Thread by @BerniceKing

A thread of quotes from my father’s last book, ‘Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?’, in which he shares at length about racism. The Beloved Community was his ultimate goal, but he believed that we had be honest about and eradicate racism to get there. #MLK #MLKonRacism

“The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.”
#MLK #MLKonRacism

“The white backlash is an expression of the same vacillations, the same search for rationalizations, the same lack of commitment that have always characterized white America on the question of race.”
#MLK #MLKonRacism

“What is the source of this perennial indecision and vacillation? It lies in the “congenital deformity” of racism that has crippled the nation from its inception.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“The roots of racism are very deep in America. Historically it was so acceptable in the national life that today it still only lightly burdens the conscience.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“No one surveying the moral landscape of our nation can overlook the hideous and pathetic wreckage of commitment twisted and turned to a thousand shapes under the stress of prejudice and irrationality.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“This does not imply that all white Americans are racists—far from it. Many white people have, through a deep moral compulsion, fought long and hard for racial justice.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“Nor does it mean that America has made no progress in her attempt to cure the body politic of the disease of racism, or that the dogma of racism has not been considerably modified in recent years.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“However, for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country even today is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“These concepts of racism, and this schizophrenic duality of conduct, remain deeply rooted in American thought today. This tendency of the nation to take one step forward on the question of racial justice and then to take a step backward is still the pattern.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“We did not cause the cancer; we merely exposed it. Only through this kind of exposure will the cancer ever be cured. The committed white liberal must see the need for powerful antidotes to combat the disease of racism.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“Yet no one observing the history of the church in America can deny the shameful fact that it has been an accomplice in structuring racism into the architecture of American society.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“The church, by and large, sanctioned slavery and surrounded it with the halo of moral respectability. It also cast the mantle of its sanctity over the system of segregation.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“It is inaccurate to refer to Black Power as racism in reverse, as some have recently done. Racism is a doctrine of the congenital inferiority and worthlessness of a people.” #MLK #MLKonRacism

“Racism can well be that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on Western civilization.” #MLK #MLKonRacism