King's letter is one of the most remarkable pieces of literature in history. It is, in its essence, the testament of an entire movement, a struggle for justice by an oppressed people within the world's most powerful empire. It stands in significance next to the words of Moses, whose example was one of enduring sources of strength in that struggle.
The letter from eight white clergymen he was responding to is in no wise comparable. Yet, it is worth noting in detail, because it so faithfully represents what has once again come to be the conventional wisdom of our age. We need to see ourselves clearly in the mirror of their words, to bring home forcefully that when King was writing from Birmingham Jail, we were not their with him, however much we might like to imagine that. No. We were the ones he was writing to.
That is our shame and our situation today.
The White Clergymen's Letter
The letter from eight white clergymen was eminently reasonable. Sober. Serious. Measured. Evil to the core:
We the undersigned clergymen are among those who, in January, issued "an appeal for law and order and common sense," in dealing with racial problems in Alabama. We expressed understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts, but urged that decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed.
How perfectly reasonable!
Since that time there had been some evidence of increased forbearance and a willingness to face facts. Responsible citizens have undertaken to work on various problems which cause racial friction and unrest. In Birmingham, recent public events have given indication that we all have opportunity for a new constructive and realistic approach to racial problems.
How encouraging. Why in a decade or two, no one will remember there was ever a problem!
However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.
Outsiders! What could possibly be more polarizing? Them!
We agree rather with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area. And we believe this kind of facing of issues can best be accomplished by citizens of our own metropolitan area, white and Negro, meeting with their knowledge and experience of the local situation. All of us need to face that responsibility and find proper channels for its accomplishment.
Because that had worked out so well for the preceeding 80-odd-years, right? Kicking out the federal troops in 1877 just worked wonders for "racial issues."
Just as we formerly pointed out that "hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions," we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham.
"[H]atred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions"? Oh, really?
Isn't the discourse of conventional wisdom a wonder to behold, in whatever age? And the dismissal of "technically peaceful" actions? Classic!
We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement officials in particular, on the calm manner in which these demonstrations have been handled. We urge the public to continue to show restraint should the demonstrations continue, and the law enforcement officials to remain calm and continue to protect our city from violence.
Yes, indeed, protect "Bombingham" from violence. By all means!
We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.
You see? When whites violate blacks' civil rights for 300+ years, it's incumbent on the "Negro community to withdraw support" from peaceful outsiders, they must join their friendly white oppressors "to observe the principles of law and order and common sense." This steadfast rejection of polarizing tactics is the only possible fair and evenhanded approach that anyone sensible can possibly consider.
Dr. King's Response
Fortunately, however, Dr. Martin Luther King was not a sensible man. Indeed, in December, 1963, he gave a speech in which he said, "there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment." And so, the creatively maladjusted Dr. King took exception to the eminently sensible men of the Southern cloth, and their stern rejection of his polarizing tactics.
After an introductory paragraph, King responded to the "outsider" charge using standard establishment logic: he was head of a regional organization with a local affiliate, and was no more of an outsider than the head of any other regional organization with a branch in Birmingham:
I think I should indicate why I am here In Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here I am here because I have organizational ties here.
But then, having established himself by establishment credentialling, he tossed such logic aside:
But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
Note the perfect blending of the civil and the religious, the ancient and the modern, and the underlying contrast between those who would divide and those who follow the call of unity. Polarization in the service of unity makes its implicit entry into the argument here.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place In Brimingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.
With this paragraph, King has effortlessly crossed over into the realm of the unspeakable. This is just the sort of argument, for seeing things whole and in depth, that cannot even be properly expressed in today's elite political discourse.
A Pointed Aside
Consider the recent dust-up over Washington Post reporting on "rumors" about Obama being a Muslim-without clearly saying that such rumors were false. As Greg Sargent noted at TPM's The Horse's Mouth:
Okay, this is just bizarre. Today The New York Times did an article covering the dust-up over the Washington Post Obama Muslim story. And guess what the focus of the entire piece was?
The fact that a blogger/professor said some nasty things about the WaPo reporter who did the piece, Perry Bacon, Jr., sparking a battle between journalistic worthies over on Romenesko.
Meanwhile, guess how much ink The Times devoted to the actual criticism of the piece? A grand total of one sentence.
Seeing things whole and in depth is not simply verbotten. It is simply, as a matter of observable fact, inconceivable.
End Aside
Such comprehensiveness and depth is utterly indispensible for making good decisions-in public life as well as private. It is only with such comprehensiveness and depth that we see the true cause of polarization, and the two very different forms of peace, and of law-one just, the other unjust.
Because civil disobedience involves breaking the law, the subject of just and unjust laws is crucial for King, and his words deserve reading in their entirety. But for the purpose of this diary, I excerpt the following passages:
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
....
One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's anti religious laws.
Thus, as King makes clear, there is a deeply moral and deeply thoughtful foundation for the practice of non-violent civil disobedience, and this foundation, both its morality and its thoughtfulness actually make it more respectful of law than mere blind obedience does.
However fundamental this point is, the second pairing-of just and unjust peace-speaks more directly to blind and foolhardy demonization of polarization we hear today. This pairing underlies virtually the whole of his argument, for it is the whole purpose of his presence in Birmingham, the very key to his whole philosophy and approach to brining justice into the word. And so much of the letter relates to it, without speaking to it directly, but rather elaborating its consequences, preconditions, correlates or the concrete embodiments of all these in the specific case of Birmingham. Yet, there are several key passages in which the central thrust is evident, beginning with a paragraph already quoted above:
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.
In short, what bothered them was disorder, not injustice. What caught their attention was not the cause of things, but only a portion of the effect.
As King explains, the Civil Rights Movement's approach was not undertaken lightly, and a great deal of deep and careful preparation preceeded the launching of a non-violent confrontation :
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self- purification; and direct action. We have gone through an these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community....
As in so many past experiences, our hopes bad been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves : "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?"
King now comes to the very crux of the matter-the relationship between confrontation, and negotiation, and the need to create tension, conflict, in order to force those who hold the upper hand to negotiate honestly in good faith:
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved South land been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
"[M]onologue rather than dialogue"-it is what King faced in his day, and it is surely what we face as well. The issues that are reported, discussed and debated in the blogosphere are simply excluded from the officially sanctioned political discourse of our nation. (Not not all of them, to be sure. But a great number, and especially the whole of them considered as a gestalt. The destruction of our Constitutional order is not a subject for debate. John Edwards' haircut is. So, too, Hillary Clinton's laugh, and rumors [aka lies] about Barack Obama's faith.) And it is very hard to see how this monologue can be broken through, and turned into a dialogue without following the same logic that King lays out: we must intensify the tensions in order to force a genuine dialogue.
Without confrontation, there will be no dialogue. Under the tutelage of consultants and DLC ideologues, we have been avoiding confrontation, running away from it, ever since George McGovern lost the 1972 election, and the result has been an increasingly dominant rightwing monologue, which has now normalized the practice of torture, and recast the fundmantal foundations of our Constitutional order-going back as far as 1215-as a "far left" position.
In sharp contrast to the mealy-mouth pundits of today, King was clear about the need for, and morality of confrontation:
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
....
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fan in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
Just so. When the Bush Administration secretly abolishes fundamental rights, telling no one what they have done, and we scream bloody murder when it comes even partially to light, then King's words describe us as well: "We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with." And when consultants, pundits, and leaders like Barack Obama scold us for polarizing and poisoning the political debate, they are acting the part of the eight Southern white clergymen who told King to shut up and go home.
It may sound unduly harsh to include Obama in this number, but he has been a leading evangelist in preaching the gosple of post-partisanship, and attacking polarization itself as an evil, without reference to where it comes from or why.
He has, just recently, attempted to modify his tune:
It's change that won't just come from more anger at Washington or turning up the heat on Republicans. There's no shortage of anger and bluster and bitter partisanship out there. We don't need more heat. We need more light. I've learned in my life that you can stand firm in your principles while still reaching out to those who might not always agree with you. And although the Republican operatives in Washington might not be interested in hearing what we have to say, I think Republican and independent voters outside of Washington are. That's the once-in-a-generation opportunity we have in this election. [Emphasis added]
But he's spent the last three years trying to get along with those very same DC Republican operatives, and squealching any attempts to dramatize to rank and file Republican voters just how badly those operatives are mis-representing them.
Obama's not a bad person, he's just woefully out of his depth. In fact, so's the entire Democratic Party establishment. They utterly fail to grasp the fundamental truths that King lays out in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." They accept the level of superficiality embraced by the tut-tuting white moderate clergymen, and treat it like it was a form of higher knowledge. They think that relying on deep moral principles means condemning Bill Clinton, MoveOn, or whichever other ally the Republicans target next.
When Obama said, "We don't need more heat. We need more light," he was lifting a page right out of the white clergymen's letter to King. King's response was simple: I wish it were different, but it's always been this way--it takes more heat to bring more light.
