If you read the essay on the Republic, thank you.
If not, the argument, very simply, is thus: Justice is a right ordering of the soul. It is always preferable to do justice than injustice, because injustice disorders, cripples and in the end destroys that very thing by which we live: our souls.
The book Black Like Me is one of the most striking stories of injustice I have ever read.
When I was a child, one of my best friends was black. But if you had mentioned it to me, it would have meant no more to me than if you had observed that his hair was black and mine was read. I would have looked at you and wondered what your point was. I don't remember being aware of "race" as an issue (or a way to divide men) until I was a teenager.
I write this to emphasize how foreign the experiences Griffin describes are to me. We call it "discrimination," but that is a word too euphemistic, perverting our language to avoid calling a thing by its true name. "Racism" does not describe it. All men are of one race.
Is it any surprise that men deprived of human dignity and all the pleasures that enlarge the spirit turn to pleasures of the flesh to avoid despair? Is it any surprise that men with great gaping holes where their hearts should be will do anything to fill them? Is it any surprise that they go wrong then?
Reading Black Like Me, I can only conclude one thing:
To despise a man for no other reason than the color of his skin is not mere prejudice. It is not enlightened rationality. To hold such views beyond a mere hour's thought is to choose them. It is vice. It is hatred. It is injustice.
It is evil.
Things are, as I understand it, different now, in 2009, than they were in 1959. But the idea that fifty years ago, such injustice and evil could be done in America--not only done but thought good, or right, or even in accordance with God's will--it angers me. It is against everything I have been raised to cherish and to defend. It is against every principle on which America rests. It is against everything I love. It is against human nature, disfiguring and distorting.
And my heart cries out to fight it and to stand against it.
The path of wisdom is a narrow one here. On the one hand is submission to injustice, on the other, revenge--doing injustice. On some small level, I begin to understand the desperate frustration men must have felt.
Say what you will about him, Dr. King found the way. We call it civil disobedience, or non-violent protest, but those are not good enough names for it. I do not have one, I only have an image:
How does a man stand against the flood of injustice? He must be a rock, set deep in the river bed. Though the water flows against and around him, he is unmoved. When the flood subsides, as in time it must, he will remain.
Please leave me your thoughts.
If not, the argument, very simply, is thus: Justice is a right ordering of the soul. It is always preferable to do justice than injustice, because injustice disorders, cripples and in the end destroys that very thing by which we live: our souls.
The book Black Like Me is one of the most striking stories of injustice I have ever read.
When I was a child, one of my best friends was black. But if you had mentioned it to me, it would have meant no more to me than if you had observed that his hair was black and mine was read. I would have looked at you and wondered what your point was. I don't remember being aware of "race" as an issue (or a way to divide men) until I was a teenager.
I write this to emphasize how foreign the experiences Griffin describes are to me. We call it "discrimination," but that is a word too euphemistic, perverting our language to avoid calling a thing by its true name. "Racism" does not describe it. All men are of one race.
Is it any surprise that men deprived of human dignity and all the pleasures that enlarge the spirit turn to pleasures of the flesh to avoid despair? Is it any surprise that men with great gaping holes where their hearts should be will do anything to fill them? Is it any surprise that they go wrong then?
Reading Black Like Me, I can only conclude one thing:
To despise a man for no other reason than the color of his skin is not mere prejudice. It is not enlightened rationality. To hold such views beyond a mere hour's thought is to choose them. It is vice. It is hatred. It is injustice.
It is evil.
Things are, as I understand it, different now, in 2009, than they were in 1959. But the idea that fifty years ago, such injustice and evil could be done in America--not only done but thought good, or right, or even in accordance with God's will--it angers me. It is against everything I have been raised to cherish and to defend. It is against every principle on which America rests. It is against everything I love. It is against human nature, disfiguring and distorting.
And my heart cries out to fight it and to stand against it.
The path of wisdom is a narrow one here. On the one hand is submission to injustice, on the other, revenge--doing injustice. On some small level, I begin to understand the desperate frustration men must have felt.
Say what you will about him, Dr. King found the way. We call it civil disobedience, or non-violent protest, but those are not good enough names for it. I do not have one, I only have an image:
How does a man stand against the flood of injustice? He must be a rock, set deep in the river bed. Though the water flows against and around him, he is unmoved. When the flood subsides, as in time it must, he will remain.
Please leave me your thoughts.
Well put. Morgan Freeman also puts it well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO214IFRW1M
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