Dr. King is obviously admirable for a multitude of reasons. However, I am most impressed with his resilient commitment to nonviolence. Time and again he was mistreated— I cannot begin to imagine the stress and frustration he must have felt. The FBI, an entity intended to protect and serve, urged him to commit suicide. His house was bombed. He was jailed several times. It must have felt as if the whole world was against him. His mission was not only good and just, but also empirically right. His belief that all men are created equal is simply fact. To be so dramatically opposed whilst knowing that you are right is incredibly frustrating under any circumstance. Add in all the abuse that he endured and it is remarkable that he remained committed to peace throughout his life.
I feel this sentiment can be connected to today. I understand the present frustration from the black community over police brutality. I therefore also acknowledge that it is unreasonable to expect a completely peaceful reaction each time a black person is killed by police. I do not condone the violence that has occurred, nor do I feel that it is just. Rather, I simply feel that it should be expected. The marginalization of black people is utterly unjust. To expect an entire community, mistreated and forced to live on the periphery, to act peacefully and rationally one-hundred percent of the time is simply foolish. We must accept that violence is a consequence of the injustices that we as a society allow to occur. If we wish to see violence snuffed out, we must be committed to reform.
I’m interested in this idea in light of our discussion about how the Civil Rights Movement is sometimes romanticized. It seems that viewing that struggle through rose-colored glasses takes away from the grueling nature of non-violent resistance in the face of unspeakable mistreatment. The fact that MLK himself struggled with the commitment to non-violence is all the more a testament how difficult a method to pursue it is, independent of individual thoughts on its efficacy. It’s a kind of “my God, why have you forsaken me?” moment.
I agree that Dr.King is very admirable for sticking with non-violence for so long, but I wonder if he would have turned to violence to get his point across had he not been killed. Do we think that if the BLM movement was more peaceful most of the time rather than turning violent, would people more or less likely to listen to them and get behind the cause? Violence draws more attention, but it can be bad attention sometimes. Is it true that all press is good press, so whether the protesters are peaceful or violent it won’t matter so long as their message is received?