Tagged: nonviolence
what would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. say about what’s happening in #Baltimore?
“Just as the slavemaster in that day used Tom — the house negro — to keep the field negros in check, the same old slavemaster today, has negros who are nothing but modern Uncle Toms, 20th century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check. [To] keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent. That’s Tom making you nonviolent.” — Malcolm X
“It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handing the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather ‘nonviolently’ in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.'” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Source: Letter From Birmingham Jail. April 16, 1963.
“Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.” — Stokley Carmichael
Me Against Iniquity: Understanding the Complexities of Global White Supremacy (Racism) Through The Eyes of an Unapologetically BLACK Intellectual 