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“….Having complete control over Africa, the colonial powers of
Europe projected the image of Africa negatively. . . : jungle
savages, cannibals, nothing civilized. [N]aturally it was so
negative that it was negative to you and me, and you and I began to
hate it. We didn’t want anybody telling us anything about Africa,
much less calling us Africans.
In hating Africa and hating the Africans, we ended up hating
ourselves, without even realizing it. Because you can’t hate the
roots of a tree and not hate the tree. You can’t hate your origin
and not end up hating yourself. You can’t hate Africa and not hate
yourself. . . .
You can’t have a positive attitude toward yourself and a negative
attitude toward Africa at the same time. To the same degree that
your understanding of and attitude toward Africa become positive,
you’ll find that your understanding of and your attitude toward
yourself will also become positive. . . .
You know yourself that we have been a people who hated our African
characteristics. We hated our heads, we hated the shape of our
nose, we wanted one of those long dog-like noses, you know; we hated the
color of our skin, hated the blood of Africa that was in our
veins. And in hating our features and our skin and our blood, why,
we had to end up hating ourselves. . . .
Our color became to us a chain–we felt that it was holding us back;
our color became to us like a prison which we felt was keeping us
confined, not letting us go this way or that way. We felt that all
of these restrictions were based solely upon our color, and the
psychological reaction to that would have to be that as long as we
felt imprisoned or chained or trapped by black skin, black features
and black blood, that skin and those features and that blood holding
us back automatically had to become hateful to us.
And it became hateful to us….”
— Malcolm X
