In Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” I found myself interested in the quote, “…groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.” If we look back on history, that has seemed to be true. Perhaps a certain individual begins a movement, such as Adolf Hitler in Germany, and has awful visions for cruelty, but then once such a person gets followers, his visions get worse because he has support and others who expand upon his current ideas for oppression. At that point, the group is no longer his, it is instead an independent entity, with a mind of its own, and all members contribute to make this group, such as the Nazis, a monster. At this point I do think that the group becomes worse than the individual. It’s easier for people to act out when they are not alone, and especially when they are angry. People fuel each other’s fire.
Mr. King also mentions that from the time the African Americans were children, a sense of inferiority was instilled in them, probably even subconsciously. This is a direct result of the segregation he is talking about. The term “separate but equal” is the biggest load of nonsense ever put forth as a justification for a law, after all, there is no such thing. With separation comes inequality, and King saw that, no matter how much people attempted to assert its morality, in truth it was just another means of holding people down. Segregation is one of the most embarrassing aspects of our nation’s history, in part because it took so long to get rid of. When one considers that America has often taken the role of international savior to other countries, fighting against communism, genocide, and racism in Germany, it seems that we never applied our own philosophy from international relations to our homeland. I hope that our nation has since become more enlightened.
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