Fluent Essays

Read short reading and answer this question. I also attached a lecture about this so you will have a better idea to answer the question.For the discussion board this week, answer the following question and respond to a post from another student.In his writings and speeches, Martin Luther King frequently calls things either just or unjust. What is MLKs definition of justice? (500 to 600 words) In answering this question, you may consider his views towards to social and political conditions of Black Americans, civil disobedience, the Vietnam War, and obligations to others. For the respond to classmate, I will try to post it asap, you only need to respond in 120 to 150 words. king_readings.pdf mlk_sp20_pp_pdf.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview 10 I I I I I letter from a Birmingham Jail 11963) Friendly detractors hod accused Mortin Luther King, Jr., of urging others to do things that he did not do. Some self-righteously proclaimed that Dr. King did not spend enough time in jail. It hurt him greatly to receive such criticisms from some of his Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com­ mittee colleagues ofter their 1962 voter registration campaign in Albany, Georgia. Such petty criticisms resulted more from envy and for­ getfulness than from actual facts. And, they seldom took his leadership responsibilities into account. His critics did not know that the Southern Christian Leadership Con­ ferences cash flow problems ohen placed it on the edge of financial ruin. Monies from Dr. Kings speaking engagements frequently saved SCLC from this kind of embarrassment. Furthermore, a simple catalogue of the many times he was arrested would cast great doubts on the accu­ racy of such criticisms. The many hours he spent celebrating the sacra­ ment of imprisonment became spiritual preparation for the Letter from a Birmingham Jail.• He wrote this essay in the form of an open letter on April 16, 1963, while he was serving a sentence for participating in civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King rarely took time to defend himself against his opponents. But eight prominent liberal Alabama clergymen published an open letter earlier in January that coiled on King to allow the bottle for integration to 83 King Lecture One Outline • Contextualizing King: Segregation in the U.S. • Background on Birmingham, Alabama • Letter From Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King Jr. January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968 Timeline of Segregation Action 1948 Executive order mandates the integration of the armed forces following World War II 1954 Desegregation of public schools after Brown v. Board of Education supreme court ruling 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Improvement Association organize a 13 month bus boycott 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964: outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin 1968 Fair Housing Act reversed laws that allowed discrimination in housing practices Justifications for breaking the law There are two types of laws: there are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all’… a just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law (89) So segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful (89) Critique of the church But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century (97) “…I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love—‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.’” (94) King Lecture Two: Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963) • Secular Reasons/Justification for Protest • Why nonviolent, direct action Secular Reasons/Justification for Protest “any law that uplifts the human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, and the segregated a false sense of inferiority” (89) “An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. One the other hand a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal” (89) “We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’” (90) “These laws are being used to manipulate people and prevent open discourse and expression, as with using the parade license to shut down a march and deny first amendment rights of peaceable assembly.” (90) Why nonviolent, direct action “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister….there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth” (87) Why nonviolent, direct action “We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured” (91) Why nonviolent, direct action “the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open to door to negotiation” (87) Why nonviolent, direct action “You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being…it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative” (85) Why nonviolent, direct action “History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily…we know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” (87) Why nonviolent, direct action “One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly…and with a willingness to accept the penalty” (90) King Lecture Three: Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963) • The white moderate • Why civil rights can’t wait The White Moderate “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom” (91) The White Moderate “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection” (91) The White Moderate “I had hopes that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail to do this they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hopes that the white moderate would understand that the present tension of the South is merely a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, where the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substance-filled positive peace, where all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality” (91) “Why not wait?” “Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was well-timed …for years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “Wait” had almost always meant ‘Never.’” (87-88) “All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively.” (92) “We must come to see that human progress never rolls in one wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy…” 92 “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights…I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stringing darts of segregation to say, ‘Wait.’ But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers of a whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society…then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait” (88-89) “when you suddenly find yourself tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park…and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people…” (88) Civil Rights and Democracy “Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity” (92) “An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because they did not have the unhampered right to vote. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the segregation laws of democratically elected? Throughout the state of Alabama all types of conniving methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters and there are some counties without a single Negro registered to vote despite the fact that the Negro constitutes a majority of the population” 90 “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in a inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny” (85) Lecture: A Time to Break Silence (1967) • Why Speak Out On Vietnam? • Refusing the demonize ‘the other’ • Questioning American values Why Speak Out About Vietnam - War disproportionately affects the poor while inhibiting domestic progress - Part of his religious mission & commitment to nonviolence “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent” (ATTBS 139) Why Speak Out About Vietnam “Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them” (ATTBS 140) “They must see Americans as strange liberators:” The Revaluation of All [American] Values “so far we have killed a million of them—mostly children” (ATTBS 142) Refusing to demonize “the other” “Now they languish under our bombs and consider us—not their fellow Vietnamese—the real enemy… How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions” (ATTBS 142) The Other: a figure or group who is perceived as not belonging by a dominant group or individual, or is seen as fundamentally different. “The Other” is often seen as lacking essential or important qualities. Refusing to demonize “the other” “Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessments of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weakness of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition” (ATTBS, 143) The Revaluation of All [American] Values “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death” (ATTBS, 148) “Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ‘ready’ for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long” (ATTBS, 141) Lecture: A Time to Break Silence (1967) • King’s nonconformity & anti-capitalism • New values King’s Non-Conformity “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s bosom and in the surrounding world” (ATTBS, 136) King’s Anti-Capitalism Speaking of U.S. soldiers: “Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor” (ATTBS, 145) “a true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries” (ATTBS, 148) Communist Manifesto “the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of modern industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway.” (CM, 11) “the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe…it compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production” (CM, 12 &13) Taking [Economic] Control We have to “always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal…Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine…the Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year…That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it” (ISTPL, 198) “But not only that, we’ve got to strengthen black institutions…now these are some practical things we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base…we are putting pressure where it really hurts” (ISTPL, 199) New Values “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered” (ATTBS, 148) New Values “I speak as a citizen of the world” (ATTBS, 145) “This call for world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This if oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept—so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force—has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life” (ATTBS, 150) “We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation” (ATTBS, 151) ... Purchase answer to see full attachment