Hughes, Deana: Diversity

How is justification for civil disobedience achieved? Is there a way to ultimately decide if something is “just” or “unjust?” A Call for Unity and Letter from a Birmingham Jail address these questions, but I feel they do not answer them. Maybe there is no answer.

Since first grade I remember learning about the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The circumstances surrounding this time period are familiar. I have read Letter from a Birmingham Jail before but I have never read A Call for Unity until now. The main thing that struck me about A Call for Unity was summed up in the first three sentences: “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.”

This was not the first time the Southern African American’s had “outsiders” help. The North won the Civil War. It is thanks to them they were free in the first place. If I had been in the demonstrators’ shoes, I would be “impatient” as well. African Americans had been waiting a very long time to be recognized as equal humans and now they were finally doing something about it. After rereading Letter from a Birmingham Jail it seems Dr. King was of the same opinion in this instance. Something needed to be done to start a change.

My problem with Dr. King’s response was his written justifications for “civil disobedience.”  His whole speech on the morality of laws seemed one sided. He says, “one has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” He continued by describing the differences between “just” and “unjust” laws, but to say that someone can disobey any law he or she finds immoral is ridiculous. His statements make perfect sense when put in the context of the African-American movement, but when all the other ethnicities are taken into account this letter negates his whole campaign for equality. There is one sentence that rectifies his cause. He states, “A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law.” This is the crux of the whole argument and gives warrant for civil disobedience.

There will never be a time when every person in the world is completely satisfied. There is not a manual on how to be fair. The best we can do is to realize there are two sides to every situation.