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“What Kind of Extremists” Will We Be?
To my fellow white folks who will use this Day of Service as an opportunity to reflect on a famous quote from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, I have a request. If you have found wisdom in a short passage today, read the source in its entirety tonight. Make it your bedtime reading. Contribute to its legacy by investing in a copy of The Radical King — a fantastic collection edited by Dr. Cornel West — or find it in the materials of the King Institute at Stanford. Read every word. Even if it’s too radical, even if it’s uncomfortably religious, even if it reminds you that racism runs through your veins, even if it calls you out. Especially if it calls you out. Go to sleep tonight with discomfort in your heart.
“Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that” is from a sermon about strategically undermining and overthrowing every last system of white supremacy (Loving Your Enemies, 1957).
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” is from a scathing condemnation of the police state, and especially of the white moderates who are the enablers of its violence (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963).
“[P]eace is not merely the absence of [] tension, but the presence of justice” is from a sermon literally…
