The White Moderate: The Greatest Threat to Freedom

Other people’s pain is the easiest to bear.

“I find this article to be extremely rude”.

That’s probably because you didn’t understand it. As the other commentators were able to see, the point is not that moderates are racists, but that for any proposed change there is a large group of people who support the goal but who find good reasons why for any time, now is not the right time for action.

Bob, in King’s day, that was the white “moderate.” Personally, I find putting people in jail for protests against segregation to be extremely rude.

King was writing about the “centrists” of his day. I suppose then, as it was now, the attempt was made to clip the political spectrum at the center, so that it was possible for privileged conservatives to believe they were actually moderates, not conservatives vested in the status quo.

…
But don’t talk about revolution
That’s going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal

After 1789, we have cause to fear revolution. I still do not understand why it is held up as an example: its main success seems to have been feeding my ancestors.

It would be better, I think, if there were less fear of change, but that would mean taking violence out of the equation.

Rich Puchalsky @ 9

There was a good deal of that embalming fluid dripping over the Swartz discussion.

Indeed there was — and still is, as of an hour or so ago. The law properly understood (and why does no lawyer ever seem to understand it this way?) is, as Bruce Wilder has said, a political instrument, not an administrative tool of this or that self-appointed majesty. Equal justice under the law doesn’t come cheap, and people denied it can rarely rely on civility to recover what’s been taken from them, especially not when folks like Orin Kerr are in charge of deciding who shall or shall not have access to it.

Ah, the Internet. Bob had a bizarre misreading of the original post, which has been followed with bizarre misreadings of his comment, thus allowing the world to continue to spin on its axis.

And as it was then, so too is it still today. “Moderates” of this sort, who abound in all times and places, are perhaps more bound to the status quo, or at least to not upsetting it, than the radical reactionaries. Above all, they wish to preserve their own small privileges, with little regard to the deprivation of others.

The classic example of the white moderate:

… In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.—Robert E. Lee, to Mary Anna Lee, December 27, 1856

To update the quote: replace “Negro” with “poor person” (let’s remember, Dr. King was organizing a “Poor Persons’ March” on Washington when he was assassinated), replace “White Citizen’s Counciler and Ku Klux Klanner” with “Republicans and Tea Partiers,” and replace “white moderate” with “Barack Obama.” Maybe that will make more sense to Bob.

The Raven (10): I really don’t get this attitude. That 1789 is held up as an example of horror is in itself the other side of the embalming fluid quoted above (the trick being to separate the ostensibly moderate hero from the violent extremist in the story that we construct about political progress). It relies on ignoring the massive violence meted out by the absolutist state right until July 14, 1789 and starting the history of the revolution just then: oh my, how suddenly violent life has become now it’s the King’s head that rolls!

People in 1788 lived as we live now under a system that constantly applies violence to perpetuate itself. The idea that this could be changed without being prepared to counter this violence seems naive to me (and no I am not arguing for quixotic armed insurrection, I’ll leave that one to the gun nuts).

In any event, the reference to revolution is not one to violence, but rather to the belief that fundamental change happens, when it happens, rapidly. We won’t reform our way to a just society.

GiT and R. Porrofatto

Phil Ochs is so awesome. I wish I had thought of it first.

King was right to criticize moderate whites as a way to encourage further progress, but his complaint makes no sense. Are these moderates really the greatest stumbling block to your people’s freedom? Perhaps he should have considered the example of South Africa as a potential alternative. An even larger black population but with a nation-wide apartheid system at least as strict as the most severe examples of Jim Crow. Things would certainly proceed more quickly if all the moderate politicians and voters in the country would suddenly switch their political views to those of the activist, but it is really quite silly to talk about them as a great stumbling block. Their existence is what enables change without violent and lethal action and international assistance as was required in SA. But you can’t expect 100% sound reasoning from MLK. He was not a philosopher or a political scientist. He was a master rhetorician/pastor leading a broad-based political movement.

@26

With the disclaimer that I’m not any sort of specialist in the subject, my impression was that pro-slavery rhetoric became more militant once there was a serious possibility of slavery actually ending. I thought that in the decades before the war a bit of pious muttering about God in His wisdom ending slavery “in time” (e.g., never) was normal among the respectable pro-slavery set.

Sorry. The last sentence should read, “to dismiss him as a ‘master-rhetorician/not a philosopher’…”.

From the quote in the OP:
who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice

This clause is esp. interesting to me b/c the negative peace vs positive peace distinction is standard in the ‘peace studies’ and conflict res. (etc.) literature. I’m guessing that MLK and the peace studies people both took it from some earlier source but I don’t know the provenance or pedigree [or substitute whatever other fancy synonym you want…] Or maybe ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ is its first appearance?

As to mpowell’s remark about King not being a philosopher, pol theorist etc.: It’s sort of beside the point b/c, as can be inferred from js’ remark about having taught King and Aquinas together, ‘Letter’ is now, or such is my impression, a canonical work taught in high schools and colleges — which I think is good, since you don’t want to limit the canon to works produced by professional philosophers. (‘Letter’ had not yet attained its present status when I was in h.s. and college.)

What MLK wasn’t is revolutionary. While those bad moderates prefer (or pretend to) slow progress, MLK prefers to progress quicker. But more or less in the same manner, by means of state violence only. That’s why he is so frustrated with the moderates. He himself was a moderate. If he was a revolutionary, the moderates would’ve been irrelevant. Certainly much less harmful than the KKK, who would actually shoot at you, when you storm the state capitol.

What does mildly irk me about this post is that moderation is relative. Every political thinker can be thought of as moderate in some sense, since infinite radicalism is impossible on many levels. As such, what is moderate and what isn’t is really a product of the particular social context, so when you take a paragraph like that out of its original context, it can come across as trying to tar others with the association, which depending on who those “others” might be can be unfair. The fact that you’re Corey Robin is biasing me, though. If Matthew Yglesias had posted this exact same post word for word, I’d interpret his usage of the word moderate very differently.

“The National Review posts a brief positive squib on King, commenters won’t let them forget the NR’s opposition.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/337725/hailing-martin-luther-king-yuval-levin”

I wonder if frequent poster and former NR contributor Tim Wilkinson has any thoughts about this.

/me raises eyebrows…

Now wait just a minute here…

First of all, all this “moderate” stuff is intended to be disarming. That’s usually the purpose of labeling something “moderate” or the “compromise position” or “Third Way”. King wasn’t really talking to a well intentioned polity. If he was, he wouldn’t have outlined his argumentation the way he did, like the discussion about “positive speech” and the presence of “justice”. His motives were to undress concern trolls of their “I’m not a racist, but…” dressing from over their sentiments, and make it more difficult to make their genuine feelings attractive and normative.

In any event, it has always amazed me, ever since I was old enough and educated enough to know, just how much white people care about race, and over the most trivial bullcrap. This has always amazed me, this creativity that some people have when trying to feel better about their noxious attitudes, like that Dred Scott dogwhistle. And it has always amazed me just how defensive white people can be when a minor racist sentiment is challenged. I don’t think I have ever been banned from any forum for a reason other than something related to white racial butthurt. And when I mean trivial, I mean stuff like correcting someone who fiddles with the stats to prove that Colt McCoy is, indeed!, better than Aaron Brooks.

There have always been poseurs within the groups of people who identify as “left”, who are largely “for me, but not for thee” every which way. Feminist who only look out for a certain segment of women. Nationalists who only think of the other guys just like them. Police unions who couldn’t give a crap about the janitors. Etc, etc, etc. Part of all movements is getting to people who want to pitch in, organize them, and exclude the time-wasters and the free-loaders. As MLK understood, radicalism means clarity, and it puts the burden of temporizing on the people that do it, not the people who listen to it. Why not now?

Not to derail the thread but I think it’s inaccurate to describe Lee as a “moderate” on slavery.

After the war at least, Lee was, I think, a fairly consistent paternalist: he thought the ex-slaves were too poorly educated to be given the vote, but he also thought they should be educated. This was actually a relatively enlightened position for a Virginian. So he ended up as a “white moderate,” in multiple senses of the term.

@25:

“Their existence is what enables change without violent and lethal action and international assistance as was required in SA.

And I suppose the battle of Cuito Cuanavale had nothing to do with the matter.

Why the Socrates fetish, who by standard interpretations was opposed to democracy ?

Seems rather moderate.

christian_h @ 10: What did the Jacobins win? They killed allies, enemies, and ultimately their own leaders indiscriminately and by the end most of the French were so disgusted that they welcomed the return of an aristocracy.

Indiscriminate violence is not freedom, rather it is the right hand of slavery.

Main Street Muse:

That’s the sort of interpretation I have a problem with. Ultimately, what MLK wanted was not extreme in the abstract. You know, equality and shit. Nobody who wanted to think about it, and who thought black people were people, could avoid the moral imperative in that positive peace. Not any more than anyone who didn’t already hate non-heterosexual people can really say that gay marriage could destroy their own.

“Moderates” were not moderate, or sensible, or any other positive connotation. They were not in between “extremes”. This world ain’t the True Blood world, where there is a minority of people who need to suck blood and stuff, never age, and plenty of those who don’t consider humans their equals and act as so. Integrating vampires is a far more dicey proposition than allowing a person to sit anywhere she likes, free of targeted, lethal, terrorism. There was never any extreme (danger, finance, otherwise) to be moderated against, except that you had to recognize someone’s very humanity.

No it was not that “moderates” had to be galvanized. It’s that “moderates” had to be suppressed, and visible practices of non-violence was how it’s done (of course, everyone else who wishes to preserve a non-egalitarian society has taken notes, and such non-violent movements aren’t allowed easy access to media these days).

To shah8 – I agree that equality should not be an extreme position, but in this country, equality has never been the norm – the declaration that liberated the US from England allowed that “all men are created equal” but if you were Native American or a slave or a woman, that lovely umbrella of equality did not cover you. So moving toward the ideals expressed by the Founding Fathers meant tearing “moderates” away from their long-held beliefs about “equality.” And yes, that was and remains a considerable challenge. And King had every right to be “gravely disappointed” in the white moderates not eager to upend the status quo to let the disenfranchised into the fold of freedom and justice for all.

50: “Only lawyers can afford the luxury of mistaking the one for the other”

I’m not sure where this crochet about lawyers comes from, but lawyers (1) regard the law mainly with regards to favorable results for clients and (2) are quite conscious of the politics behind the law. Any public defender, or anyone familiar with “tort reform,” can tell you that.

I am unclear from your comments what you think lawyers are supposed to be doing differently, but I am happy to be educated.

As one of those white moderates (I was barely a teenager), I do recall that our first emotional reaction to this, was indignation at being criticized. Others had to try to explain what he meant. Now, I think MLK knew what he was doing, and wouldn’t have been taken aback by our gut defensive reaction, but I think that was the overwhelming reaction at the time among the moderates.
Us moderates from the liberal NE were rooting the the underdogs MLK and company. But, I suppose for many, making the country look bad internationally, at a time when social comparison versus the commies was an important front in the cold war -well that wasn’t exactly appreciated. A few took up the challenge, joined marches etc (at some personal risk). But, most of us watched from the sidelines.

I submit as evidence in the matter, Ray Davies and the Kinks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3nvJ2hmaUI

Undoubtedly there are those (and my last several day jobs has been to change corporate cultures) who drag their feet about “how it’s done” and “why we must” and “what if…” — but the first rule of those would would bring change is to understand change, to find the styles, the values, the hooks to the future that might genuinely get others to engage in the risks of moving forward.

My read of King’s statements is that he is trying to set those hooks, and by those means: not blow up the pond — trying to embarrass into shame those whom he knows swim with him, already — rather than trying to land by any means.

Wha? What does preserving strawberry jam (in all its different varieties) and custard pie have to do with any of this? (Also:the original version, and the only one worth listening to.)

More seriously, (and to clarify my last comment a bit), King’s point is clearly that the so-called and self-conceived white moderates are squarely on the side of injustice—this is how they can be “the great stumbling block” in the fight for civil rights (so also, they don’t “swim with him”, or whatever).

At the same time, to say that the white moderates are the great stumbling block, on the side of injustice etc., is not to say that they are inevitably any or all of these things. (Which is why, while I agree with a lot of what shah8 says, and while my 57 was partly in support of his view, I disagree that King thinks the moderates need necessarily be “suppressed”—cf. #50.) The point of the designation is precisely to make evident to the self-conceived “moderates” (the kind who would “sympathetically” read what King wrote while gravely tsk tsk-ing his methods) the ways in which they support and abet injustice. But I take it that part of the point here is that making this evident can at the very least make them less of a stumbling block.

js@53: I’d like to look into your recommendation of Hobsbawm, though it goes on to a stack of recommended books. FWIW, I think you’re probably right that the Jacobin program would now be considered moderate; I’ve often thought that the Framers would regard modern American democracy as insane anarchy. And, like you, I am hesitant to say more, but being a risk-prone bird, I will anyway. It’s just—it seems to me that the defenses of the Jacobin violence sound remarkably like the defenses of the violence in our current society, and that oughtn’t be so; it has to be violence to a purpose, or else the violence is in control.

Anderson @ 42 – Lee a white moderate, maybe, but my grandfather, born and raised in Louisiana, was still thinking the same way in 1910.
Strange, how moderates never seem to get anywhere.

59: but it was lawyers for Swartz who argued your same position.

The prosecutors in the Swartz case were showing the “Rambo mentality” that the civil bar has been trying to purge for some time (hence the dated metaphor). If anything, they were acting “politically.” Had they been less conscious of the law as politics and more as an imperfect mechanism, Swartz might be alive today.

67: true dat. Lee had more of an excuse. To keep repeating his same line, while ignoring Jim Crow, was disingenuous.

@67

I guess I’m just quibbling because if Lee counts as moderate, I’m not sure where that leaves folks like Lincoln, who spent the years leading up to the war casting around for some painless way to end slavery before finally accepting that there wasn’t one.

They certainly couldn’t be called radical, since the radical position was abolition now, whatever the cost.

It just seems to me that a definition of moderate that includes both Lee (no intention whatever of ending slavery but willing to make vague noises about how it would be nice if it just magically disappeared at some unspecified point in the future) and Lincoln (genuinely bent on ending slavery but looking for a non-disruptive way of doing it), is overly broad.

A 1963 ‘moderate’ (when the letter was penned) would be an arch-conservative by 2013 standards….this doesn’t mean there aren’t any left, but it does mean that over the course of 40 years the mid-point of the conversation changes….this is true of countless things, not just racial issues.

Its rarely the moderates who cause this midpoint to move – its the push/pull of those who carry the countervailing views most strongly.

Periodically there are events which will fundamentally shift a moderate view on a topic in a sharp way – 9/11 was one such, Newtown perhaps, will be another….but racial and gender equality issues rarely have event catalysts, they just require generations to die so that outdated views can gradually supplanted with newer views/new mid-points.

I don’t think the Occupy critiques (at least the best ones) are the same thing that MLK is talking about here, Rich. The “moderates” MLK is attacking see the solutions – have had them described in great detail – but think the solutions would rock various boats too much, so things have to be done “moderately” – i.e., more slowly. The best Occupy critiques boil down to either “you didn’t propose a solution” or “I don’t think what you’re proposing is a solution; it won’t work for reasons X, Y, and Z.” That’s very different from “your solution would work, but X, Y, and Z might be inconvenienced so lets do it another time.”

(I’d also note that MLK always had not just lists of specific grievances, but lists of specific steps to be taken to remedy those grievances. Compare and contrast, again, to Occupy, where the grievances were sometimes well-articulated, often not, and the solutions were correspondingly vague at best and non-existent at worst.)

Luis, if you want to characterize what the moderates MLK was attacking were saying, it might be good to look back at their statement (“Public Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen”). There is no mention of solutions there, either in terms of agreement or disagreement, only an insistence on recommitment to negotiation. Similarly, MLK Jr. doesn’t focus on solutions in his reply. He writes that “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.”

I agree that the Civil Rights Movement always had a good idea of what its next goal was, what the next thing was that it should ask for. That’s one of the many reasons why it was so much more successful than Occupy. But there is a tendency to dismiss non-segregation problems that the movement started to address as never having existed in the first place — components about militarism, for instance. If those hadn’t been swept away by the official celebrations, the Civil Rights Movement might look a lot more unfocussed and wooly to people now.

In partial agreement with mpowell, people should note that MLK Jr. does the very typical moderate “I’m standing between two positions” bit in the letter. He’s not really addressing a binary between moderates and extremists intended to stand for all time, he’s criticizing particular attitudes.

“At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. “

If MLK had been a philosophy professor, he would’ve written journal articles, and someone else would’ve had to lead the marches for civil rights.

“Not a philosopher” is sometimes a compliment.

“There have been some revolutions that have not been, in the short to medium term, a step to the worse: not many. Examples?”

It doesn’t matter. The fact that the king and his minions can and will get their heads chopped off if they go too far, it creates an important constraint. Checks and balances.

Similar to democratic kings (representing ‘all their men’ behind them) having to stand for an election every few years. And when the elections become less and less meaningful, the prospect of spontaneous head-chopping becomes the next ‘check’. Without it, the dynamics would’ve been quite different. More unpleasant.

The kind of moderate King wrote about doesn’t, today at least, say anything like “It’d be inconvenient for me if you push for that now.” They say things like:

* Your pursuit of a narrow interest-group concern breaks our message of focus on some general one.

* Your pursuit of your own self-interest that way threatens the viability of our coalition on some general matter.

* Of course we care about your grievances but we don’t have time to formulate an appropriate strategy; please stop sabotaging our worthy efforts.

Some of my friends in GLBT activism are feeling rather mean right now. It was always a given that the presidential and party line would be “When the time was right, we acted wisely, and now all is well.” But it’s sometimes infuriating to see the groups and people outside the party who told them to shut up, stop jeopardizing the ACA, and just generally to stop being so damn selfish now attributing the results of sustained protest to the target of the protests rather than to the instigators. Also, of course, now that they’ve got DADA repealed and some movement on marriage equality, they can please shut up about ENDA and other issues that will threaten the vital second-term campaigns.

King was not a one trick pony and it’s worth reading his other work seriously.

“Where do we go from here” is really brilliant.

Also recommended: In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America by Eddie Glaude.

And – short but sweet – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ9zPySHbuY

Stephen@81

The use of the Twain quote was to highlight the fact that the popular view of the Jacobin Terror is that it was premeditated and unique in its blood thirst, its depravity and its violence. It wasn’t. Twain makes it clear that the lot of the average French person was bleak and dismal for a millennium, but if direct violence is the measure you want to use then the Bourbon monarchy had more than its fair share, far more than the Jacobins can ever be accused of- the pointless slaughter of the seven years war and the Atlantic slave trade are just two 18th Century examples. Robespierre and the Convention of course abolished French slavery during the terror (5th February 1794).

But the real question is why did the terror emerge? It’s a popular theory that all Revolutions “carry within them the seeds of their own destruction” but of course this is crude determinism, ironically a charge leveled against left wing History held by those who believe Revolution to be doomed to deterministic destruction. Revolutions are dynamic, chaotic by their nature and at the mercy of human agency and events. The French Revolution and the subsequent terror is one such example of this in action.

The reign of terror stemmed from the destabilization and threat to France caused by the declaration of war in the Assembly by the opportunist Brissotin faction on 20th April 1792. The most vehement opponent of war was one Maximilien Robespierre who famously declared, “Armed missionaries are loved by nobody”. War was supported secretly by the counter revolutionaries and Louis XVI who saw it as an opportunity to bring the revolution to its knees and towards absolute restoration.

The reign of terror was not some uniform, thought out, premeditated plan of bloodthirsty action but one that was planned according to circumstances and events. This is why some areas of France never felt the impact of the terror at all. The maximum was an attempt to stop war profiteering and to try to ensure the supply of food to French citizens and Gracchus Babeuf was executed by the reactionary Directory, instituted after the fall of Robespierre.

Yes there were disgusting excesses, notably Fouche in Lyons who was recalled to Paris by Robespierre as a result (and would go on to be chief reactionary against Robespierre during Thermidor and faithful servant of Napoleon). The maximum was chaotic in its implementation and had dubious results and yes towards the end Robespierre descended into paranoia, exhaustion and excess. However the radical phase of the Jacobin period introduced policies and reforms we now take for granted- universal suffrage, abolition of slavery etc and saved France from coalition occupation and the re-installation of absolute monarchy in 1793-1794. This was humanity’s advance. Unfortunately there has never been a radical political advance in human progress that has not included violence as an integral part.

The reactionary revolt of Thermidor ensured the White Terror (surpassing the Jacobin Terror for violence), the stripping of suffrage; bourgeois rights as against citizen’s rights and the way clear for the Bonapartist regime.

The French Revolution is a tumultuous event in human history and cannot be categorised as ‘one event and one failure’. There are at least three distinct periods- 1789-92, 1793-94 and Thermidor until Brumaire (1799) and the periods differ fundamentally in terms of what was gained and lost. The Revolution’s lessons are myriad and its effects are still felt today. It should never be dismissed as a wasted, doomed, premeditated, violent attempt to change humanity- all tumbrils and guillotines. Unfortunately for the most part it is.

” It should never be dismissed as a wasted, doomed, premeditated, violent attempt to change humanity- all tumbrils and guillotines. Unfortunately for the most part it is.”

That was not my intention. I do think though, that it is regarded as glorious by people who likely enough, if they lived in that time and place, would have lost their heads.

The most casual study refutes premeditiation. But that makes it all the worse. It did not start with the intention of creating terror. Instead, it descended into terror, going from the highest of intentions to the lowest of actions, and left a lasting mark in history by that process. It is hard for me to escape the belief that the modern model of non-violent revolution, pioneered by Gandhi, that most stern of lawgivers, and followed by King, is a more hopeful one.

Hidden Heart-

I dont necessarily disagree with you. But I’m trying to find a way of defining the terms that doesn’t cary the implication that one is necessarily right and the other wrong.

Mao Cheng Ji@82

“The fact that the king and his minions can and will get their heads chopped off if they go too far, it creates an important constraint.”

Very true. Also true for the President or the First Secretary of the Communist Party. But only a very partial truth.

Joseph de Maistre – not I think a writer much admired on CT, but one sometimes worth considering – put it more generally. Abuses in government may eventually produce popular revolutions, and that is a very important lesson for governments. But the abuses of revolutions are usually worse than the abuses of the previous governments, and that is a very important lesson for peoples.

You see, the French Revolution was not just a matter of beheading king, queen and some nobles. Most of its victims were ordinary decent people, and the outcome was no improvement. As someone, I forget who, said: enthusiasm for revolution in settled societies is too often playing with fire, by children who don’t even know that fire is hot.

Sure it was an improvement. Revolutions only happen when things can’t go on as usual anymore. Exactly because the risk for people involved is very high. They can’t take it anymore, so they revolt. Anything is an improvement.

Now, it’s true that ‘ordinary decent people’ will suffer, but a revolt is something that happens to a society: the society is sick, it convulses, and these ordinary people become, as they say, a collateral damage. Perhaps they should’ve organized and done something to prevent the breakdown? That would seem like a better lesson than “whatever happens, don’t revolt”…