It also allows people to understand what life was really like for a black person in this era. Malcolm's childhood is full of trauma and anguish. His father is killed and his mother is eventually sent to a mental hospital. His siblings are split up and he is sent to live with a white foster family. Despite this misery, Malcolm remains ambitious, becoming class president and maintaining his goal of becoming a lawyer. The anguish Malcolm suffers as a young man is a direct result of racism. It is disheartening to imagine such a young child suffering so much pain because of the color of his skin. The text surprisingly shows this pain that Malcolm fights and how he deals with it. A turning point in his life comes when Malcolm tells his teacher about his aspirations to become a lawyer and tells him to focus on carpentry instead. He states, “It was surprising that I had never thought about it that way before, but I realized that whatever I wasn't, I was smarter than almost all those white kids. But apparently I wasn't smart enough yet, in their eyes, to become what I wanted to be” (p. 34). In this quote, Malcolm acknowledges that he is smarter than his peers, but because he is darker skinned, his intelligence doesn't matter. At this moment, Malcolm realizes the true extent of racism in society and begins to take a step back from white people. Malcolm states, “I don't care how nice someone is to you; the thing you must always remember is that he almost never really sees you as he sees himself, as he sees his peers. He may stand by your side in difficult times, but not in difficult times; when things get bad, you will discover that in him, like his bone structure, is fixed his belief, sometimes unconscious, that he is better than anyone else black" (page 29).