"One of the great accomplishments of Martin Luther King (and apologies for invoking him, since it has become so banal) is that he managed to bring prejudiced people to his side. Attitudes in the South toward blacks and their place in society were changed by viewing well-dressed men and women attacked by dogs and blasted by fire hoses. The starry-eyed might claim that prejudice was thereby eliminated, and in many cases that was surely true. But a more modest view is that many people, still maintaining antipathy toward black Americans, found the visuals to be repellent. They didn’t like King and his supporters, but they disliked what they saw even more. Such thinking, that humans frequently have to select between two bad choices, is part and parcel of the right-wing view of humanity and seems a far more realistic explanation of human behavior than the idea that prejudice was or can be somehow totally or even largely expunged from a culture grounded in it."
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Activists from the United StatesSpiritual teachersCivil rights activistsAnti-apartheid activistsAnti-racism activists
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Michael Malice, The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics (2019)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
pastor, preacher, civil rights advocate
1929 – 1968 · United States
523 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Martin Luther King Jr. →
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