Why should ANYONE take moral lectures from a career criminal?!!!

You take moral lessons from the 12 apostles yes?

Well, they were adulterers, liars, thieves, murderers and prostitutes.

The holy vatican system of which close to 1.5 billion people look to for morality are responsible for surpressing science and women and large scale child abuse.

Malcolm X was a thief and a liar early in his life, people looked up to him because he WAS a criminal and not a saint. People could relate to him and he spoke from personal experience.

I think the biggest misperception or myth of Malcolm's legacy was that he was some sort of "thug" or "bad seed" who makes a dramatic change into becoming an influential leader. But in regard to him being a deviant, nothing is further from the truth.

Yes, he was a former criminal, but he engaged in crimes not so because he was a a "bad person." He engaged in crime because as a black man during that specific time period it was the only he could achieve the "American Dream" of success.

One of the most memorable scenes of this movie, at least for me, occurs when Shorty and Sophia transport Malcolm back to Boston after Malcolm's run-in with West Indian Archie in Harlem. While sitting in the back seat of the car, Malcolm (or "Red" as he was known then) reflects and says how black guys like Archie, who had high mathematical aptitude as a numbers runner, could have been scientists or how Malcolm himself could have become a great lawyer had he his aspirations not been shattered by his jr. high school teacher. But as Malcolm said, "We were all victims of the American social order." Meaning that because they were black, they were all denied the opportunity to embark on legitimate professional careers and their only choice for achieving success was the underworld.

It wasn't so much that Malcolm was a deviant or "carer criminal." It was just that illegitimate operations--such as prostitution, robbery, and drug dealing--were the only means for black men of Malcolm's generation to attain money.

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give me a break.... the most supposedly esteemed people up there... priests, cops, politicians.... They are some of the most dirty people out there.

A reformed criminal has seen it all.

When it comes down to it, we ALL dirty.... Yes, even you. In fact, especially you. So, yes, i will trust the guy who's come clean about him being dirty over some self-proclaimed angel.

You're right - Mandela was in this toward the end.

The biggest con man through all of this was Elijah Muhammad. And though Malcolm was street smart, he, like many other Black ppl who, as he said, "had been had, been took, been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok," by Elijah Muhammad's version of Islam. I grew up in the NOI, and my momma was fanatical in her belief in Elijah Muhammad, that he was the closest thing God Himself, as did so many misguided Black ppl. While those poor, yet loyal followers gave up their last dollar, nickel and dimes toward the "propagation of Islam in the Wilderness if North America", that money was making Elijah Muhammad and his family Croesus-rich. While many of the devout were driving jalopies or riding the bus to and from where they had to go, Muhammad and his crew were driven around in limos or driving big ass cars and such. My father was the cartoonist for the Muhammad Speaks newspaper, and he worked diligently damn near day and night to see that the paper got out on time. I attended the Muslim elementary and high school and rode the school bus. We lived in one of the "Nation's Buildings" where two apartments were Elijah Muhammad's "love nests" for his trysts with the secretaries he was boning. My momma even found a birth certificate listing his name as the baby daddy of one his womens' kid. This was around 1963, when the scandal was hot copy for the press, and around the same time Minister Malcolm had probably found out about it and the betrayal by Elijah Muhammad.

Why shouldn't anyone listen to a moral lecture from someone who was a career criminal? How on Earth could he pull my leg? I'm not going to instantly agree with everything he says. It's not like someone could tell me that stealing is okay and I'd suddenly become a thief because I mistakenly listened to them and became unable to form my own opinions. The value of listening to people like Malcolm X comes not from the fact that I can follow in their footsteps, but rather that I might better understand where they came from and why they were criminals. The main issue I take with your statement is that many of the good people you mention taught that people could genuinely change for the better, and several lived lifestyles that they later thought were wrong. You should take your own advice and listen to them.