I found this passage from Storing interesting, but not quite enough to motivate me to write a SLAP about it:
"Is the problem simply that whites have power and blacks do not? Or is there some fundamental and ineradicable injustice in the American system? If the latter, is that injustice essentially the 'racism' now officially acknowledged, or is it a deeper defect, such as a preoccupation with material comfort and a lessening of concern for the 'human values'?" (90)
It seems to me that Storing is insinuating that the racism that the Civil Rights activists were fighting against was actually only a side-effect of a greater problem, thereby implying that struggling against racism is ultimately futile, since they're treating the symptom rather than the root of the disease. Given that racial discrimination survives in various subtler forms today, he may have had a point.
On the other hand, the "American system" will only change when the people who define that system change as a whole, which can't happen unless they are aware of the severity of the issue. And what better way to point out a problem than by highlighting its effects?
What do you think?
Nice analysis -- would have made a pretty good SLAP!
ReplyDeleteBut with whom, exactly, is Storing disagreeing? Read King's later speeches, and you see him steadily widening the circle of injustices he thinks need to be addressed along with racism -- war, economic inequality, etc.