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- CRITIQUES OF KINGS METHOD
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JUSTICEIn his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," one of his most famous pieces of writing, King outlined a complex definition of a "just law." He did so in order to justify why he encouraged his fellow protesters to break the law, when it was necessary to conduct their nonviolent protest. He felt that the protesters must be willing to take full legal responsibility for the laws they broke by spending time in jail, as he did when he wrote this letter in the margins of a newspaper, but he argued that it is always just to break a law if it is done in the spirit of nonviolence, and if the law is unjust. The first definition of a just law in "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is a human-created law that is cohesive with what he termed the "moral law or the law of God." His religious background caused his moral framework to be mired in religious justification. He would argue that a law prohibiting murder or theft, for example, is justified because it reflects a moral law outlined in the Bible. Second, King said that a just law "uplifts the human personality." Segregation, because it degrades the personality of blacks, is was not a just law. A corollary to this definition is that just laws are those which overcome the tragic separation between people. Returning to the example of segregation, that law creates divisions in society, rather than creating a cohesive social whole, and is thus an unjust law. The third definition he uses is a law that the majority makes reflecting his belief in the superiority of democracy that they are willing to impose upon itself. It cannot target the minority with negative consequences that the majority would be unwilling to impose upon themselves. If black children are only allowed to go to certain schools, white parents must be willing to have their children go to schools of a similar caliber. Finally, a just law must be one which the minority had some part or contribution to the enactment or creation of. The standard for this contribution is that they must be allowed the unhampered right to vote. King developed this definition for two primary reasons. First, his anger at laws that had been passed in the past, before black suffrage, which blacks consequently had no part in forming. Second, poll taxes, designed to prevent blacks from being able to vote, were legal until the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional in 1966. King believed that any sort of a poll tax, voting competence test, or other tools that had been used to stop blacks from voting, made the laws passed during that period fundamentally unjust. CRITIQUES OF KING'S METHODKing was criticized by other Civil Rights leaders of his era for not being sufficiently radical in his pursuit of racial equality. His reliance on non-violent tactics, and his strategy of appealing to white moderates, led others to accuse him of selling out, or as Malcolm X put it, of being a "house-Negro," meaning that he had been domesticated by white culture and was reliant upon them. Much of King's success, however, can be attributed to his moderate strategy. Unlike Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, and other more radical groups, King did not argue for a radical reconstruction of the United States government. There are many arguments made in favor of more confrontational responses to such severe injustices as King faced in the 1950s and 1960s. King's argument was that the ideals the United States was founded upon are valuable liberty, democracy, equality, etc. but that those principles have not always been followed. Thus, he argued, all that needs to be done is to realign the legally sanctioned inequalities with the principles our government is based on. This strategy gave legitimacy to the government as being fundamentally just, and emphasized white values. While this opened his method up to criticism by more radical factions of the Civil Rights Movement, it was effective for persuading the white, male politicians in power that Civil Rights were not a threat to the system, engendering their support for structural changes like the creation of the Civil Rights Commission and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice by the Congress and President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957. Another method of attacking Kings arguments is that he relies on race-conscious policy-making. Many scholars argue that race-conscious policies for example, bussing students to forcibly diversify schools are counterproductive, and only entrench race stereotypes. Other negative effects of these policies, some argue, are to stigmatize the recipients of the benefits of race-conscious policies, stir up resentment against them by those who are not eligible for the same benefits, cause tokenism, and other problems. BibliographyBaldwin, Lewis V. THER IS A BALM IN GILEAD: THE CULTURAL ROOTS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991)
Simon and Schuster, 1988) Branch, Taylor. PILAR OF FIRE: AMERICA IN THE KING YEARS, 1963-65. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998) Erskine, Noel Leo. KING AMONG THE THEOLOGIANS. (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1994) Fairclough, Adam. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995) Friedly, Michael. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: THE FBI FILE. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1993) Harding, Vincent. MARTIN LUTHER KING: THE INCONVENIENT HERO. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996)
(Brookfield: Millbrook Press, 1992)
Carson. (New York: Warner Books, 1998) King, Jr, Martin Luther. I HAVE A DREAM: WRITINGS AND SPEECHES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, ed. James M. Washington. (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992) Ralph, James. NORTHERN PROTEST: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., CHICAGO, AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) Lischer, Richard. THE PREACHER KING: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. AND THE WORD THAT MOVED AMERICA. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) Rowland, Della. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: THE DREAM OF PEACEFUL REVOLUTION. (Englewood Cliffs: Silver Burdett Press, 1990) Smith, Sande. A MAN WITH A DREAM: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1994) Ward, Brian and Tony Badger eds. THE MAKING OF MARTIN LUTHER KING AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. (New York: New York University Press, 1996) Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 5.81 Mb. Share with your friends:
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