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gazzahaz 's review for:
Every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day we see the circulation of quotes from him and anecdotes about his life in celebration of his legacy. Growing up, I was only ever given a surface level understanding of him which didn’t really mean much to my young brain besides the assumption that racism was a thing of the past and that I could stay home from school and play video games.
With recent events in our country surrounding questions of racism and social and economic injustice, I’ve become painfully aware of how little I have ever understood about our nation’s history of civil rights. I’ve recently heard and read several ideas recently put forward about MLK, citing him as an example of the “right” way to protest, or cherry-picking words from his more famous speeches to justify the opinion that institutional racism is inconsequential or nonexistent. It is often convenient to present an uncomplicated narrative of a historical figure to complement one’s personal worldview; as a religious person I see this happen frequently.
When the BLM protests began last summer, I often came across comparisons between MLK Jr. and Malcom X, nearly always citing the former as the successful and peaceful and heroic and the latter as a failure with a dangerous worldview. As I was left to stew on this with little personal knowledge about the nuanced lives of either of these men, you can imagine my interest when I heard about this book. I recommend it highly to those interested in a digestible history of both of these men and the Civil Rights movement and how the movements of our time are stark reflections of it and of both of their legacies.
Key takeaway: MLK Jr. and Malcom X were not so diametrically opposed in thought or agenda as modern, oversimplified narratives might suggest, especially towards the end of their lives (both of which were taken from them, you’ll remember). Many of their ideas and radical calls for change, both on an individual and systemic level, overlapped and complemented one another, even though they sparred publicly and privately about methods to achieve them.
In honor of both of their legacies, I want to share a quote from MLK Jr. that would likely have made Malcom X proud and that profoundly touches on current issues of our time, following which I’ll share a quote from the final chapter of the aforementioned book:
“White America is seeking to keep the walls of segregation substantially intact while the evolution of society and the Negro's desperation is causing them to crumble. The white majority, unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change, is resisting and producing chaos while complaining that if there were no chaos orderly change would come...
... A profound judgment of today's riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, 'If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.'
The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.”
— Martin Luther King Jr., “The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement”
“...Martin Luther King Jr. Day allowed America to bask in his dream, even as the nation stood further from fulfilling its mandate. King would not recognize himself in the uncomplicated, largely timid figure that much of the nation and the world celebrate today. The radical King who gathered an army of the poor to descend upon the nation’s capitol in defiance of critics, is airbrushed from history. The risk-taking King who defied a sitting President to protest a war is missing from our popular memory. The revolutionary King, who marched shoulder to shoulder with garbage workers, locked arms with Black Power militants, and lived in Chicago ghettos in an effort to stimulate social change, is forgotten. The King who proclaimed that America’s greatness remained ‘the right to protest for right’ has all but vanished, replaced by generic platitudes about freedom and justice.”
— Peniel E. Joseph
With recent events in our country surrounding questions of racism and social and economic injustice, I’ve become painfully aware of how little I have ever understood about our nation’s history of civil rights. I’ve recently heard and read several ideas recently put forward about MLK, citing him as an example of the “right” way to protest, or cherry-picking words from his more famous speeches to justify the opinion that institutional racism is inconsequential or nonexistent. It is often convenient to present an uncomplicated narrative of a historical figure to complement one’s personal worldview; as a religious person I see this happen frequently.
When the BLM protests began last summer, I often came across comparisons between MLK Jr. and Malcom X, nearly always citing the former as the successful and peaceful and heroic and the latter as a failure with a dangerous worldview. As I was left to stew on this with little personal knowledge about the nuanced lives of either of these men, you can imagine my interest when I heard about this book. I recommend it highly to those interested in a digestible history of both of these men and the Civil Rights movement and how the movements of our time are stark reflections of it and of both of their legacies.
Key takeaway: MLK Jr. and Malcom X were not so diametrically opposed in thought or agenda as modern, oversimplified narratives might suggest, especially towards the end of their lives (both of which were taken from them, you’ll remember). Many of their ideas and radical calls for change, both on an individual and systemic level, overlapped and complemented one another, even though they sparred publicly and privately about methods to achieve them.
In honor of both of their legacies, I want to share a quote from MLK Jr. that would likely have made Malcom X proud and that profoundly touches on current issues of our time, following which I’ll share a quote from the final chapter of the aforementioned book:
“White America is seeking to keep the walls of segregation substantially intact while the evolution of society and the Negro's desperation is causing them to crumble. The white majority, unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change, is resisting and producing chaos while complaining that if there were no chaos orderly change would come...
... A profound judgment of today's riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, 'If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.'
The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.”
— Martin Luther King Jr., “The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement”
“...Martin Luther King Jr. Day allowed America to bask in his dream, even as the nation stood further from fulfilling its mandate. King would not recognize himself in the uncomplicated, largely timid figure that much of the nation and the world celebrate today. The radical King who gathered an army of the poor to descend upon the nation’s capitol in defiance of critics, is airbrushed from history. The risk-taking King who defied a sitting President to protest a war is missing from our popular memory. The revolutionary King, who marched shoulder to shoulder with garbage workers, locked arms with Black Power militants, and lived in Chicago ghettos in an effort to stimulate social change, is forgotten. The King who proclaimed that America’s greatness remained ‘the right to protest for right’ has all but vanished, replaced by generic platitudes about freedom and justice.”
— Peniel E. Joseph