Dison, Michaela: Diversity

The essays “A Call for Unity” and “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” are polar opposites on how to deal with everyone accepting diversity. One calls for no rallies or anything that could possibly get violent, while the other says that nothing will get done unless there are demonstrations and rallies. The essays come from two different cultures, which explains why they are so drastically different in the way that they want to approach integration.

                 

In “A Call for Unity” White church officials want people to stay home and not do anything to improve their lives, but if they looked in the Bible it would say that all men and women are created equal and therefore they should be able to have equal rights. Therefore, why should the African Americans not be able to have equal rights with Whites? The church, of any group in America, should be the ones backing equal rights for all people. For the church to be against a group of people who want to be treated as equals seems to show that it must not be as Bible-based as it claims to be. The church is supposed to help those that need help, not condemn them for trying to help themselves.

                  

Martin Luther King Jr. showed the White church officials why their actions were wrong for the way they were acting when he wrote a “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”  He informed them that the only way to get anything done was to do it yourself, even if that meant demonstrations. The letter goes on to tell how he had thought that the local religious organizations would be in favor of equality and integration among people. But that belief was proved wrong time and time again, showing that people are not who you think they are and you must do what you believe is right in order to gain what your goals.

                  

These letters came from two distinct groups of people who had two different ways of approaching an issue that was of importance to them. They either wanted to let the issue work itself out or to have nonviolent demonstrations to get their point across. There was no middle ground on how they approached the issue. Either a person wanted to stand up for what they believed in or they sat back and let others decide their fate.