ThePowerfulMinority
- 2. Helen Keller once said, “Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the
sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained”.
She says this with the gleaming idea that people are responsible for the application and
awarding of justice. The wheels of motion to set segregation down it’s road to demise
was the responsibility of the people, not just those discriminated against. One way to aid
change was to not follow unjust laws as a minority. Aside from choosing to follow only
the just laws, people of the majority could speak up against their phalanx of oppression
and advocate change. Lastly, one other way to ensure that change was made is the
realization that time is neutral, and not singlehandedly going to modify discrimination.
In Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King leads us to realize that
it is the role of the minority to show civil disobedience; the role of the majority to speak
up against narrowminded oppression; and the role of the people to utilize the neutrality
of time.
A large part of the Civil Rights Movement in the 50’s and 60’s was set around the
idea of civil disobedience. The tactic that aggressive opposition was not to be made, but
rather those oppressed would actively profess a refusal to follow certain laws that they
deemed “unjust”. In the his letter, Martin Luther King, Jr. highlights his position on not
choosing to follow laws in general, but choosing not to follow all unjust laws. He states,
“One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to
accept the penalty” (King 72).He then goes on to talk about his own civil disobedience
and how he chooses to accept his jail time as a way of raising awareness in the
community about the injustices. Moreover, Dr. King gives the example of unjust laws in
writing, “We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’... it was
‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany” (King 72). In bringing up Hitler,
Germany, and the Jewish people, Dr. King shows a prime example of the just and
unjust laws. He shows us that just because something is ‘legal’ or illegal’, that does not
mean it is morally correct. At the time, lynchings, police brutality, segregation, and even
derogatory terms were all legal, but does that mean they were morally okay? No. Dr.
Martin Luther King outlines this very clearly: If laws are laws, that does not makes them
just, and more so that does not mean you should just put your head down and go
through the motion of handing yourself over to injustice.
In his letter, Dr. King advocates for those in a majority to speak up against the
others in their ethnic group. He states, “Whatever affects one directly affects all
indirectly… Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an
outsider anywhere in this country” (King 67). By writing this, he is saying that an
injustice affecting one person, ultimately ends up affecting all people because there is a
rippleeffect, and lasting repercussions of an justice not served. Additionally, he is
saying that the United States is such a large ethnic pool, and melting pot, that no one
person is ever truly the minority anywhere in this country. Another example of the call
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- 3. on the majority to speak up against oppression is found later in this letter where Dr. King
mentions 4 caucasians that he says have grasped this “social revolution and committed
themselves” to changing the societal norm. Therefore he states, “They, unlike so many
of their moderate brothers and sisters, have recognized the urgency of the moment and
sensed the need for powerful ‘action’ antidotes to combat the disease of segregation”
(King 76). It takes one to spark a revolution and it is important to remember that things
do not change on their own. It takes people of a majority to stand up and make other
realize that these injustices are ridiculous. Even the Declaration of Independence,
written by ‘white males”, states that “all men are created equal”. The document on which
the United States was founded clearly tells us that all men are uniform and no one man
is better than any other. It is that mentality that should shine bright, far beyond the
darkness of oppression and segregation.
Mentality is not the only thing that needs to be utilized to change injustice. Time
is a factor that many people look at, and believe it will heal all. The phrase “only time will
heal” is used day after day, and it was not different in the days of segregation, but to say
time alone will fix something is incorrect. Dr. King writes, “It is in the strangely irrational
notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills.
Actually time is neutral”, and he says this because time after time the human races
looks upon an issue with the bifocals of “time will heal”, when in reality it is us, the
masses, the human race, the very people accepting injustice that need to set in motion
that idea of change (King 73). Change is only as tangible as we create it to be. Martin
Luther King continues on to say that, “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” (King 7374). Time never
stands still, but progression towards a goal does, and it is no coincidence. Time can be
used in two ways: constructively, or destructively; but it is in the hands of the masses to
do with time as they wish.
Understandably, many would oppose the claims above saying: How can one be
expected to stand in front of many and oppose the very thing the masses choose to do;
how can all be expected to openly break laws they believe to be unjust; and how can all
people be expected to utilize the idea that time won’t ever change something all by
itself? The answer is, we can’t expect all people to do any of these things. There is a
very specific reason that Martin Luther King is the iconic civil right leader he is today.
There is a reason that Rosa Parks in known for acting civilly disobedient and sitting at
the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. There is a reason for Nelson Mandela’s
long imprisonment, followed by the triumphant lifting of the apartheid. The reason for it?
These symbols of justice, as the minority, chose to speak up against the masses, they
chose to boycott unjust laws, and every single one used the neutrality of time to spark
change and allow us to be the very integrated society we know today.
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