The Problem With the White Moderate
Moderation has kept me disengaged and unable — unwilling — to understand the racism that exists in our country
It’s a season of critical self-reflection and reexamination. I am coming to terms with some hard truths about racism and choosing to move in a direction that aligns with my values more.
In a recent reread of the “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr., I was struck by something I had glossed over before. I felt the sting when King calls out the “white moderate.”
He writes, “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 Councilor 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…
