Of Church and State Episode 10: Race Relations in America

Of Church and State

Today, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the national holiday honoring the birth and legacy of our nation's greatest civil rights leader, it seems an appropriate time to look back and ponder one of the man's most poignant quotes. Reverend King once said: I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Surely everyone would agree the America of 2017 is demonstrably more equal & just than the America of 1960. So what does it mean in today's USA to be a "white moderate?", and further not even a caucasian moderate, per se, but a moderate straddling the fence of social justice? How has the conversation of civil rights in America evolved since Dr. King's time? and where is the line between defining our battlefields of justice and disagreeing on the prescriptions to our societal problems? All that and more, today on the corner of church & state...