Malcolm X #2 (The Knife Will Still Leave a Scar)

One of the quotes that I think is very significant is “Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man’s back –and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man’s supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it’s still going to leave a scar” (Haley 275). I think that this quote is very significant because it states that what happens in the past can be forgiven, but never forgotten. The black man has always been oppressed by the white man. It all started when the first ship of African Americans came to this country and the white man decided to make them their slaves. Even after the emancipation of slavery, black men where still being discriminated by white men. What Malcolm X means by this statement is that no matter how good the black man may be treated by a white man, the pain of once being oppressed will never go away.

There is a very interesting article about a survivor’s reaction to the genocide of Rwanda (http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/apr/06/headline-here/) that talks about the grievances the Tutsis have against the Hutus. The survivor states that he has forgiven the Hutus, but the genocide was a point in history that will be very difficult for him to forget. He went through a lot of hardships to survive the violent genocide and many of his family members and friends died. 

I know of a lot of things that have happened to me because of someone else's fault that I forgave, but are still within my memories up to this moment. I will never forget the moments that my brother made me go through a lot of pain like the moment he hit me in the mouth with a baseball bat or when he pushed me into a steaming pot while we were arguing in the kitchen. It took me a very long time for me to forgive my brother for what he had done, but I ended up forgiving him. But like I said, these are things that I will always remember.