When Malcolm is a child, his parents teach him not to take abuse from white people. Although he is briefly happy while staying with the Swerlins, his white foster family, he is not content being their “mascot.” When Malcolm moves to Boston, his sole significant contact with white people is Sophia, whom he never acknowledges as anything more than an object. Once he leaves Boston, Malcolm treats white people as they have always treated him: inhumanly. By the time Malcolm reaches prison, this impulse to treat white people as inhuman has been so reinforced by his experiences that he readily accepts Elijah Muhammad’s teachings that the white man is the devil. When Malcolm reviews the white people he has known, he can think of only one, his Jewish
