Political Humiliation and Conversion

In this article, I explore political humiliation and its relation to conversion, as seen in the autobiographies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. In brief, I argue that before and during the time that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X lived, political structures, laws, policies, and programs gave rise to and supported social behaviors and communications of the dominant group that were aimed at humiliating a subjugated, marginalized group—African-Americans. These experiences of political humiliation served to motivate Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to make changes in their religious commitments and attitudes. I argue further that their conversions, while different in a number of ways, cannot simply be understood as religious acts. Rather, their conversions represent political-religious acts that involved a turning away from the individual and social political subjugation to acts of political resistance against the pervasive barrage of humiliations at the hands of whites. Their political-religious acts of resistance also included a redemptive telos, which was a quest for a present and future political, social, and religious realization of human dignity and freedom.