A Mirror and a Guide: Remembering Malcolm X on His 100th Birthday
If I had to name when my consciousness, particularly my sense of Blackness, began to shift, I’d trace it back to high school. One of my earliest memories of that awakening is connected to a book my father had in the trunk of his car: The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I don’t know if someone gave it to him or if he picked it up himself, but when I saw the cover, I knew I had to read it. I was hooked.
The only other book that had captured me like that was I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, which I read in middle school. But this one, Malcolm’s story, did something different. It cracked something open. Interestingly enough, Maya Angelou and Malcolm X became friends and collaborated during the Civil Rights Movement.
I was attending an all-girls, mostly white high school in Queens, New York. There were no Black teachers. No real curriculum that spoke to our identities or experiences. The sense of Black consciousness, racial and cultural affirmation, wasn’t something I got from the classroom. It came through friendships, our lunchroom conversations, the music and lyrics we memorized. Though small in number, we were the daughters of Caribbean and West African immigrants and a few African American families, navigating that space together.
Reading Malcolm’s autobiography while living that reality, that book became an anchor. It gave me language and perspective at a time when police brutality, racial tension, and systemic violence were a very frightening part of my adolescence. That book was not just formative, it was foundational.
And so today, on what would have been Malcolm X’s 100th birthday, I find myself thinking not just about his life, but about the legacy he left behind. Why does Malcolm still matter? Why do his words and ideas continue to provoke, challenge, and guide us?
Many have cited the powerful question that Malcolm X posed in a speech he delivered on May 5 1962, in Los Angeles:
“Who taught you to hate yourself?”
The question he poses acts like a mental jolt, yes, but more importantly, it becomes a mirror. A confrontation. And in this moment, it feels especially relevant.
We are living in a time where, in public discourse, in art criticism, in viral debates online, we’re seeing Black people, sometimes unknowingly, perpetuate messages of internalized self-loathing. I’m thinking about the harsh backlash toward the statue currently in Times Square by Black British artist, Thomas J. Price, much of it coming from Black folx. I’m thinking about the casual weaponization of Emmett Till’s name as an insult that recently played out on a reality television show. I’m thinking about how often conversations around violence, particularly intimate partner violence involving Black women, get flattened, dismissed, or turned into spectacle.
These moments reveal something we still don’t want to fully grapple with: that many of us are still carrying, unconsciously or not, the tools of white supremacy inside us. The preferences. The judgments. The shame.
That’s why Malcolm’s question still rings true. It calls us to examine the ways we’ve internalized inferiority, how some of us seek white validation, aspire to Eurocentric beauty standards, or reject the parts of ourselves that don’t fit dominant norms.
But Malcolm X didn’t just offer condemnation of internalized racism; throughout his life, he demonstrated his process and evolution. He modeled what evolution looks like. From Malcolm Little to Detroit Red to Malcolm X to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, his life was marked by radical transformation. Each name change reflected a deepening sense of his purpose, power, and identity.
He didn’t remain static. He continued to learn, challenge himself, and expand his worldview, shifting from a nation-based Black nationalism to a broader, global vision of solidarity and liberation. His pilgrimage to Mecca profoundly shaped his understanding of unity, spirituality, and struggle. That evolution is part of his brilliance.
And so, as we remember Malcolm, I want to center not just his legacy, but the questions he left us to contemplate. Especially this one:
Who taught you to hate yourself?
It’s a question we need to ask when someone sees a statue of a Black woman, braided hair, full-bodied, brown-skinned, and calls it “monstrous.” When someone reduces Emmett Till, a teenage boy brutally murdered by white supremacist violence, to a horrible insult. When we, knowingly or not, turn our pain inward or on each other.
The power of Malcolm’s question is that it’s not about shaming. It’s about revealing and making the hidden visible. It asks us to slow down and reflect:
Where did I learn this?
Why do I believe this?
Who benefits from my believing this?
His words remind us that liberation begins in the mind. And that any revolution worth having must include an inward reckoning.
Malcolm X remains a sage for me, not just for what he stood for, but for how he allowed himself to grow. That’s part of the invitation, too, not just to memorize the quote, but to live inside the question. To be willing to evolve, to think more critically, and to love ourselves more fully.
My hope, on this day of remembrance, is that we honor him not just by celebrating his legacy, but by practicing what he exemplified: courage, clarity, and the refusal to accept a version of ourselves shaped by someone else’s hatred.
May we continue the work. May we ask the hard questions. And may we, each in our own way, step more fully into our own transformation.
