Reference no: EM133574555
Case Study: Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a profound critique of the "soul" of the nation. Indicative of MLK's intellectual and spiritual evolution, "Beyond Vietnam" transcended narrow race matters to call attention to "a far deeper malady within the American spirit." Racism, he proposed, is not the disease. It is a symptom of a disease that will not be cured without holistic healing. A nation, he warned, that continues year after year to spend more money on militarization than programs of social uplift is "approaching spiritual death." The speech provoked scathing reactions among the mainstream media, the political class, and those civil rights figures who had become entrenched in party politics and married to narrow civil rights agendas without the potential for real liberation. Dr. King became scolded for venturing beyond the safe spaces of civil rights. Such reactions reflected the influence that the Military-Industrial-Complex and National Security State had come to wield within the nation's power centers by the 1960s. Even into the present, the mainstream of American society does not wish to remember the MLK of 1967-68, preferring a younger King whose intellectual evolution had not yet comprehended the intersections between race, class/poverty, and militarism. Beyond Vietnam" (Speech):
Questions:
1. MLK's stated position on the US war in Vietnam:
2. What compelled MLK to preach about the US war on Vietnam and realities made this mission to speak difficult?
3. On what basis did MLK reconcile the civil rights struggle and the peace struggle (how are they compatible and overlapping?)? Consider, among other things, what the war consumed and at whose expense, and who it drafted in disproportionate numbers.
4. What lesson is the war teaching the "desperate, rejected, and angry young men" on the home-front (and all ofAmerican society)?
5. Identify the selective nature of the press's applause for MLK and the selective nature of its scorn: (For what did mainstream America and for what had it scorned him?)
6. To get on the right side of history (or the "world revolution"), MLK believes that America must undergo a radical revolution of values. What does he mean? What must the US come to value and prioritize?
7. Identify the "giant triplets," or (later)"the triple evils":
8. When does a nation face "spiritual death," according to MLK?
9. What has the US (and other Western nations) betrayed and what must it recapture, according to MLK?
10. Did MLK hate America? Why is he speaking out against the war? Explain.