|
 There can be no gainsaying the fact that we face a crisis in race relations in our nation. This crisis has been precipitate by the collision between the forces of liberation and the forces of domination. One of the greatest expressions of this crisis is the resistance to the supreme court's decision outlawing segregation in the public schools; at times this résistance has risen to ominous proportions. But the old ideal of racial segregation, of paternalistic relationships, has exhausted itself, and the American society is seeking to reorient itself the idea of integration, the idea of person to person relations. This is the crisis of our age.
Now when the crisis develops in a society there is always an attempt to solve the problem developed as a result of the crisis and to get rid of the precipitating forces. Certainly those who have been oppressed or who have been the victims of the forces of domination, are always seeking to deal with the crisis. And there are three ways that oppressed people can get grapple with their oppression.
One method is that of acquiescence there are those individuals who feel that the only way to deal with their oppression is to resign themselves to the fate of oppression. There are those who surrender and find themselves becoming conditioned to things as they are. They feel that it is better to live with these things than to go through the ordeals of changing the old order to the new order. There was a man who lived in one of the Negro communities in Atlanta some years ago; he used to play his guitar and sing various songs, and one day he was heard singing a song that went something like this: "been down so long that down don't bother me." I guess he had achieved a level of freedom - a freedom of exhaustion. He had given up the struggle.
 So this is the method of acquiescence - but it is not the way. It may be the easy way at times, but it is not moral way and it is not the courageous way; it is a cowardly way for the individual who adjusts to an evil system, and he must take some of the responsibility for the perpetuation of the unjust system. There is a second way that oppressed people can deal with their oppression and that is to rise up with the violence and corroding hatred.
Now, of course, we know about this method. We know about violence and i am not here to say that violence has never worked. One who studies history soon discovers that nations have often received their independence through violence. Violence has often brought about momentary victories, it can never bring about permanent peace and it ends up creating many more social problems. Violence in the long run in the struggle for racial justice in both impractical and immoral. it is impractical for many reasons, and I think one of the best reasons is that so many of our opponents would love us to start a violent revolution; they would use this an excuse to kill many innocent people under the pretense that they are inciting a riot.
 I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, that "Bull" Connor (Commissioner of Public Safety) was always happy when somebody on the sideline from the Negro Community threw rocks but he was always unhappy when we remained non-violent. He knows how to deal with violence, but he does not know how to handle non-violence.
And violence is impractical because the old eye for an eye philosophy ends up leaving everybody blind. This method is wrong. This method is immoral. It is immoral because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for everybody. It is wrong because it seeks to annihilate the opponent rather than convert him. It is wrong because it leaves society in monologue, rather than dialogue.
Dr. Martin Luther King
|
