Martin Luther King jnr speech at Newcastle University, 1967 “…Racism is a reality i

Martin Luther King jnr speech at Newcastle University, 1967 “…Racism is a reality in many sections of our world today. Racism is still the coloured man’s burden and the white man’s shame. And the world will never rise to its full moral or political or even social maturity until racism is totally eradicated. Racism is exactly what it says. It is a myth of the inferior race; it is the notion that a particular race is worthless and degradated innately and the tragedy of racism is that it is based not on an empirical generalisation but on an ontological affirmation. It is the idea that the very being of a people is inferior.Well, it may be true that morality cannot be legislated but behaviour can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can restrain him from lynching me; and I think that is pretty important also. And so, while the law may not change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men if it is vigorously enforced, and through changes in habits, pretty soon attitudinal changes will take place and even the heart may be changed in theprocess. And so that is a challenge and a great one: for all men of good will to work passionately and unrelentingly to get rid of racial injustice, whether it exists in the United States of America whether it exists in England, or whether it exists in South Africa, wherever it is alive it must be defeated. And somewhere along the way, in this sometimes sick and often terribly schizophrenic world, we have got to come to see that the destiny of white and coloured persons is tied together. In a real sense we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And finally, there can be no separate black path to power and fulfilment that does not intersect white routes and there can be no separate white path to power and fulfilment short of social disaster that does not recognise the necessity of sharing that power with coloured aspirations for freedom and human dignity….” Martin Luther King jnr, speech at Newcastle University, November 13th, 1967. -- source link

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