I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the White moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the White moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”
Dr. King wrote those words in 1963 in his Letter From Birmingham Jail.
Kyrsten Lea Sinema was born in 1976. So, I can only guess God told Dr. MLK, ’cause the good Reverend saw her coming. Saw Joe Manchin, too.
Take a look at this.
By prioritizing an arcane Senate rule over the protection of voting rights, Manchin and Sinema have chosen “order” over justice. The clergymen Dr. King addressed in his letter similarly elevated procedural and strategic complaints over the urgent need for racial equality, even though city officials in Birmingham secured an injunction against civil rights demonstrations and were negotiating with civil rights activists in bad faith. By claiming the movement should continue negotiating with those who were unified in their opposition to racial progress, the clergymen were effectively siding with segregation and suborning Black rights to White whims.
Manchin and Sinema’s procedural complaints about the filibuster are reminiscent of the clergymen Dr. King was confronting. Manchin has expressed his concerns that an exception for voting rights legislation would lead to a slippery slope of rule changes. But he fails to grasp that disenfranchisement creates another slippery slope for those who are denied ballot access — a more dangerous one that allows their other rights to be more easily abridged. Sinema says she is similarly worried that changing the filibuster would erode Americans’ faith in government and increase political division. But what is a greater threat to faith in government than being denied the right to vote?
– Victor Ray is the F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Criminology and African American Studies at the University of Iowa and a Nonresident Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution.
And today’s Republican Party would not surprise him, not surprise him at all.
Here’s the Letter From Birmingham Jail.