Philosopher views
Download 5.81 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Answering Kings Nonviolence Views
King And PacifismKing was famous for his Christian pacifism, his commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience (exemplified by his willingness to serve time in prison) and his supposed difference of opinion with Malcolm X over strategy. This last fact is often overblown by media and scholars. As a reverend, King preached peace and lived it. "Violence as a means of social change is both impractical and immoral," he said, "... because it stems from hatred rather than love." King's civil rights movement was inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi's satyagraha movement, which freed India from British imperialism and colonialism. This tactic of converting your opponent with love and non-violent resistance drew admiration from many in white America who might otherwise not have supported the movement King led. Given that this man has achieved the status of near-sainthood, what is the best way to answer these views? Sometimes, on certain topics, you can try to be “more-non-violent-than-thou” – outflanking your opponent from the left, effectively. This is often a good strategy. On some topics, though – like the 2001 NFL Nationals topic – this is impossible. You are left with the options of either 1. Defending violence, at least to the extent of refuting pacifism; or 2. Losing. I’m assuming most debaters are going to choose option one. Onward, then! Answering King's Nonviolence ViewsThis year’s NFL Nationals LD topic is only one of many that are concerned with issues of violence and pacifism. You can list a host of others that are concerned with these issues just from the last few years – even including the nuclear weapons topic from earlier this year. King and Gandhi run neck-and-neck as the most oft-cited philosophers of nonviolence, with the Dalai Lama running a distant third, paying only to show. Given the penchant for recycling topics – and timeless nature of the violence-vs.-nonviolence debate – it pays off to know how to answer these thinkers’ view on pacifism. Now, a lot of folks will immediately rush to the Malcolm X to get their answers to Martin Luther King’s view on peace. While certainly not a bad idea – I’ll never discourage someone from reading X – there’s one source I would suggest getting before you rush out and pore through the Autobiography. The best single source for historical analysis and outstanding evidence refuting the pacifist claims of King can be found in Ward Churchill’s 1998 tract Pacifism As Pathology. Not only does Churchill offer a stirring rebuke of pacifism’s means and goals, he also covers in-depth the two cases which pacifists usually cite as empirical examples of their tactics working. Those two examples, of course, are King’s Civil Rights Movement and Gandhi’s anti-imperialist crusade to decolonize India. The reason I suggest reading Churchill before reading X is that Churchill – and his cohort, Canadian activist Mike Ryan, who contributes a responding essay at the end of the tome – offers a nuanced portrayal of how King and X really related to each other, and how their philosophies of doing things were actually complementary. What? I hear you ask. Aren’t we taught in school (when we’re even TAUGHT about Malcolm X, or even King, in some places) that these two men were the quintessential opposites of one another, the one being the peace-loving Christian teddy bear, the other a frightening Muslim with an assault rifle? Well, at least that’s what we were taught in my school. But, like many of the things you’re taught in school, it’s either an oversimplification or a flat-out fabrication. Basically, King and X were two men who had similar goals – smashing Jim Crow, bringing about some level of equality in the country, and generally stopping racist assaults on the human dignity of people of color. Both were deeply committed to this. And, as King found, it made it a heck of a lot easier to deal with the (white) power structure when there was a threat of militant unrest coming from nearby. Churchill and Ryan make the case that the Civil Rights Movement’s most publicized gains came after black militancy became more visible, with Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party being the most apparent examples. While many in the power structure weren’t anxious to negotiate with King, his demands didn’t look altogether unreasonable compared with the apparent alternative. It’s a classic “good cop vs. bad cop” strategy. Suddenly, King and his bunch were the reasonable ones, the just movement struggling peacefully against oppression. This interpretation, increasingly favored by the media, portrayed the Civil Rights Movement in an ever-more favorable light. The organizers on the ground were aware of this. Churchill quotes one of Martin Luther King’s allies as saying in the late 1960s: "There are a lot of reasons why I can't get behind fomenting violent actions like riots, and none of 'em are religious. It's all pragmatic politics. But I'll tell you what: I never let a riot slide by. I'm always the first one down at City Hall and testifying before Congress, telling 'em, "See? If you guys'd been dealing with us all along, this never would have happened." It gets results, man. Like nothing else. The thing is that Rap Brown and the Black Panthers are the best things that ever happened to the Civil Rights Movement." Presumably, that would apply to Malcolm X as well as it applied to militants like H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael. The analysis is certainly there. That’s not to say King overtly condoned violence – certainly, he never did, and likely would not if he were alive today. But there’s strong evidence that he tacitly accepted the tactics of Malcolm X, given the fact that those tactics brought white America to the Civil Rights negotiating table. All of these things are facts about King’s thought that aren’t as widely known as they should be. You can use them to gain a credibility foothold against your opponent – if you know the stuff better than the debater who initiated the discussion, it looks good for you – as well as win on the flow. But there are other arguments that you can make that are grounded simply in logic and history rather than in evidence. Let’s go over those now. 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:
|