Malcolm X: Independent views Part 16.

After he left the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X began to articulate his own views. During the final year of his life, his philosophy was flexible, and it is difficult to categorize his views on some subjects. Some of the themes to which Malcolm X frequently returned in his speeches demonstrate a relative consistency of thought.

After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X announced his willingness to work with leaders of the civil rights movement. However, he felt that the civil rights movement should change its focus to human rights. So long as the movement remained a fight for civil rights, its struggle remained a domestic issue.

By framing the African American struggle for equal rights as a fight for human rights, it would become an international issue and the movement could bring its complaint before the United Nations. Malcolm X said the emerging nations of the world would add their support to the cause of African Americans.

Malcolm X continued to hold the view that African Americans were right to defend themselves from aggressors, arguing that if the government was unwilling or unable to protect black people, they should protect themselves "by whatever means necessary".

He also continued to reject nonviolence as the only means for securing equality, declaring that he and the other members of the Organization of Afro-American Unity were determined to win freedom, justice, and equality "by any means necessary".

Malcolm X stressed the global perspective he gained from his international travels. He emphasized the "direct connection" between the domestic struggle of African Americans for equal rights with the liberation struggles of Third World nations. He said that African Americans were wrong when they thought of themselves as a minority; in a global context, black people were a majority, not a minority.

Although he no longer called for the separation of black people from white people, Malcolm X continued to advocate black nationalism, which he defined as self-determination for the African-American community. In the last months of his life, however, Malcolm X began to reconsider his support of black nationalism after meeting northern African revolutionaries who, to all appearances, were white.

After his Hajj, Malcolm X articulated a view of white people and racism that represented a deep change from the philosophy he articulated as a minister of the Nation of Islam. In a famous letter from Mecca, he wrote that the white people he met during his pilgrimage forced him to "rearrange" his thinking about race and "toss aside some of [his] previous conclusions".
In a 1965 conversation with Gordon Parks, two days before his assassination,

Malcolm said:
[L]istening to leaders like Nasser, Ben Bella, and Nkrumah awakened me to the dangers of racism. I realized racism isn't just a black and white problem. It's brought bloodbaths to about every nation on earth at one time or another.

Brother, remember the time that white college girl came into the restaurant—the one who wanted to help the [Black] Muslims and the whites get together—and I told her there wasn't a ghost of a chance and she went away crying? Well, I've lived to regret that incident. In many parts of the African continent I saw white students helping black people.

Something like this kills a lot of argument. I did many things as a [Black] Muslim that I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then—like all [Black] Muslims—I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man's entitled to make a fool of himself if he's ready to pay the cost. It cost me 12 years.

That was a bad scene, brother. The sickness and madness of those days—I'm glad to be free of them.