Nonfiction book project

     I enjoyed the nonfiction book project mainly because we got to explore a book of our own choosing. I opted to read the Autobiography of Malcolm X because I had only read excerpts from it before and heard it to be a very influential book. For the project we had identify the arguments made by the author and analyze one of them in an essay. I chose to write my essay on Malcolm X’s argument that blacks would be better served if they were separated from whites and had their own institutions. I ended up defending his argument even though I initially disagreed with it. However, as I read more of the book and was exposed to his examples and rationale I began to recognize the valid case he was making for separation.
     It was hard to write from this perspective because it is not a popular opinion especially now people believe that integration is the only option to make the races equal. Having to write from this unpopular opinion was really interesting and hard because I was challenging my own beliefs and what I had been taught since I a young age. I was taught that blacks and whites should be a part of the same environment because they are equal. However Malcolm X says that though blacks and whites are supposed to be treated equally America is a white man’s society and integrating blacks into this society would make them second class citizens. People of other races also have different cultures which means that there are some basic institutional differences. Looking at the state of race relations today I can see that black people are often treated as second class citizens so what Malcolm predicted would happen with integration largely came true.
     If I were to do this project again I would present my argument with more confidence. I was a little bit unsure of my essay because of how I thought I would be perceived by presenting this perspective. In the essay I tried to push some off some of my own ideas onto Malcolm X and it was often unclear whose idea I was arguing him or my own. Despite the troubles I had with this essay it belongs in my portfolio because it showed me there are so many different perspectives to a single idea, such as racial equality and showed me that if you are able to open your mind up you can find the value in something that is not as widely accepted.