Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“White America was ready to demand that the Negro should be spared the lash of brutality and coarse degradation, but it had never been truly committed to helping him out of poverty, exploitation or all forms of discrimination.”

In addressing the evolution of the civil rights movement by the mid-1960s, King illustrates that despite the historic constitutional achievements of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, racism and discrimination against African Americans persisted. He criticizes white Americans for failing to commit to true justice and equality, stressing that the end of segregationist brutality does not signify the arrival of justice.

“The real cost lies ahead. The stiffening of white resistance is a recognition of that fact. The discount education given Negroes will in the future have to be purchased at full price if quality education is to be realized. Jobs are harder and costlier to create than voting rolls. The eradication of slums housing millions is complex far beyond integrating buses and lunch counters.”

In the first chapter, King already addresses future challenges for the civil rights movement. Putting the class struggle with the issue of economic justice, he indicates a shift in the politics of civil rights. Echoing the Black power ideology, he notes that class inequity is a more complex achievement than integration, as it would demand costlier governmental policies. King indicates that integration was not the end of the movement.

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”

The passage illustrates King’s indictment of white racial ignorance. For King, white people ignored African American reality and history, maintaining their feelings of social and cultural superiority. White Americans believed that the inclusion of Black people in a white-dominated society would bring racial equality. King demonstrates that for justice to become real, white people must also change and shift from their social position.