two articles
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Two Articles Concerning Black Issues
Racial discrimination had remained a touchy issue in American society. In the 1960s, a wave calling for civil rights swept across the continent. Black Americans demanded for their rights and a series of social reforms were carried out. The following two articles “Letter From Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. and “Why Blacks Need Affirmative Action” by Jesson Jackson emerged from this historical background. While the former convinces us with his eloquence and appeals to our emotions to abandon the segregation statutes, the latter justifies his rebuttal through his insight analysis of the statistics and advocates affirmative action.
As for the priest, facing the dilemma incurred by the question, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others,” he responded with his great skills of eloquence. In order to justify his position to disobey segregation ordinances, he begins by defining two types of laws: just and unjust laws. To illustrate his ideas, he gives definitions of these two concepts. A just law agrees with the moral law while the unjust doesn’t. Then the priest adopts the “syllogism”method: any law that degrades human personality is unjust; segregation statutes distort the personality; therefore segregation is unjust. People have a moral obligation to abandon the unjust segregation law. Thus the priest moves from the general moral responsibility to the specific case of disobeying segregation law. Using such deductive methods, the priest actually appeals for sympathy from members of all races. In the process, the method of
defining and syllogism play a vital part and naturally leads to the completely contrast attitudes towards the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court and the segregation statutes. In this way, the priest successfully retorted the question and managed to get out of the dillemma.
Except from the previous techniques, the use of quotations of other famous figures contribute a lot to the powerful deduction process. St. Augustine’s words “ an unjust law is no all at all.” St. Thomas Aquinas’s “ An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.” The terminology of Martin Buber “I-it”“I-Thou” and so on. All these quotations add to the strength of the speech and make it sound prevailing.
In the latter article, the author refutes the stand taken by a recent publication, indicating that job discrimination will disappear in less than fifty years due to the progress brought by affirmative action. In spite of what the news account makes it seem, the author still believes that affirmative action needs to be done in order to achieve educational and economic equity.
Different from the priest’s great eloquence, the author conveys his ideas in a rather restrained and rational way. The huge gaps between blacks and whites are made explicitly clear by presenting sets of solid statistics in parallel forms, regarding the law and medical personnel resources distributed to the blacks and whites. To further elaborate his opinion, the author refers to the metaphor made by William Raspberry. “What if, instead of setting aside 16 of 100 slots, we added 16 slots to the 100.” He points out that this is exactly what has happened
in law and medical school. Despite the substantial increase of blacks in medical and law enrollment compared with the situation before the affirmative action that began a few years ago, the whites are even expanding in an astounding way. As a result, the blacks still occupy a minor portion of the whole law and medical enrollment picture. The goal to achieve educational and economic equity still takes a long way to go.
The two articles reflect the 1960 civil rights movements and its subsequet influences. The priest excellently defeated his opponents on the matter of disobeying segregation laws, using powerful eloquent speech and syllogism methods. And the author of the latter englightens us on the equity issue between whites and minority groups with his insight analysis of the statistics.。
