During the Civil Rights movement, their was a spectrum of ideas in the black community as to what the best way was to finally achieve the justice that they had been fighting for. Two of the biggest names of civil rights activists were Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
M.L.K always believed in the nonviolent movement to achieve the initial goal of integration and continued that thought throughout the rest of his years and an activist. Malcolm X came on to the scene later in the movement, and his core belief was that nonviolence will not achieve much, that violence in unavoidable because of the way that African-Americans are being treated by whites and authority.
There were two different problems in the North and South and Malcolm and M.L.K tried to address individually, and that is the main reason why their ideas were different than each other, but they both had the same goal: complete equality between races.
I agree with MLK more than I agree with Malcolm X in his approach on desegregation. MLK tactics for a nonviolent protest was more befitting for their race than a violent one. Because african americans were already seen in a negative light this idea of fight for desegrgation with violence would only add on to people's perception of african americans. So by fighting segregation passively would cause people to change their view and outlook on african american. The treatment of african americans was brutal and unjust, but the idea of retaliating with violence is just as bad. Even though the treatment of african americans were just as bad during this movement of a peaceful protest by having this understanding and mindset of peace and nonviolence, many things were achived as well, just at a slower pace. So with MLK tactics, more and more people transition to the side of the african americans leading them to belive that they weren't as bad as they are protrayed. Becasue of this african americans were shown to be the victims of many incidences causing americans to belive that the law was also wrong. So not only was MLK able to achive what he wanted over time he was also able to show many americans why this law was so unjust. Unlike Malcom X, who kept this negative protrayl of african americans. Which didn't not help this cause of desegration, rather it have kept African American and Americans more seprate.
ReplyDeleteI understand both sides of the fight. Where MLK was leading a nonviolent protest which tried to show the whites how violent they really were to the innocent African Americans. This was more for the people of the South because there really wasn't anything more they can do. But Malcolm X was from the North where there wasn't as much of this violence and they really just needed to fight for their spots in the economy. Although both were being segregated, they both wanted to find a way to gain peace either together or separately.
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