Injustice

 Faith Tyranski

Dr. Ellis

Banned Books

2 Feb. 2022

Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere

In 1929, King comprised a powerful letter while imprisoned in Birmingham jail centered around defending his stance of nonviolence, and more generally, around his appeal for change. He develops his appeal through the idea of interconnectedness, developed by the idea of tension and employment of pathos and logos, to effectively underscore the imperativeness of his protest. The inescapable network of mutuality juxtaposes everyone and therefore, the duty falls on everyone's shoulders to overturn the overlapping structures of oppression against African Americans; in doing such, that same body brings awareness and potential healing to the world. The soul to King's letter, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," accentuates how oppression against any one group expands to poison the world and holds equally important ramifications for the world today (King 1).

        King substantiates how he has arrived at his understanding by calling on pathos and logos to silently praise those who can chronologically backtrack through the movement. Though he does not outright detest the popular way, which quickly hyper focuses on the resultant actions of protests but not their cause, King emphasizes just that "I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who merely at effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is so unfortunate;" King's unspoken words imply praise for those who would not fall into that category of individuals, while simultaneously shaming the absurdity of those who do. Logos successfully demonstrates that until the antecedent has been examined to the same extent which the resultant actions have been scrutinized, those who comment on the end results have no substance to their claims. 

        In addition to expanding his argument to encompass both the antecedents and their ramifications, King further interconnects the substance of his letter and each person who witnesses the protests through the idea of tension and injustice. King introduces the role of tension in his movement stating, "nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to comfort the issue" (King 2). First and foremost, King evokes pathos by utilizing the idea of crisis to enhance his argument. The idea of a crisis evokes fear, trepidation, and intense discomfort in those who hear the word; paradoxically, King specifically uses this word to underscore the need for discomfort, specifically the discomfort that arises from tension. Creative tension intersects the day of those in the community who before may not have been privy to the oppression in their own community. King's strategy seeks to rope in individuals who perhaps were not a part of the active protest. However, since these same individuals exist in the community where the protest took place, they inevitably feel the tension that follows. Therefore, though perhaps before these others in the community could blindly continue on with their day, they must now confront the oppression at hand in order to ease their own discomfort. 

        King's appeal continues to outline the compounding and communal effects of oppression, reaching its' peak purpose when he states, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" (King 1). How tension effectively pervades the community who did not want to interact with oppressions before their own discomfort, injustice pervades systematics to serve as a conductor for further discrimination or oppression against new groups. By analyzing a Letter from Birmingham Jail through the context of this interconnected lens, we become aware of the fact that injustice against one group threatens the security of all groups. Utilizing King's effective strategies of tension and ethos, pathos, logos as a weapon against oppression serves as the first steps to defeating systematic injustice; however, the most imperative aspect in defeating injustice to protect the justice of the world, falls on the ability to understand and connect all bodies of the world (whether in the group receiving direct oppression or in their surrounding community). With the increased awareness of this phenomenon, historians today understand why the UN responds eagerly to the Russian-Ukraine 2022 conflict; in the January conference, Kenya went as far to echo the sentiments of King stating, "when elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers" (UN 2022).  



Sources: 

King M.L. cc. 1929. Letter from Birmingham Jail. Accessed online via moodle; available at: 

        https://moodle.loyola.edu/pluginfile.php/4178425

UN. cc. 2022 January. UN Conference 2022. Accessed via television. 


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