Louise Little - Characters, The Autobiography Of Malcolm X | The Autobiography of Malcolm X -Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

Malcolm's mom is a picky eater. The light-skinned, straight-haired, educated woman from Granada only gets a few defining features in Malcolm's memory before she is locked away in a mental institution and her food restriction are one of them. You could say that her particularities helped the Littles adjust to the food restrictions of Islam, but we think that's a stretch. There are, however, two aspects of Louise Little that have a pretty big impact on her son.

Red

If you've read Malcolm X's character analysis, you'll remember that he was called Detroit Red because of his light skin. How did he get his light skin? From his mom. He describes her:

Louise Little, my mother, who was born in Grenada, in the British West Indies, looked like a white woman. Her father was white. She had straight black hair, and her accent did not sound like a Negro's. (1.6)

So it's no wonder that Malcolm isn't as dark as the majority of his friends.

But it's not just her light skin that Louise passes on to Malcolm. She seems aware that light skin is considered a good thing in many parts of the black community (this is called shadeism), but wants to make sure that Malcolm never feels that way. Their skin color is the result of rape, after all. Malcolm says:

I remember that she would tell me to get out of the house and "Let the sun shine on you so you can get some color." She went out of her way never to let me become afflicted with a sense of color-superiority. I am sure that she treated me this way partly because of how she came to be light herself.(1.24)

So even though Malcolm X doesn't mention his mother's political views, it's obvious that she is not completely ignorant to the struggles of black people in America or the self-defeating problem of shadeism.

Even though Malcolm doesn't say he remembers it, we are pretty sure her treatment of him probably made an impact on his future sensibilities, just like his father's evangelism for Marcus Garvey. Malcolm's mom is not just a teacher; she's a warning.

"Welfare"

Malcolm's father is killed at the hands of white racists, and white people also destroy his mother’s life. Instead of physically violent racists, her sanity is actually dismantled by white liberals who run the welfare system a.k.a. well-meaning white people. Of course, these people were also racist but we doubt that they would have realized it themselves. In their minds, they were only helping.

How did they help? They removed several young black children from a home situation that was unstable and food insecure. Or at least that's how they would've seen it. The way Malcolm and his siblings saw it, they pestered and demeaned a single mother and recent widow in order to make her lose her sanity and take custody of her children. That's a pretty different point of view, isn't it?

Later on in the autobiography Malcolm often talks about why white people aren't to be trusted, even well meaning ones. He also talks about how he prefers obviously violent racists to white liberals. Why? Because they both will probably end up hurting him, but at least the violent one is honest about it.

We wouldn't be surprised if part of this mentality comes from what happened to his mother. She was his very first example of how supposedly-friendly white people could end up being just as bad, if not worse, than physically violent racists like the Black Legion.