...(the white man) I do not believe that he is the devil. Because to say that he is the devil is to say that he is more than human, and I do not believe that. You know that in the Christian religion the devil was flung out of heaven; he was an angel, he was more than a man, and to believe that the white man is a devil is to attribute to him supernatural powers. That is a cult mystique. There is nothing about the white man that is supernatural. He is just exactly like we are-- this is why we can understand him so well. There is nothing mysterious about what he does. He was not condemned to be the devil for six thousand years-- he just acts like a devil because it suits his purpose, and he mistreats us, he oppresses us, he's brutal to us, because it's in his interest-- not because he is a devil.

It is closer to sat that he is a beast, and that is what Malcolm said. You would like to forget that now, but every time I talked to him, he referred to the white man as a beast. And those of you who are white here will agree that most white people are beasts-- you can't deny it. On the basis of the way the white man has treated black men in America and throughout the world for four hundred years, you cannot deny what he said that the white man is a beast. But not a devil. A beast is lower than a man, a devil is higher than a man. Certainly the white man is not a devil, but in many instances a beast.

Reverend Albert Cleage, a speech on the legacy of the murdered Malik El-Shabazz

delivered in Detroit February 24, 1967