Sabah Hasan 12.12.14 Shaun Adams English 1010 ESSAY #3 In the 1960’s discrimination was a major issue, and thought times have change now it is also a very prominent issue. This problem should have been abolished s along with slavery. It is a problem that is very difficult to solve because it is instilled in people from the time they are born. There are many sides to discrimination; there is racial, economical, and institutional discrimination, segregation, etc. The essays, Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin and Letter From Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King contain many similarities as well as differences. Even though they were both written during the same time period(WHAT TIME PERIOD) you will notice that Kings Letter From Birmingham …show more content…
It is mainly about his relationship with his father and how after his father passed away he realized how his anger and rage, which was depicted as a disease, was legitimate. His father was a paranoid, bitter old man who had a very profound hatred of white people. He used to warn his son that they were “not to be trusted.” Baldwin never understood his father’s hatred for white people; he did not understand that because his father was of the first generation of African Americans to be free that he faced a lot of racism growing up. They never understood why this bitter old man hated the white race so much; all they knew was that his hatred consumed him so much that in the end it was what killed him. Only after his move to New Jersey did Baldwin begin to understand why his father’s hatred towards the whites was so great. He came to realize why his father was consumed with anger and rage, why he pushed his beliefs on his children so much that they began to hate him. He was only preparing them for the real world. That move made Baldwin begin to understand his father, made him become like his father. During his stay in New Jersey, he practically became his father and what he realized was that his father had so much anger and hatred inside of him that it consumed him and ended his life; he realized that that was not how he wanted his life to end. It was a disease of the mind. He says in the essay, “When he died I have been away …show more content…
Segregation is the act of separating. In this essay, King is writing to the clergymen from jail that segregation is an unjust law. He went on to explain the difference between just and unjust laws. A just law is a “man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God.” Simply put, a just law is a law that is universally practiced. An unjust law is “a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” So any law that degrades human personality is unjust. King was put into jail for protesting the treatment of blacks in Birmingham, Alabama. Everything in Alabama was segregated, whether in schools, bathrooms, churches, or buses the blacks were always separated from the whites. Blacks faced a lot of discrimination during that time and they went about trying to solve this injustice the nonviolent way by protesting. Yet they were arrested, this essay was written to try to make an unjust law just. "I am here because injustice is here," he wrote. "I would agree with Saint Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" All he wanted to do was create equality among all people. It was not fair that equality only existed between the white people. King believed that using violence in order to get what you want is unjust and would be against God, that it would lessen the chance of getting what they wanted. He thought that the way to do things was through nonviolence, which is why he was protesting. He was
Just laws apply to everyone, but unjust laws do not apply to everyone. So segregation laws are unjust. He also use example to show that some law can be just on paper, but applied unjustly. Therefore, we must break unjust laws because that shows the highest respect for
Injustices in Birmingham While sitting in the Birmingham jail in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., writes a powerful and emotional letter to the clergymen of Birmingham. In his letter, he responds to the harsh criticism and injustices he received for simply protesting peacefully without a permit. King states in his letter, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Knowing that Baldwin was a black man from Harlem, one can assume he had put up with discrimination. He describes his relationship with his father saying, “I had not known my father very well” and this explains why he never learned to deal with hatred, and let it eat him up like it did to his father. His father was also very religious, and consequently, Baldwin saw Christianity, in which he grew up, as a mechanism by which African Americans channeled their desire for revenge against white oppressors. By describing his background in this fashion, he is able to gain empathy, credibility, and a large sense of ethos from his readers. Baldwin’s pathos is seen in his pure unadulterated hatred of white people.
Any law that degrades human personality is unjust" (King 702). King declares that segregation is unjust, "It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority" (King 702). For example, King uses Hitler and the Nazi Germany. It was legal for Hitler to persecute the innocent Jewish people.
After defining this clear difference between laws, Martin then went on to explain why the law they went against was right. Because the law set a segregation between the people, it created unfair treatment towards a certain set of the population making it an unjust law. Unjust laws are allowed to be disobeyed to show that you still support
King wrote about the ways African Americans were treated, and how they suffered just because they were a different race. King believed that the way African Americans were treated was unjust. He believed that If whites were allowed to have their "god given rights", so should African Americans. King believes that "there is nothing
As of the year 2016, there are an estimated 324,118,787 people living in America. 324,118,787 people consider themselves to be Americans and 324,118,787 people have decided that America really is worthy enough to be called home. These people, whether they were born within the country or emigrated from another country, comingle in this melting pot of a nation, sharing grocery stores and hospitals and neighborhoods and all the ideologies that make up American society, and each of these people have their own lives and opinions and personal beliefs. All of these people, all (roughly) 324,118,787 of them, fall under the definition of an American – a person who lives in America, because there is simply no other way to define what an American is when
In the eyes of Martin Luther King Jr., Justice within a society is achieved through the implementation of just laws. Furthermore, “just laws are regulations that have been created by man that follow the laws of God for man” (“Clergymen’s Letter”). Any law that does not correspond with the ideals of God and morality are considered to be unjust or a form of injustice. King identifies that injustice is clearly evident within the justice system. This injustice can truly be seen through the misconduct imposed toward the African American community.
Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: Just and Unjust Laws Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a letter to eight white clergymen while he’s sitting in a jail cell, the result of a protest in Birmingham, Alabama that King, a Georgian, traveled to attend. Due to the criticisms of the clergymen, he commences his letter by explaining why he needed to come to Birmingham. King states that he was there for a multitude of reasons, the first being that he had organizational ties to Birmingham, the second being that he was there because there was injustice in Birmingham. He states that as a citizen of America, injustice in Birmingham is not removed from justice anywhere else because everything is interrelated, and that injustice
1. Ethos, Logos, and Pathos are important aspects in Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. The meaning behind Ethos is to appeal to ethics, which means convincing readers of the author’s credibility, meanwhile Pathos is an appeal to emotion, and is used in literature to convince readers of an argument by getting their emotions involved. Last but not least, Logos is the appeal to logic and is used to persuade readers using a force of reason. These terms are important in MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail because the foundation of the letter is built upon ideas of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.
"I have begun this letter five times and torn it up five times. I keep seeing your face, which is also the face of your father and my brother" (1) indicates that Baldwin put time and effort into making this work as heartfelt as possible to make his message clear. The writing style he used in this message is one that shows that he is familiar with his audience, his nephew. At the same time, this language style is familiar because this letter can be used to address African-American teens other than his nephew James. Baldwin 's language in A Letter to My Nephew shows that he is pacifying his nephew for being born into the environment that he is in, but at the same time passing the blame onto the United States for creating such an environment.
King stating their wrong doings, helped prove his point about just and unjust laws and about his wrongful jailing for taking a peaceful stand.
So this makes his real- life experience connect so closely to the story he had written. He experienced loss in real life along with in his story. In the story, the narrator had also lost his daughter to polo, although he didn’t exactly explain his feelings, he showed that it did affect him. Which makes me think that maybe Baldwin was the type of person to hide his feelings and act tough even though things affected him. He tried not to dwell on things, but realize that he can feel
In terms of legacies, Martin Luther King Jr. is an example of someone whose legacy has left an impact on a great many fields. The first to come to mind for most would be civil rights activism, as he was an instrumental figure in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. However, Martin Luther King Jr is an extremely influential figure in the field of oration and rhetoric. His Letter from Birmingham Jail is a work that he wrote while incarcerated in the Birmingham City Jail in response to criticism from Alabama clergymen. This letter is a prime example of King’s expertise in constructing persuasive rhetoric that appealed to the masses at large.
One will constantly face temporary conflict throughout life, but ultimately they can overcome through a will to on and pursue what makes oneself happy. Baldwin was able to create a picture in the reader's mind due to his personal relation to his characters, he was able to understand the harsh times for an African-American male. It also reflects on the care that siblings have for one another and how even though they have good intentions, they can't always help their loved one follow a positive