Bias In Malcom X's Learning To Read

Kyle Hill, a science writer and communicator, observes that “We tend to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs and ignore or discredit information that does not. This confirmation bias settles over our eyes like distorting spectacles for everything we look at.” Confirmation bias, can affect the way that we interpret information, and the opinions we make based on the way we interpret information. In Malcom X’s “Learning to Read”, he examines the importance of his self-education, and the information he absorbed while in jail. He learns that throughout world history many atrocities have effected people of color. Many of these events that he highlights and includes within his essay, involved white people as the main perpetrator. His criticisms fail to recognize the events within history that did not involve white people, and the examples he utilized …show more content…
He explains,” I read the histories of various nations, which opened my eyes gradually, then wider and wider, to how the whole world’s white men had indeed acted like devils, pillaging, and raping and draining the whole world’s non-white people.” Through the use of inflammatory language, he uses jarring words, such as, “devil” in referring to white men/people. His statement, generalizes an entire race of people, and is an opinion that is not factual. Although, events in which white people have detrimentally effected other races, have occurred the same could be said for any other race of people.
The issue of civil rights or human rights that Malcom X addresses towards the end of his essay, is never fully addressed in a concise way nor is the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that he states afflicted the black race in America. The only understanding that the reader gets of it, is