Malcolm X, Laura and Sophia

I'm not exactly sure why Malcolm had the sudden urge to be with Sophia. She's a white girl, most unlike himself, and she isn't as good of a dancer as Laura is. I liked Laura because she is eager and young and exactly what Malcolm X is looking for. Laura is also more Malcolm's age as opposed to Sophia who is much older. Malcolm drops Laura who spent time at dances with him, lied to her grandmother for him, and spent lots of time getting to know him. I feel that Malcolm, as we all know is trying to be white, wants to be with Sophia because of the fact that she is white. I think that he feels that people will look at him differently if he has a white girl and he parades her around. "[Malcolm] paraded her. The negro men loved her"( Haley 71). After all, he was already changing his style of fashion and conking his hair. If he has a white girl, he thinks that he will be seen as more white with his conk and his white girlfriend who wasn't a prostitute. He thought to himself, "Now at that time, in Roxbury, in any black ghetto in America, to have a white woman who wasn't a known common whore was--for the average black man, at least-- a status symbol of the first order" (Haley 70). He definitely saw her skin color as more than just white. He saw it as a way to become white and gain a higher social status.