Hi Billy, > King's enemy was the KKK, local buffoons like Bull Connor, even the ghost of > Woodrow Wilson -who had institutionalized racism in government in his day.
That’s an excellent point. My bad, I used the wrong term. You are certainly right about his enemies. > > King could mobilize white people for his cause in part because of -at the > time- the continued relevance of the mainline churches, many of whose members > helped-out in one way or another. That’s what I meant to say. His “target” — the people he was trying to convince — were those white moderates who privately decried racism but publicly tolerated it. What’s fascinating to me is that his strategy for forcing the issue appears to have been demonstrating moral superiority by the suffering his followers were willing to patiently endure. I was deeply touched by a movie showing a black man being bullied by whites for sitting at a deli counter — in a practice session! To me, King exemplified the point I was making about inner evil: > "While I've learned a lot from the Buddhist and stoic traditions, > Christianity (for all its flaws) is the only system I've found that gives me > the courage to face the fact that the evil I see outside of me also lives > within me." > > Excellent point. Thanks, I appreciate that. It also highlights what is so dysfunctional about black activism today: it asks for redress based on the involuntary suffering of marginal communities, based on pity or guilt. It demands whites demonstrate superior character, while excusing black flaws. But MLK was the opposite. HE demanded his followers demonstrate superior character by embracing voluntary suffering, like Christ. He built an amazing system for training his followers to win over their opponents (targets) by first overcoming the evil within. There ought to be a way to do that for Radical Centrism... Eg -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
