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Some Logical Problems With Pacifism
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- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- KING’S LEGACY IS PERVERTED TO ATTACK AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Some Logical Problems With PacifismThe first thing people usually think of when refuting pacifism is that it doesn’t always work. There’s always a reason something is the first argument people think of. Sometimes, it means that the argument is very simple. Sometimes, it means that the argument is very true. This is a case of “both of the above.” The simplest and most non-controversial example is the Nazi regime. Would non-violence alone have stopped Hitler? Likely not. Pacifists would claim that non-compliance should have started early, which might have taken out the need for violence – but hindsight is always 20-20, and this is the real world we’re talking about: there are always going to be lunatic leaders. Would you really condemn on a moral level the actions of revolutionary Jews who killed a bunch of Nazis, trying to overthrow that regime? I hope not. World War II examples are overused, though, and I know at least two judges who roll their eyes automatically whenever an debater invokes the name “Hitler.” History is replete with other examples, sad to say. It’s easy to be a pacifist in America. It’s hard to be a pacifist in Burma, where thousands of peaceful student protesters were shot on August 8, 1988. It’s equally tough to be a peaceful protester in East Timor, where the Indonesian dictatorship has slaughtered about 1/3 of the population. Some pacifists might claim that this is because the movement wasn’t an organized and massive movement. That may be true – but this is still the real world, where not everyone is going to be recruited into a mass movement where pacifism is the rule of the day. It also didn’t work for Ibrahim Rugova, who tried to organize a Gandhian resistance to genocide in the former Yugoslavia. In the best case scenario, the pacifist resistance solves problems without violence. In the worst case scenario, the pacifists just go down without a fight. That’s particularly true in a repressive regime. This leads into another argument: pacifism is often the tactic of the privileged. Well-off white people are the most likely pacifists. Some say that’s because they aren’t in as much physical danger as people of color are (and were during the civil rights era). It’s easy to say that no violence should happen when you know you aren’t going to get beaten up at a traffic stop, for example. And continuing to preach peace means you don’t risk any violence being done to you. Pacifists claim that their way is morally superior because no one gets hurt as a result of their actions. Two thoughts on that: 1. If a more effective tactic might stop oppression – including innocents being hurt – then isn’t the pacifist morally culpable for that? 2. Peaceful protesters being beaten or even killed without a fight definitely seems like a negative consequence that the pacifists should answer for. Conclusion It’s always a good idea to read up on philosophers. That’s more true than ever in the case of Martin Luther King, a complex thinker whose stirring commentaries are reduced to simple aphorisms more often than not. If you read the original works, you will be better prepared to answer his philosophy than 90 percent of debaters are to argue in favor of it in the first place. BIBLIOGRAPHYAnsbro, John. Martin Luther King, Jr.: the making of a mind. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Bks., 1982 Clayborne Carson and Kris Shepard, editors, THE LANDMARK SPEECHES OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Warner Books, 2001. Clayborne Carson, et. al., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. : Symbol of the Movement, January 1957‑December 1958 (Papers of Martin Luther King, Vol. 4), University of California Press, 2000. Ward Churchill with Mike Ryan, PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, 1998, Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Press. Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, "The Martin Luther King You Don't See On TV," FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY IN REPORTING MEDIA BEAT, January 4, 1995,http://www.fair.org/media‑beat/950104.html, accessed May 10, 2001. David Garrow, THE FBI AND MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: FROM "SOLO" TO MEMPHIS. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981. Colman McCarthy, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, January 17, 2000, p. A2. J.M. Washington, editor, A TESTAMENT OF HOPE: THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986. KING’S LEGACY IS PERVERTED TO ATTACK AFFIRMATIVE ACTION1. KING’S WORDS ARE TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT TO ATTACK PROGRESSIVE PROGRAMS Tim Wise, antiracist author and organizer, Brittanica.com, January 17, 2000, http://www.britannica.com/original/print?article_id=3159, accessed May 10, 2001. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that someone as oft‑quoted as Martin Luther King, Jr., might occasionally have his words misinterpreted, misunderstood, or taken out of context. King's status as something of a secular saint only magnifies the willingness and desire of writers, academics, political commentators, and elected officials to expropriate King's words to advance one or another agenda. After all, claiming the ideological support of a bona fide national hero like King never hurts. Nowhere is the tendency to "play the King card" more apparent than in the claim by dozens of contemporary writers and theorists that King's principal goal was "color‑blindness" and that he viewed the development of such a legally codified visual disability as the avenue by which racism would best be attacked. 2. MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS NOT A “COLOR-BLIND” THINKER Tim Wise, antiracist author and organizer, Brittanica.com, January 17, 2000, http://www.britannica.com/original/print?article_id=3159, accessed May 10, 2001. Perhaps the most extensive articulation of the notion that the modern civil rights movement has betrayed King by supporting affirmative action comes from Dinesh D'Souza in his 1995 book The End of Racism. D'Souza says affirmative action "seems to be a repudiation of King's vision, in that it involves a celebration and affirmation of group identity." He then claims "black leaders are the strongest opponents of King's principles," which he defines as the doctrine that "race should be ignored and we should be judged on our merits as persons." Oddly enough, despite the faint praise for King's "vision," as he understands it, D'Souza then calls for the repeal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, arguably the crowning legislative achievement of the movement King led. Yet, despite the wealth of literature claiming that Dr. King principally sought color‑blindness and would have opposed affirmative action, an examination of his writings makes such a position difficult to maintain. From the beginning, King placed responsibility for the nation's racial inequality squarely on whites. In a 1956 article, collected in James Washington's superbly edited collection, Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., King said that whites had "rejected the very center of their own ethical professions...and so they rationalized" the conditions under which they had forced blacks to live. And in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963) , King specifically criticized white ministers and white moderates, who he faulted for being "more devoted to 'order' than to justice," and whom he said were perhaps more of a barrier to true freedom for blacks than the Klan. In short, King was hardly color‑blind. He was clear as to who the victims, and who the chief perpetrators of racism were, and he said so forcefully.
Tim Wise, antiracist author and organizer, Brittanica.com, January 17, 2000, http://www.britannica.com/original/print?article_id=3159, accessed May 10, 2001. King was even more clear on so‑called "preferential treatment"‑‑what we now typically refer to as affirmative action. Although it is true that King called for universal programs of economic and educational opportunity for all the poor, regardless of race, he also saw the need for programs targeted at the victims of American racial apartheid. In 1961, after visiting India, King praised that nation's "preferential" policies that had been put in place to provide opportunity to those at the bottom of the caste system, and in a 1963 article in Newsweek, published the very month of the "I Have a Dream" speech, King actually suggested it might be necessary to have something akin to "discrimination in reverse" as a form of national "atonement" for the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation.
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