Martin Luther King, Jr - The Other America (1967)

then mr. prominent faculty members and members of the student body of this great institution of learning, ladies and gentlemen, there are now several things that the fourth could talk about, such a large, concerned and enlightened audience, there are so many problems facing our nation In our world. that one could take off anywhere, but today I would like to talk mainly about the race problem, since tomorrow I will have to rush out and go to New York to talk about Vietnam and I have been tal

king

a lot about it this week and weeks before that, but I would like to use as a topic to talk about this afternoon the

other

America and I use this topic because there are literally two Americas, one America is a beautiful autumn situation and in a certain sense, this America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunities this America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material needs for their bodies and culture and education for their minds freedom and human dignity for their spirits in this America millions of people experience every day the opportunity to have a life in freedom and the pursuit of happiness in all dimensions and in this United States millions of young people grow up under the sunlight of opportunities, but tragically and unfortunately there is an

other

United States and this other United States has something barely ugly that constantly transforms the sea ​​of ​​broth of Hope in the fatigue of despair in this United States.

Millions of hungry wor

king

men walk the streets daily looking for jobs that do not exist in this America. Millions of people find themselves living in vermin-infested, rat-infested slums. Americans are poor by the millions and find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. In a sense, the greatest tragedy of American straws is what they do to the young children of this urban city. America is forced to grow up with clouds of inferiority forming every day in her little mental skies and when we look at this furnace, we see America as a scene of ruined hopes and shattered dreams.

Many people of diverse backgrounds live in this United States. America sama. Mexican Americans sama Puerto Ricans some Indians some turned out to be from other groups millions of them are Appalachian whites probably the largest group in this other America in proportion to its size in the population is the American black a black American is found living in a ghetto triple a ghetto race, a poverty ghetto again is to deal with this problem to deal with this problem of the two Americans who seek to make America an indivisible nation with liberty and justice for all. Now let me say that the fight for civil rights in a The fight to make these two Americans one United States is much more difficult today than it was five or ten years ago, for about a decade or maybe twelve years we fought throughout the South and glorious struggles to get rid of overt legal segregation and all humiliation. that surrounded that system of segregation in a sense this was a fight for decency we could not go to a restaurant in many cases and buy a hamburger our cup of coffee we could not use public accommodations public transport was segregated and we often had to sitting in the back and inside the transportation transportation within the cities we often had to stand on empty seats because the sections were reserved for whites there we did not have the right to vote in so many areas of the south and the struggle was to deal with these problems now they certainly were problems difficult conditions were humiliating for the thousands who protested these conditions we made clear that it was ultimately more honorable and accepting navigation experiences in prison than to accept segregation and humiliation for the thousands of students and adults who decided to sit at the counters segregated lunch counters to protest the conditions there and when they were sitting at those lunch counters they were actually defending the best of the American dream and trying to lead the entire nation back to those great wells of democracy that were dug deep by the parents founders in formulating the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence many things were achieved as a result of these years of struggle in 1964 the civil rights bill was born after the Birmingham movement which did much to raise the conscience of a large segment of the nation to appear before the court of morality on the whole issue of civil rights after the Selma movement in 1965, we were able to get a voting rights bill now, all of these things represented progress, but we must see that the fight today is much more difficult today is more difficult because now we are fighting for genuine equality and it is much easier to integrate a lunch counter than to guarantee a decent income and a good solid job it is much easier to guarantee the right to vote than to guarantee the right to live and decent sanitary housing conditions, it is much easier to integrate a public park than to make a genuine and quality integrated education a reality and that is why today we are fighting for something that says that we demand genuine equality, it is not simply a fight against extremist behavior towards blacks and I am convinced that many of the few people who supported us in the struggle in the South and who were not willing to go to the end now came to see this in a very difficult and painful way in Chicago .

During the last year that I lived and worked, some of the people who quickly came to march with us in Selma and Birmingham were active people in Chicago and I realized that there were many people who were morally and even financially supportive of what we were doing . in Birmingham and Selma were really outraged by the extremist behavior of Bull Connor and Jim Clark towards blacks instead of believing in genuine equality for blacks and I think this is what we need to see now and this is what makes the fight much more difficult. So as a result of all this, we see that today there are many problems that are becoming more difficult.

It's something that's often overlooked, but black people generally live in worse slums today than they did 20 or 25 years ago. In the north, schools are more segregated today than ever before. In 1954, when the Supreme Court's desegregation decision was adopted economically, the Negro is worth worse today than he was 15 and 20 years ago, so the unemployment rate among whites at one time was about the same as the unemployment rate among blacks, but today the The unemployment rate among blacks is double that of whites and the average income of blacks is today 50% lower than that of whites and when we look at these problems the We see it grow and develop every day and we see the fact that black people are facing a crisis economically. depression in your daily life that is more staggering than the depression of the 1930s, the unemployment rate of the nation as a whole is around 4%; statistics would say from the Department of Labor that among blacks it is about 8.4 percent, but these are the people who are in the labor market who still go to employment agencies to look for work and that is why the statistics can be calculated They can be obtained because somehow they are still in the job market but there are hundreds of thousands of blacks who have given up, they have lost hope of coming to feel that life for them is a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign and therefore That is why those who would estimate that these people who are called the discouraged are no longer going to look for work there would be six or seven percent in the black community and that means that unemployment among blacks may well be 16 percent; among young black people, in some of our large urban areas it's as high as thirty and forty percent, so you can see what I mean when I say that in the black community that is one of the main The tragic and amazing depression that we face in our daily life.

The other thing that we have to come to see now that many of us didn't see very well over the last ten years is that racism is still alive in American society. and much more widespread than we realize and we must see racism for what it is: it is a myth of the superior and inferior race, it is the false and tragic notion that a particular group, a particular race, is responsible for all of everyone's progress. the ideas and the total flow of history and the theory that another group, another race, is totally depraved, innately impure and innately inferior, ultimately racism is bad because its ultimate logic is genocide.

Hitler was a sick and tragic man who brought racism to an end. logical conclusion and ended up leading a nation to kill about six million Jews and this is the tragedy of racism because its ultimate logic is genocide if one says I am not good enough to live next to him if one says no I'm good enough to eat in a restaurant but good enough to have a good decent job or go to school with him simply because of my race, he is consciously or unconsciously saying that I don't deserve to exist to use a philosophical analogy here.

Racism is not based on some empirical generalization, it is rather based on an ontological claim, it is not the claim that certain people are culturally backward, otherwise due to environmental conditions, it is the claim that the very being of a people are inferior and this is a great It is a tragedy. I said that, as unpleasant as it is, we must honestly admit that racism is still deeply rooted throughout America, it is still deeply rooted in the North, and it is still deeply rooted in the South. Now this leads me to say something about another discussion that we hear a lot and that is the so-called white reaction.

I would like to tell you honestly that the white backlash is simply a new name for something old, it is not something that arose simply because of the cries of black power cries because black people participated in riots and watts, for example, the fact is that the state of California voted for a fair house and the demise of existence before anyone shouted black power before anyone rioted in watts, it may well be the Sharps of black power and the riots and watts and the Harlem in other areas or the consequences of the white reaction rather than the cause of them, what needs to be seen is that there has never been a single solid and determined monist commitment on the part of the vast majority of white Americans, the whole question of civil rights and In the whole question of racial equality this is something which truth compels all men of good will to admit.

The Statue of Liberty says that the United States is the home of the exams, but it does not take us long to realize that the United States has been the home of its white exiles from Europe but has not had events of the same type, the maternal care and concern for their black exiles from Africa, it is not surprising that in one of their songs of pain and growing up they can sing sometimes I feel like a child without a mother, what a great distance, what a great feeling of rejection it caused the people emerged with such metal as they examined their lives.

What I am trying to convey is that our nation has consistently taken a positive step forward on the issue of racial justice. and racial equality, but again and again at the same time he took certain steps backwards and this has been the persistence of the so-called white reaction. In 1863, the black man was freed from physical slavery but at the same time the nation refused. give him land to make that freedom meaningful and in that same period the United States was giving millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that the United States was willing to support its white farmers from Europe with an economic flow that would make it possible for them to grow and develop and refused to give that economic floor to his black peasant, so to speak, that is why Frederick Douglass could say that emancipation for the black was freedom from hunger, freedom from the winds and rains from heaven, freedom without roofs to cover their heads.

He went on to say that it was freedom without bread to eat, freedom without land to farm, it was freedom and famine at the same time, but it doesn't end there: in 1875 the nation passed a civil rights bill and refused to implement it in 1964. The nation passed a weaker civil rights bill and even to this day that bill has not been fully implemented in all its dimensions. The nation celebrated a new day of concern for the poor, the poverty-stricken, the disadvantaged and created a poverty bill, but at the same time, it invested so little money in the program that it was not and still is not a good skirmish against poverty.

White politicians and sober suburbanites speak eloquently against open housing while also claiming that they are no longer racist. All of this and All of these things tell us that America has been responding to the whole question of the basic constitutional and divine rights ofblacks and other disadvantaged groups for over 300 years, so these conditions persist in widespread inner-city poverty and tragic school conditions. and other areas of life, all of these things have caused great despair and despair, great disappointment and even bitterness in black communities today, all of our cities face enormous problems, all of our cities are potentially dust. barrels as a result of the continued existence of these conditions, many in moments of anger, many and moments of deep bitterness engaged in riots and let me say, as I have always said and will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-destructive. defeat I am still convinced that nonviolence is the most powerful weapon available to oppress people in their fight for freedom and justice.

I feel that violence will create more social problems than it solves. That in a real sense it is not practical for the Black to even think about mounting a violent revolution in the United States, so I will continue to condemn the riots and I will continue to tell my brothers and sisters that this is not the way. I will continue to affirm that there is another way, but at the same time it is. It is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions that call upon people to feel that they must engage in riotous activities, as it is for me to condemn riots.

I believe that the United States must ensure that riots do not arise out of nowhere, certain conditions still exist in our society that must be condemned as strongly as possible. We condemn riots but ultimately riots are the language of the unheard. What hasn't America heard? You haven't heard that the plight of poor blacks has gotten worse in recent years. You haven't heard that. the promises of freedom and justice have not been fulfilled and it has not been heard that large segments of white society are more concerned with tranquility in the status quo than with justice, equality and humanity, etc., in a real sense of our nation, some of the unrest is caused by our nation's winters of delay and as long as America postpones justice we will be in the position of having these recurrences of violence and unrest repeat themselves over and over again social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

Now let me continue by saying that if we are going to address all the problems that I have talked about, we must get America to the point where we have one indivisible nation with liberty and justice for all, there are certain things that we must do, the work that we have to do. ahead must be massive and positive, we must develop mass action programs throughout the United States of America in order to address the problems that I have mentioned now. To develop these mass action programs we have to get rid of one or two false notions that continue to exist in our society, one is the notion that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice.

I'm sure you've heard this idea, it's the notion that it's something in the very flow of time that will miraculously cure all ills and I've heard it time and time again, it's those people, and often they're sincere people, who tell you to the blacks and their lies in the white community that we must slow down and be kind and patient and continue to pray and in 102 of 200 years from now the problem will be solved only because time can solve the problem. I believe it is a response to that myth and it is a neutral tense that can be used constructively or destructively and I am absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation the extremist writers of our nation have often used tense much more effectively that the forces of good will and we may well have to repent in this generation not only for the vitriolic words of bad people in the violent actions of bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of good people who they sit back and say: wait in time, somewhere we must come to see that social progress never rolls on the wheels of inevitability, but is achieved through tireless efforts and persistent work of dedicated individuals and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation and that is why we must help time and we must realize that it is always the right time to do the right thing, not just another notion that comes to light.

Everywhere and in the south it is in the north it is in California and throughout our nation there is the notion that legislation cannot solve the problem, it cannot do anything in this area and those who project this argument maintain that we must change the heart and that the heart cannot be changed through legislation now. I would be the first to say that there is a real need for many changes of heart in our country and I believe in changing hearts. I preach about it. Believe. in the need for conversion in many cases and regeneration, to use theological terms, and I would be the first to say that if the racial problem in the United States is to be solved, the white person must treat the blacks well, not only because the law says so, but also because The closest is natural because it is right and because the black is its brother, so I realize that if we want to have a truly integrated society, men and women will have to rise to the majestic heights of being obedient to the inapplicable, but after saying this, let me say another.

What the other side gives is that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated, although it may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can curb harshness, although it may be true that The law cannot change the heart. The law cannot make a man love me, it can stop him from lynching me and I think that is also very important, so although the law cannot change the hearts of men, it can change the habits of men, and when you start changing them. of men very soon attitudes will change very soon hearts will change I am convinced that we still need strong civil rights legislation.

There is a bill before Congress right now to have a national federal open housing bill, a federal law declaring discrimination in housing. unconstitutional and also a bill to make the administration of justice real throughout our country now no one can doubt the need for this, no one can doubt the need if you think about the fact that since 1963 about 50 black civil rights workers and whites have been brutally murdered Only in the state of Mississippi and not a single person has been convicted for these deaths, the crimes have been some accusations but no one has been convicted, so it is necessary because the whole issue of the administration of justice It is necessary for fair justice. housing laws across our country and it's really tragic that last year Congress allowed this bill to die and that bill died in Congress a little bit of democracy died a little bit of our commitment to justice will die if this happens again in this section of the larger Congress Various degrees of our commitment to democratic principles will die and I see no more dangerous trend in our country than the continued development of predominantly black central cities surrounded by white suburbs.

This only invites social disaster and the only way to solve this problem is for the nation to take a firm stand and for state governments to take a firm stand against housing segregation and against discrimination in all these areas and as something else that I would like to mention when talking about the massive action program and time does not permit it. undertake specific programmatic actions to a large extent, but we must realize now that the Negro cannot solve the problem by himself. There are also those who always tell black people why don't you do something for yourself, why don't you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and we hear this over and over again now certainly there are many things that we must do for ourselves and that only we can do for ourselves we certainly must develop a sense of dignity and respect for ourselves, but no one else can give us the feeling that a man had a sense of personality a sense of not being ashamed of our heritage not being ashamed of our color was wrong and tried to give that black man ever allowed himself to be ashamed of the fact that he was black or to be ashamed of the fact that his home and his brother home was Africa saw that there is a lot that the black man can do to develop self-respect there is a lot that the Negro must do and can do to accumulate political and economic power within his own community and using his own resources, then we must do certain things for ourselves, but this must not deny the fact and cause the nation to overlook the fact that the black man cannot solve the problem by himself.

The man was on the plane with me a few weeks ago and he came to me and told me the problem dr. King what I see was what you all are doing is that every time I see you and the sky grows you protested and did nothing for yourselves he went on to tell me that he was very poor at one time and he was able to achieve it by doing something for himself , why don't you teach his people, he said, to stand up for themselves and then he went on to say that the floating groups face disadvantages, the Irish, the Italians, and he followed the line and I said. telling him that it doesn't help the black man, it only deepens his frustration with sensitive and sensitive people telling him that other ethnic groups that immigrated to this country about 200 years ago have surpassed him and he came here about 344 years ago. years ago and I reminded him that black people came to this country involuntarily in chains, while others came voluntarily.

I reminded him that no other racial group has ever been a slave on American soil. I reminded him that the other problem we have faced over the years is that the Society put a stigma on the color of black in the color of his skin because he was black doors were closed to him that were not closed to other groups and I must say that people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but it is a cruel joke to tell a bootless man that he should pull himself up with his eyes in his hands, the fact is that millions of blacks as a result of centuries of denial and neglect have been left abandoned. useless and find themselves like impoverished foreigners in this opulent society and that is much that society can and must do if the black man wants to obtain the economic security that he needs now, it seems to me that one of the answers is a guaranteed annual income. a guaranteed minimum income for all people and for all families in our country, it seems to me that the civil rights movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income, begin to organize the people of all Africans and mobilize forces for That we can I can bring this need and this to the attention of our nation, something that I think will go a long way toward addressing the black economic problem and the economic problem of many other poor people that our nation faces.

Now I said I wasn't going to do it. I talk about Vietnam, but I can't give a speech without mentioning some of the problems we face there because I believe this wall has diverted attention from civil rights, strengthened the forces of reaction in our country, and brought the military industrial complex that even President Eisenhower warned us against at one time and, above all, it is destroying human lives, it is destroying the lives of thousands of promising young people of our nation, strong the lives of boys and girls in Vietnam, but one The most important thing this war is doing to us and to civil rights is that it allows the Great Society to be torn down on the battlefields of Vietnam every day and this afternoon I propose that we can end poverty in the United States , our nation has the resources.

To do so, the gross national product of the United States will increase to this founding figure, about eight hundred settlers this year, we have the resources, the question is, well, does the nation have the will and I maintain that if we can spy on billions of dollars a year , we will fight evil. -Considering war in Vietnam and 20 billion dollars to put a man on the Moon, our nation can spend billions of dollars on its own feet here on Earth, let me say something else that is more in the realm of the spirit, I guess it is. that we had to move forward in the days to come and make true Brotherhood a reality, it is necessary that we realize more than ever that the destinies of the black man and the white man are united now that there are still many people who do not.

I don't realize this, the races still don't realize this, but it is now a fact that blacks and whites are united and we need each other. The black man needs the white man to save him from a sphere. The white man needs the black man to save him. because of him we are united in many ways our language our musicour cultural patterns our material prosperity and even our food in a black and white malgal so there can be no separate black path to power and fulfillment that does not intersect with white roots there can be no separate white path to power and the realization of social disaster does not recognize the need to share that power with black aspirations for freedom and justice.

We must come to see now that integration is not simply a romantic or aesthetic thing to simply add color to a still predominantly white power structure. Integration must also be seen in political terms, where power is shared and where black and white men share power together to build a great new nation, in a real sense, we are caught in an inescapable web. of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny Jean dump lay years ago in graphic turns no man is an island and a private elf every man is a piece of the continent a part of the Maine and continues towards the end to say any man death diminishes me because I am involved in humanity therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls tolls for you and so everyone in the same situation the salvation of the blacks would mean the salvation of the white man and the destruction of life. and of the continued progress of the blacks will be the destruction of the continued progress of the nation.

Now let me finally say that we have difficult days ahead, but I had not despaired in any way. I remain hopeful despite hope and I have talked about the difficulties and how difficult the problems will be as we address them, but I want to end by saying this afternoon that I still have faith in the future and I continue to believe that these problems can be solved, for so I won't join anyone who says that. We cannot yet develop a coalition of consciences. I realize and understand the discontent, agony, disappointment and even bitterness of those who feel that white people and America cannot be trusted, and I would be the first to say that all of them.

There are too many who are still protected by the racist spirit. I remain convinced that there are still many white people of good will and I am happy to say that I see them every day in the generation of students who value democratic principles and justice above principles and who will continue to defend the cause of justice, the cause of civil rights and the cause of peace over the next few days, so I refuse to despair. I believe that we will achieve our freedom because, no matter how far America strays from the ideals of justice, America's goal is freedom, sights, dance, Conder, even though we may.be our destiny is tied to the destiny of the United States Before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth we were here before Jefferson crossed the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence we were here before the beautiful words of the star-spangled banner were written we were here for more than two centuries our ancestors They worked here without wages, they became kings of cotton, they built their masters' houses in the midst of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions, but from a bottomless vitality they continued to grow and develop and I say that if the inexpressible shams of slavery do not were able to stop us, the opposition we now face, including the so-called white reaction, will surely fail, we will use our freedom because both the secret of our nation and the eternal will of the Almighty God, I embody the demands of the danaiah coins and that is why I can still sing we will win we will win the costs are out of the mall the universe is long but it bends toward justice we will win because Carlyle is right no lie can live forever we will win because William Cullen Bryant is just Christ will rise again will win because James Russell Lowell is right the truth forever on the wrong scaffold forever on the throne however that scaffold influences the future with me we will be able to carve from the mountain of despair a stone of hope that with this faith we will be able to transform the discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood .

With this baby we can hasten the day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews, Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics. we will be able to join hands and live together as brothers and sisters throughout this great nation that will be a great layman that will be a great tomorrow in the word sure will speak symbolically that will be the day when the morning stars will sing together and the children of God will shout for joy