The Outsider View
All societies have shared rules. These rules, or norms, are important for the community because they ensure it will continue to run and avoid chaos. But in every society, we see that there are some people who break away from these standards and are then called, or labeled, as outsiders. We see outsiders in every society. Throughout history, we have seen different social groups take the label of "outsider". Malcom X, Black Elk, and Robert Matthews were all individuals who were apart of social groups that were viewed by many as not belonging.
Malcolm X was born as "Malcolm Little" on May 19th,1925 in Omaha, Nebraska to his parents Reverend Earl Little and Louise Little. Malcolm X was an African-American politician and a human rights activist. When his was a young boy, his father was killed by white racists. When he was thirteen, his mother was placed in a mental hospital, and he was placed in a series of foster homes. At age 20, in 1946, he went to prison for stealing. He graduated from a primary school in a black district in Massachusetts. He could not study more, and he started stealing. He went to Michigan, Boston, and then finally landed Harlem. He was a prisoner for seven years. After he returned to Harlem people saw a different Malcolm. As an African-American Muslim politician and a human rights activist, he always worked hard, and his ideas were reasonable. The political movements which we can say that he was involved in are: Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. As a black man he was never ashamed of being a black. He was a brave man who would not hesitate to speak against the power. He became a member of Nation of Islam in 1952 and until 1963 he was in action. Because of his bravery and honesty, he was forced to leave Nation of Islam. In 1964 he went to pilgrimage to Mecca and Africa. He met Betty Sanders and married with her in 1958. Malcolm and Betty had 6 daughters. Unfortunately, in 1965 while he was giving a speech, he was assassinated.
Malcolm X was an outsider politician. He was a black man in a commonly white society and he was a Muslim in a mostly Christian society with a political and activist identity that was far different from others around him.
During this time in age, the Negroes were always looked down upon. Louise Little, Malcom X's mother, was a lighter colored black woman since her mother was raped by a white man. This allowed her to get jobs around town in the homes of white people. However, once these white families would find out they woman working in their home was a Negro, she would be fired on the spot.
"Whites have always hidden or justified all of the guilts they could by ridiculing or blaming Negroes" (Haley, pg. 16).
Robert Matthews, who later called himself prophet Matthias, is seen as an extremist who created his own "kingdom" where he would preach his "religion". He saw himself as a prophet and fooled his newfound followers with his religious views – freedom of those in need, less economic oppression, and claims of the good life. Matthias denied and criticized Christianity and controlled the life of his followers, which is why he is seen as a sort of cult leader. He insisted on being different from the Christians, specifically Protestants, as according to Matthias, Christianity is the work of the devil. Matthias along with Elijah Pierson, who Matthias believed to be Elijah the Prophet, worked together to implement the "Kingdom of Matthias" which later became "Mount Zion".
Mount Zion moved into the countryside where it would be free from the police, neighbors, and Christians. By this group secluding themselves from the people in their community, we see why they were considered outsiders to all others. At the Kingdom, Matthias banished preaching, praying and sickness. Most, if not all, of these ways of teaching were what separated Matthias and his followers from other Christians. To outsiders, Matthias and his followers looked more in the manner of a cult than a religious following. A cult is a "relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister" (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). Many of the individuals in New York who knew of Matthias, his kingdom and followers, wanted nothing to do with such group.
Matthias and his fo
Black Elk was an Oglala Lakota holy man and medicine man who shares the traditions and history of the tribe he belongs to through his life story and visions. Similar to Matthias and the followers of his Kingdom and Malcom X and his followers, we see that the Lakota people show a distinct difference in comparison to those that surrounded them.
Throughout the novel, Neihardt and Black Elk communicate to help us understand that the Lakota have a lost a large portion of their customs due to the white men who kept infiltrating their land. The Lakota participated in traditions that were unfamiliar to the Europeans, which is why they were seen as so different when compared to them.
The Lakota begin their interactions with the "white men", the Europeans, in the 1800s. We compare the traditions and religion of the Lakota to the men that were trying to take their land. The men that were forcibly trying to take their land changed the culture of the tribe and stole some of their religious identity when trying to do so.
Religion seems to refer to the concept of the "other", which has to do with discussing something that is not associated with the subject. The term other primarily just encompasses a social group that one does not belong to. With all three figures, Malcom X, Matthias, and Black Elk, we can see just how the groups they belonged to would be considered as being way different from the society they were a part of.