the type to dive right in.

            Though you would think Malcolm’s loyalties first and foremost would be to his family, it’s debatable. Malcolm loved his half-sister who he met later in his life more than his mother. In fact, when you think about it, most of the people and places from early in his life seemed to be of little importance to him later on. Malcolm considers his “first big turning point” to be when he met Mr. Ostrowski, not all the crazy things that happened to his family in his early years.

            Malcolm, in prison, decides that everything up to that point was him being the brainwashed black man catering to the devil white man. Because he is suddenly forced to question everything he has ever known, everything in his past – and Reginald is a part of his past – does he question Reginald for this reason too?

            This brings us to the topic of who really saved Malcolm in prison. In the chapters Saved and Savior, it’s actually not entirely clear. It is Reginald who brings Malcolm into The Nation of Islam, who hooks him, who encourages him to write to Elijah Muhammad. Reginald was the one who could get through to him when no one else could. Elijah Muhammad gave him the information, but none of that would’ve happened if it weren’t for Reginald. Then why did Malcolm stand by Elijah Muhammad longer?

            My claim is that Reginald looked up to Malcolm who looked up to Elijah Muhammad. It’s like a food chain, really, or a social order. Reginald was below him, in Malcolm’s mind. That doesn’t mean he loved him any less – it might even mean he loved him more, because Malcolm had a thing for those inferior to him – but it does mean that Malcolm puts less faith in him. Elijah Muhammad is pretty much Malcolm’s idol. Malcolm looks up to him. Malcolm admires him. Malcolm is Elijah Muhammad’s Reginald.

            If a child and an adult make the same mistake, you’d be more upset with the adult, because they should have known better. Maybe that’s why Malcolm can’t accept the truth about Elijah Muhammad – because he should’ve known better.

            And although Reginald is Malcolm’s actual brother, Malcolm spent far more time with Elijah Muhammad than with Reginald. Since Malcolm and his siblings were separated during childhood, Malcolm and Reginald weren’t really in the same place very often. Malcolm spent years speaking side-by-side with Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm didn’t even know Reginald that well when Reginald came to visit him in prison. It’s easier to doubt someone you don’t really know than someone you think you do.

            Reginald told Malcolm about The Nation of Islam. That’s one thing. But Elijah Muhammad WAS The Nation of Islam. If Elijah Muhammad was a liar, that meant The Nation of Islam was a lie too. That would mean that everything Malcolm rebuilt his life around and on, and everything that had gotten him out of the gutter, was a lie.

            But Malcolm hadn’t had that degree of trouble accepting changes before.

            But maybe this was different. Maybe it was in a completely different league. As it says on page 372, Malcolm believed in Elijah Muhammad “Not only as a leader in the ordinary human sense, but also I believed in him as a divine leader. I believed he had no human weaknesses or faults, and that, therefore, he could make no mistakes and that he could do no wrong.” He doesn’t think that Elijah Muhammad is an ordinary human, whereas Reginald is very human. Does Malcolm hate Reginald in fact for his humanity? Reginald looks up to Malcolm. That would mean, in a sense, that since Malcolm influenced him, the crimes Reginald has committed Malcolm has indirectly committed too. Is Malcolm afraid to accept his own humanity, his own faults? Especially when he is at the vulnerable time of being in prison? But it is in prison that Malcolm realizes the flaws in how he’s lived.

            Malcolm might’ve seen Elijah Muhammad as a divine leader, maybe that was why he didn’t want to doubt him. But people doubt God as quickly as they doubt humans.

            But if someone told you that your brother and God both committed adultery… well at first I was going to say you’d doubt your brother because he’s human, but in reality wouldn’t you stand by him longer? Because he’s your brother and you know him? But what if your brother is estranged? But even so, you don’t know God. You can’t trust him.

            It’s important to remember that Elijah Muhammad and Reginald being accused of adultery did not happen simultaneously on Malcolm’s timeline. There was a significant gap in between. But wouldn’t Malcolm be more open to the fact that people commit adultery after Reginald’s incident?

            Malcolm’s life had been a fast-paced chronology of changes during the time in his life up to being in prison. Isn’t it easier to doubt things when your life is moving so quickly? During his time with Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm had temporarily achieved a sort of stability. Maybe it seemed impossible to him for anything to come along that would shake that. Or maybe he didn’t want to forfeit his stability and thought that if he didn’t accept Elijah Muhammad’s adultery everything would stay the same and it would just be gone like a passing breeze.