I Have a Dream

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin Luther King Jr. delivering the speech at the 1963 Washington D.C. Civil Rights March.

 

External audio

I Have a Dream, August 28, 1963, Educational Radio Network

"I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in American history.

Beginning with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions of slaves in 1863, King said "one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free". Toward the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme "I have a dream", prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry: "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" In this part of the speech, which most excited the listeners and has now become its most famous, King described his dreams of freedom and equality arising from a land of slavery and hatred. Jon Meacham writes that, "With a single phrase, Martin Luther King Jr. joined Jefferson and Lincoln in the ranks of men who've shaped modern America". The speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century in a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.

Background

View from the Lincoln Memorial toward the Washington Monument on August 28, 1963

 

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was partly intended to demonstrate mass support for the civil rights legislation proposed by President Kennedy in June. Martin Luther King and other leaders therefore agreed to keep their speeches calm, also, to avoid provoking the civil disobedience which had become the hallmark of the Civil Rights Movement. King originally designed his speech as a homage to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, timed to correspond with the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Speech title and the writing process

King had been preaching about dreams since 1960, when he gave a speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called "The Negro and the American Dream". This speech discusses the gap between the American dream and reality, saying that overt white supremacists have violated the dream, and that "our federal government has also scarred the dream through its apathy and hypocrisy, its betrayal of the cause of justice". King suggests that "It may well be that the Negro is God's instrument to save the soul of America." In 1961, he spoke of the Civil Rights Movement and student activists' "dream" of equality—"the American Dream ... a dream as yet unfulfilled"—in several national speeches and statements, and took "the dream" as the centerpiece for these speeches.

On November 27, 1962, King gave a speech at Booker T. Washington High School in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. That speech was longer than the version which he would eventually deliver from the Lincoln Memorial. And while parts of the text had been moved around, large portions were identical, including the "I have a dream" refrain. After being rediscovered, the restored and digitized recording of the 1962 speech was presented to the public by the English department of North Carolina State University.

King had also delivered a "dream" speech in Detroit, in June 1963, when he marched on Woodward Avenue with Walter Reuther and the Reverend C. L. Franklin, and had rehearsed other parts. Mahalia Jackson, who sang "How I Got Over", just before the speech in Washington, knew about King's Detroit speech.

The March on Washington Speech, known as "I Have a Dream Speech", has been shown to have had several versions, written at several different times. It has no single version draft, but is an amalgamation of several drafts, and was originally called "Normalcy, Never Again". Little of this, and another "Normalcy Speech", ended up in the final draft. A draft of "Normalcy, Never Again" is housed in the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection of the Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center and Morehouse College. The focus on "I have a dream" comes through the speech's delivery. Toward the end of its delivery, noted African American gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted to King from the crowd, "Tell them about the dream, Martin." King departed from his prepared remarks and started "preaching" improvisationally, punctuating his points with "I have a dream." 

The speech was drafted with the assistance of Stanley Levison and Clarence Benjamin Jones in Riverdale, New York City. Jones has said that "the logistical preparations for the march were so burdensome that the speech was not a priority for us" and that, "on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 27, [12 hours before the march] Martin still didn't know what he was going to say".

Leading up to the speech's rendition at the Great March on Washington, King had delivered its "I have a dream" refrains in his speech before 25,000 people in Detroit's Cobo Hall immediately after the 125,000-strong Great Walk to Freedom in Detroit, June 23, 1963. After the Washington, D.C. March, a recording of King's Cobo Hall speech was released by Detroit's Gordy Records as an LP entitled "The Great March To Freedom".

Speech

Widely hailed as a masterpiece of rhetoric, King's speech invokes pivotal documents in American history, including the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the United States Constitution. Early in his speech, King alludes to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address by saying "Five score years ago ..." In reference to the abolition of slavery articulated in the Emancipation Proclamation, King says: "It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity." Anaphora (i.e., the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of sentences) is employed throughout the speech. Early in his speech, King urges his audience to seize the moment; "Now is the time" is repeated three times in the sixth paragraph. The most widely cited example of anaphora is found in the often quoted phrase "I have a dream", which is repeated eight times as King paints a picture of an integrated and unified America for his audience. Other occasions include "One hundred years later", "We can never be satisfied", "With this faith", "Let freedom ring", and "free at last". King was the sixteenth out of eighteen people to speak that day, according to the official program.

I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream – one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed, "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream ...

—Martin Luther King Jr. (1963)

 

Among the most quoted lines of the speech are "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"

According to U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations."

The ideas in the speech reflect King's social experiences of ethnocentric abuse, the mistreatment and exploitation of blacks. The speech draws upon appeals to America's myths as a nation founded to provide freedom and justice to all people, and then reinforces and transcends those secular mythologies by placing them within a spiritual context by arguing that racial justice is also in accord with God's will. Thus, the rhetoric of the speech provides redemption to America for its racial sins. King describes the promises made by America as a "promissory note" on which America has defaulted. He says that "America has given the Negro people a bad check", but that "we've come to cash this check" by marching in Washington, D.C.

Similarities and allusions

King's speech used words and ideas from his own speeches and other texts. For years, he had spoken about dreams, quoted from Samuel Francis Smith's popular patriotic hymn "America" ("My Country, 'Tis of Thee"), and referred extensively to the Bible. The idea of constitutional rights as an "unfulfilled promise" was suggested by Clarence Jones.

The final passage from King's speech closely resembles Archibald Carey Jr.'s address to the 1952 Republican National Convention: both speeches end with a recitation of the first verse of "America", and the speeches share the name of one of several mountains from which both exhort "let freedom ring".

King also is said to have used portions of Prathia Hall's speech at the site of a burned-down African American church in Terrell County, Georgia, in September 1962, in which she used the repeated phrase "I have a dream". The church burned down after it was used for voter registration meetings.

The speech also alludes to Psalm 30:5 in the second stanza of the speech. Additionally, King quotes from Isaiah 40:4–5 ("I have a dream that every valley shall be exalted ...") and Amos 5:24 ("But let justice roll down like water ..."). He also alludes to the opening lines of Shakespeare's Richard III ("Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer ...") when he remarks that "this sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn ..."

Rhetoric

King at the Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C

 

The "I Have a Dream" speech can be dissected by using three rhetorical lenses: voice merging, prophetic voice, and dynamic spectacle. Voice merging is the combining of one's own voice with religious predecessors. Prophetic voice is using rhetoric to speak for a population. A dynamic spectacle has origins from the Aristotelian definition as "a weak hybrid form of drama, a theatrical concoction that relied upon external factors (shock, sensation, and passionate release) such as televised rituals of conflict and social control."

Voice merging is a common technique used amongst African American preachers. It combines the voices of previous preachers and excerpts from scriptures along with their own unique thoughts to create a unique voice. King uses voice merging in his peroration when he references the secular hymn "America." 

The rhetoric of King's speech can be compared to the rhetoric of Old Testament prophets. During King's speech, he speaks with urgency and crisis giving him a prophetic voice. The prophetic voice must "restore a sense of duty and virtue amidst the decay of venality." An evident example is when King declares that, "now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children." 

Why King's speech was powerful is debated, but essentially, it came at a point of many factors combining at a key cultural turning point. Executive speechwriter Anthony Trendl writes, "The right man delivered the right words to the right people in the right place at the right time."

"Given the context of drama and tension in which it was situated", King's speech can be classified as a dynamic spectacle. A dynamic spectacle is dependent on the situation in which it is used. It can be considered a dynamic spectacle because it happened at the correct time and place: during the Civil Rights Movement and the March on Washington.

Responses

The speech was lauded in the days after the event, and was widely considered the high point of the March by contemporary observers. James Reston, writing for The New York Times, said that "Dr. King touched all the themes of the day, only better than anybody else. He was full of the symbolism of Lincoln and Gandhi, and the cadences of the Bible. He was both militant and sad, and he sent the crowd away feeling that the long journey had been worthwhile." Reston also noted that the event "was better covered by television and the press than any event here since President Kennedy's inauguration", and opined that "it will be a long time before [Washington] forgets the melodious and melancholy voice of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. crying out his dreams to the multitude." An article in The Boston Globe by Mary McGrory reported that King's speech "caught the mood" and "moved the crowd" of the day "as no other" speaker in the event. Marquis Childs of The Washington Post wrote that King's speech "rose above mere oratory". An article in the Los Angeles Times commented that the "matchless eloquence" displayed by King—"a supreme orator" of "a type so rare as almost to be forgotten in our age"—put to shame the advocates of segregation by inspiring the "conscience of America" with the justice of the civil-rights cause.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which viewed King and his allies for racial justice as subversive, also noticed the speech. This provoked the organization to expand their COINTELPRO operation against the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and to target King specifically as a major enemy of the United States. Two days after King delivered "I Have a Dream", Agent William C. Sullivan, the head of COINTELPRO, wrote a memo about King's growing influence:

In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech yesterday he stands head and shoulders above all other Negro leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses of Negroes. We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.

The speech was a success for the Kennedy administration and for the liberal civil rights coalition that had planned it. It was considered a "triumph of managed protest", and not one arrest relating to the demonstration occurred. Kennedy had watched King's speech on television and been very impressed. Afterwards, March leaders accepted an invitation to the White House to meet with President Kennedy. Kennedy felt the March bolstered the chances for his civil rights bill.

Meanwhile, some of the more radical Black leaders who were present condemned the speech (along with the rest of the march) as too compromising. Malcolm X later wrote in his autobiography: "Who ever heard of angry revolutionaries swinging their bare feet together with their oppressor in lily pad pools, with gospels and guitars and 'I have a dream' speeches?"

Legacy

The location on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial from which King delivered the speech is commemorated with this inscription

 

The March on Washington put pressure on the Kennedy administration to advance its civil rights legislation in Congress. The diaries of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., published posthumously in 2007, suggest that President Kennedy was concerned that if the march failed to attract large numbers of demonstrators, it might undermine his civil rights efforts.

In the wake of the speech and march, King was named Man of the Year by TIME magazine for 1963, and in 1964, he was the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The full speech did not appear in writing until August 1983, some 15 years after King's death, when a transcript was published in The Washington Post.

In 1990, the Australian alternative comedy rock band Doug Anthony All Stars released an album called Icon. One song from Icon, "Shang-a-lang", sampled the end of the speech. 

In 1992, the band Moodswings, incorporated excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in their song "Spiritual High, Part III" on the album Moodfood. 

In 2002, the Library of Congress honored the speech by adding it to the United States National Recording Registry. In 2003, the National Park Service dedicated an inscribed marble pedestal to commemorate the location of King's speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was dedicated in 2011. The centerpiece for the memorial is based on a line from King's "I Have A Dream" speech: "Out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope." A 30 feet (9.1 m)-high relief of King named the "Stone of Hope" stands past two other pieces of granite that symbolize the "mountain of despair."

In August 2012, the Dutch DJ and producer Bakermat released the single "One Day", which consists of an integrated sample of the speech. The re-release in 2014 became a hit in several European countries.

On August 26, 2013, UK's BBC Radio 4 broadcast "God's Trombone", in which Gary Younge looked behind the scenes of the speech and explored "what made it both timely and timeless".

On August 28, 2013, thousands gathered on the mall in Washington D.C. where King made his historic speech to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the occasion. In attendance were former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and incumbent President Barack Obama, who addressed the crowd and spoke on the significance of the event. Many of King's family were in attendance.

On October 11, 2015, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an exclusive report about Stone Mountain officials considering installation of a new "Freedom Bell" honoring King and citing the speech's reference to the mountain "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia." Design details and a timeline for its installation remain to be determined. The article mentioned inspiration for the proposed monument came from a bell-ringing ceremony held in 2013 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of King's speech. 

On April 20, 2016, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that the U.S. $5 bill, which has featured the Lincoln Memorial on its back, would undergo a redesign prior to 2020. Lew said that a portrait of Lincoln would remain on the front of the bill, but the back would be redesigned to depict various historical events that have occurred at the memorial, including an image from King's speech.

Ava DuVernay was commissioned by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture to create a film which debuted at the museum's opening on September 24, 2016. This film, August 28: A Day in the Life of a People (2016), tells of six significant events in African-American history that happened on the same date, August 28. Events depicted include (among others) the speech.

In October 2016, Science Friday in a segment on its crowd sourced update to the Voyager Golden Record included the speech.

Copyright dispute

Because King's speech was broadcast to a large radio and television audience, there was controversy about its copyright status. If the performance of the speech constituted "general publication", it would have entered the public domain due to King's failure to register the speech with the Register of Copyrights. However, if the performance only constituted "limited publication", King retained common law copyright. This led to a lawsuit, Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. v. CBS, Inc., which established that the King estate does hold copyright over the speech and had standing to sue; the parties then settled. Unlicensed use of the speech or a part of it can still be lawful in some circumstances, especially in jurisdictions under doctrines such as fair use or fair dealing. Under the applicable copyright laws, the speech will remain under copyright in the United States until 70 years after King's death, through 2038.

Original copy of the speech

As King waved goodbye to the audience, he handed George Raveling the original typewritten "I Have a Dream" speech. Raveling, a star Villanova Wildcats college basketball player, had volunteered as a security guard for the event and was on the podium with King at that moment. In 2013, Raveling still had custody of the original copy, for which he had been offered $3,000,000, but he has said he does not intend to sell it.

Hate group

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Celtic cross flag, Nazi flag, Confederate battle flag and SS flag

 

Examples of hate group symbols:

1. the white nationalist Celtic cross
2. the Odal rune
3. the Aryan fist
4. the Iron Cross with the Nazi Hakenkreuz
5. the SS Sig runes
6. the SS Totenkopf

A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other designated sector of society. According to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a hate group's "primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization."

Monitoring

In the US, The FBI does not publish a list of hate groups, and it also says that "[I]nvestigations are only conducted when a threat or advocacy of force is made; when the group has the apparent ability to carry out the proclaimed act; and when the act would constitute a potential violation of federal law". The FBI maintains statistics on hate crimes.

Two private American non-profit organizations that monitor intolerance and hate groups are the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). They maintain lists of what they deem to be hate groups, supremacist groups and anti-Semitic, anti-government or extremist groups that have committed hate crimes. The SPLC's definition of a "hate group" includes any group with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people—particularly when the characteristics being maligned are immutable. However, at least for the SPLC, inclusion of a group in the list "does not imply a group advocates or engages in violence or other criminal activity." According to USA Today, their list ranges from "white supremacists to black nationalists, neo-Nazis to neo-Confederates."

According to the SPLC, from 2000 to 2008, hate group activity saw a 50 percent increase in the US, with a total of 926 active groups. In 2019, the organization's report showed a total of 1,020 hate groups, the highest number in 20 years, and a 7% increase from 2017 to 2018. The previous high was 1,018 in 2011, and the recent low point was 2014, when the list included 784 groups. A rise in white nationalist groups from 100 in 2017 to 148 in 2018 was the most significant increase in the 2019 report.

Since 2010 the term alt-right, short for "alternative right," has come into usage. This broad term includes a range of people who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of forms of conservatism that may embrace implicit or explicit racism or white supremacy. The alt-right is described as being "a weird mix of old-school neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, anti-globalists, and young right-wing internet trolls—all united in the belief that white male identity is under attack by multicultural, "politically correct" forces."

Violence and hate crimes

Four categories associated with hate groups' propensity for violence are: organizational capacity, organizational constituency, strategic connectivity, and structural arrangement. The larger an extremist group is and the longer it has existed, the more prone the group is to engage in violence. Regionally, hate groups based in the West and Northeast are more likely to engage in violence than those based in the South. If a group has a charismatic leader, it is more likely to be violent. Groups that share a conflict-based relationship with another group are more likely to engage in extreme violence. The amount of ideological literature a group publishes is linked to significant decreases in a group's violent behavior, with more literature linked to lower levels of violence. 

Violent hate groups tend to commit "downward crimes," which involve the persecution of a minority group by a more powerful majority. By contrast, acts of terrorism are typically "upward crimes," with a low-power minority perpetrator targeting a more prominent majority group.

The California Association for Human Relations Organizations (CAHRO) asserts that hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and White Aryan Resistance (WAR) preach violence against racial, religious, sexual and other minorities in the United States. Joseph E. Agne argues that hate-motivated violence is a result of the successes of the civil rights movement, and he asserts that the KKK has resurfaced and that new hate groups have formed. Agne argues that it is a mistake to underestimate the strength of the hate-violence movement, its apologists and its silent partners.

In the US, crimes that "manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including the crimes of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter; forcible rape; robbery; aggravated assault; burglary; larceny-theft; motor vehicle theft; arson; simple assault; intimidation; and destruction, damage or vandalism of property", directed at the government, an individual, a business, or institution, involving hate groups and hate crimes, may be investigated as acts of domestic terrorism.

Hate speech

Counter-terrorism expert Ehud Sprinzak argues that verbal violence is "the use of extreme language against an individual or a group that either implies a direct threat that physical force will be used against them, or is seen as an indirect call for others to use it." Sprinzak argues that verbal violence is often a substitute for real violence, and that the verbalization of hate has the potential to incite people who are incapable of distinguishing between real and verbal violence to engage in actual violence.

People tend to judge the offensiveness of hate speech on a gradient depending on how public the speech is and what group it targets. Although people's opinions of hate speech are complex, they typically consider public speech targeting ethnic minorities to be the most offensive.

Historian Daniel Goldhagen, discussing antisemitic hate groups, argues that we should view verbal violence as "an assault in its own right, having been intended to produce profound damage—emotional, psychological, and social—to the dignity and honor of the Jews. The wounds that people suffer by ... such vituperation ... can be as bad as ... [a] beating."

In the mid-1990s, the popularity of the Internet brought new international exposure to many organizations, including groups with beliefs such as white supremacy, neo-Nazism, homophobia, Holocaust denial and Islamophobia. Several white supremacist groups have founded websites dedicated to attacking their perceived enemies. In 1996, the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles asked Internet access providers to adopt a code of ethics that would prevent extremists from publishing their ideas online. In 1996, the European Commission formed the Consultative Commission on Racism and Xenophobia (CRAX), a pan-European group which was tasked to "investigate and, using legal means, stamp out the current wave of racism on the Internet."

Religious hate groups

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has designated several Christian groups as hate groups, including the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, Abiding Truth Ministries, American Vision, the Chalcedon Foundation, the Dove World Outreach Center, the Traditional Values Coalition and Westboro Baptist Church. Some conservatives have criticized the SPLC for its inclusion of certain Christian groups, such as the Family Research Council, on its list.

The SPLC classes the Nation of Islam (NOI) as a hate group under the black separatist category. The NOI preaches that a black scientist named Yakub created the white race, a "race of devils", on the Greek island of Patmos. The NOI, unlike traditional Muslim groups, does not accept white members and it is not regarded as a legitimate branch of Islam by mainstream Muslims.

The white supremacist Creativity Movement (formerly the World Church of the Creator), led by Matthew F. Hale, is associated with violence and bigotry. Aryan Nations is another religiously-based white supremacist hate group.

Westboro Baptist Church is considered a hate group because of its provocative stance against homosexuality and the United States, and it has been condemned by many mainstream gay rights opponents as well as by gay rights supporters.

Internet hate groups

Traditionally, hate groups recruited members and spread extremist messages by word of mouth, or through the distribution of flyers and pamphlets. In contrast, the Internet allows hate group members from all over the world to engage in real-time conversations. The Internet has been a boon for hate groups in terms of promotion, recruitment and expansion of their base to include younger audiences. An Internet hate group does not have to be part of a traditional faction such as the Ku Klux Klan.

While many hate sites are explicitly antagonistic or violent, others may appear patriotic or benign, and this façade may contribute to the appeal of the groups. Hate group websites work towards the following goals: to educate group members and the public, to encourage participation, to claim a divine calling and privilege, and to accuse out-groups (e.g. the government or the media). Groups that work effectively towards these goals via an online presence tend to strengthen their sense of identity, decrease the threat levels from out-groups, and recruit more new members.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), in its 2009 iReport, identified more than 10,000 problematic hate and terrorist websites and other Internet postings. The report includes hate websites, social networks, blogs, newsgroups, YouTube and other video sites. The findings illustrate that as the Internet continues to grow, extremists find new ways to seek validation of their hateful agendas and recruit members. 

Creators of hate pages and groups on Facebook choose their target, set up their page or group, and then recruit members. Anyone can create a Facebook group and invite followers to post comments, add pictures and participate in discussion boards. A Facebook page is similar, with the exception that one must "like" the page in order to become a member. Because of the ease of creating and joining such groups, many so-called hate groups exist only in cyberspace. United Patriots Front, an internet-based Australian far-right anti-immigration and neo-nazi organisation formed in 2015 has been described as a hate group.

Psychology of hate groups

Hateful intergroup conflict may be motivated by "in-group love," a desire to positively contribute to the group to which one belongs, or "out-group hate," a desire to injure a foreign group. Both individuals and groups are more motivated by "in-group love" than "out-group hate," even though both motivations might advance a group's status. This preference is especially salient when a group is not situated in a competitive position against another. This partiality towards cooperative behavior suggests that intergroup conflict might decline if group members devoted more energy to positive in-group improvements than to out-group competition. Groups formed around a set of moral codes are more likely than non-morality-based groups to exhibit "out-group hate" as a response to their especially strong sense of "in-group love."

Intergroup threat occurs when one group's interests threaten another group's goals and well-being. Intergroup threat theories provide a framework for intergroup biases and aggression.

One type of intergroup threat theory, realistic group conflict theory, addresses competition between groups by positing that when two groups are competing for limited resources, one group's potential success is at odds with the other's interests, which leads to negative out-group attitudes. If groups have the same goal, their interactions will be positive, but opposing goals will worsen intergroup relations. Intergroup conflict may increase in-group unity, leading to a larger disparity and more conflict between groups. 

Symbolic threat theory proposes that intergroup bias and conflict result from conflicting ideals, not from perceived competition or opposing goals. Biases based on symbolic threat tend to be stronger predictors of practical behavior towards out-groups than biases based on realistic threat.

Realistic group conflict theory and symbolic threat theory are, in some cases, compatible. Integrated-threat theory recognizes that conflict can arise from a combination of intergroup dynamics and classifies threats into four types: realistic threat, symbolic threat, intergroup anxiety, and negative stereotypes. Intergroup threat theories provide a framework for intergroup biases and aggression. Intergroup anxiety refers to a felt uneasiness around members of other groups, which is predictive of biased attitudes and behaviors. Negative stereotypes are also correlated with these behaviors, causing threat based on negative expectations about an out-group.

According to the 7-stage hate model, a hate group, if unimpeded, passes through seven successive stages. In the first four stages, hate groups vocalize their beliefs and in the last three stages, they act on their beliefs. Factors that contribute to a group's likelihood to act include the vulnerability of its members as well as its reliance on symbols and mythologies. This model points to a transition period that exists between verbal violence and acting out that violence, separating hardcore haters from rhetorical haters. Thus, hate speech is seen as a prerequisite of hate crimes, and as a condition of their possibility. 

Hate group intervention is most possible if a group has not yet passed from the speech to the action stage, and interventions on immature hate groups are more effective than those that are firmly established. Intervention and rehabilitation is most effective when the one investigating a hate group can identify and deconstruct personal insecurities of group members, which in turn contribute to the weakness of the group. Perhaps most critical to combating group hate is to prevent the recruitment of new members by supporting those who are most susceptible, especially children and youth, in developing a positive self-esteem and a humanized understanding of out-groups.

Satyagraha

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Satyaagraha (Sanskrit: सत्याग्रह; satya: "truth", āgraha: "insistence" or "holding firmly to") or holding onto truth or truth force – is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. It is not the same as passive resistance, and advocates resisting non-violently over using violence, but at the same time advocates using violence over cowering in fear (while pretending to be a satyagrahi). Resisting non-violently, without feeling fear, is thus considered the summit of bravery. Someone who practices satyagraha is a satyagrahi.

The term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948). He deployed satyagraha in the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa for Indian rights. Satyagraha theory influenced Martin Luther King Jr.'s and James Bevel's campaigns during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and many other social justice and similar movements.

Towards satyagraha, Gandhi said in 1939 as the Indian Independence struggle was peaking: "For I cannot in any case tolerate cowardice. Let no one say when I am gone that I taught the people to be cowards. I would far rather that you died bravely dealing a blow and receiving a blow than died in abject terror. Fleeing from battle is cowardice and unworthy of a warrior. Cowardice is worse than violence because cowards can never be non-violent."

Origin and meaning of name

Gandhi leading the 1930 famous Salt March, a notable example of satyagraha.

 

The term originated in a competition in the news-sheet Indian Opinion in South Africa in 1906. Mr. Maganlal Gandhi, grandson of an uncle of Mahatma Gandhi, came up with the word "Sadagraha" and won the prize. Subsequently, to make it clearer, Gandhi changed it to Satyagraha. "Satyagraha" is a tatpuruṣa compound of the Sanskrit words satya (meaning "truth") and āgraha ("polite insistence", or "holding firmly to"). Satya is derived from the word “sat”, which means “being”. Nothing is or exists in reality except Truth. In the context of satyagraha, Truth therefore includes a) Truth in speech, as opposed to falsehood, b) what is real, as opposed to nonexistent (asat) and c) good as opposed to evil, or bad. This was critical to Gandhi’s understanding of and faith in nonviolence: "The world rests upon the bedrock of satya or truth. Asatya, meaning untruth, also means nonexistent, and satya or truth also means that which is. If untruth does not so much as exist, its victory is out of the question. And truth being that which is, can never be destroyed. This is the doctrine of satyagraha in a nutshell."  For Gandhi, satyagraha went far beyond mere "passive resistance" and became strength in practising non-violent methods. In his words:

Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase “passive resistance”, in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing we often avoided it and used instead the word “satyagraha” itself or some other equivalent English phrase.

In September 1935, a letter to P. K. Rao, Servants of India Society, Gandhi disputed the proposition that his idea of Civil Disobedience was adapted from the writings of Henry David Thoreau especially Civil Disobedience of 1849.

The statement that I had derived my idea of civil disobedience from the writings of Thoreau is wrong. The resistance to authority in South Africa was well advanced before I got the essay of Thoreau on civil disobedience. But the movement was then known as passive resistance. As it was incomplete, I had coined the word satyagraha for the Gujarati readers. When I saw the title of Thoreau’s great essay, I began the use of his phrase to explain our struggle to the English readers. But I found that even civil disobedience failed to convey the full meaning of the struggle. I therefore adopted the phrase civil resistance. Non-violence was always an integral part of our struggle."

Gandhi described it as follows:

Its root meaning is holding on to truth, hence truth-force. I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the application of satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and compassion. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself.

Contrast to "passive resistance"

Gandhi distinguished between satyagraha and passive resistance in the following letter:

I have drawn the distinction between passive resistance as understood and practised in the West and satyagraha before I had evolved the doctrine of the latter to its full logical and spiritual extent. I often used “passive resistance” and “satyagraha” as synonymous terms: but as the doctrine of satyagraha developed, the expression “passive resistance” ceases even to be synonymous, as passive resistance has admitted of violence as in the case of the suffragettes and has been universally acknowledged to be a weapon of the weak. Moreover, passive resistance does not necessarily involve complete adherence to truth under every circumstance. Therefore it is different from satyagraha in three essentials: Satyagraha is a weapon of the strong; it admits of no violence under any circumstance whatsoever; and it ever insists upon truth.

Ahimsa and satyagraha

It is important to note the intrinsic connection between ahimsa and satyagraha. Satyagraha is sometimes used to refer to the whole principle of nonviolence, where it is essentially the same as ahimsa, and sometimes used in a “marked” meaning to refer specifically to direct action that is largely obstructive, for example in the form of civil disobedience.

Gandhi says:

It is perhaps clear from the foregoing, that without ahinsa it is not possible to seek and find Truth. Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them. They are like the two sides of a coin, or rather of a smooth unstamped metallic disk. Nevertheless, ahimsa is the means; Truth is the end. Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa is our supreme duty.

Defining success

Assessing the extent to which Gandhi's ideas of satyagraha were or were not successful in the Indian independence struggle is a complex task. Judith Brown has suggested that "this is a political strategy and technique which, for its outcomes, depends of historical specificities." The view taken by Gandhi differs from the idea that the goal in any conflict is necessarily to defeat the opponent or frustrate the opponent’s objectives, or to meet one’s own objectives despite the efforts of the opponent to obstruct these. In satyagraha, by contrast, “The Satyagrahi’s object is to convert, not to coerce, the wrong-doer.” The opponent must be converted, at least as far as to stop obstructing the just end, for this cooperation to take place. There are cases, to be sure, when an opponent, e.g. a dictator, has to be unseated and one cannot wait to convert him. The satyagrahi would count this a partial success.

Means and ends

The theory of satyagraha sees means and ends as inseparable. The means used to obtain an end are wrapped up in and attached to that end. Therefore, it is contradictory to try to use unjust means to obtain justice or to try to use violence to obtain peace. As Gandhi wrote: “They say, 'means are, after all, means'. I would say, 'means are, after all, everything'. As the means so the end...”

Gandhi used an example to explain this:

If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it; if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay for it; and if I want a gift, I shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means I employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation.

Gandhi rejected the idea that injustice should, or even could, be fought against “by any means necessary” – if you use violent, coercive, unjust means, whatever ends you produce will necessarily embed that injustice. To those who preached violence and called nonviolent actionists cowards, he replied: “I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence....I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour....But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.” However, in the same book Gandhi makes the opposite argument. He admits that even though his book argues that machinery is bad, it was produced by machinery, which he says can do nothing good. Thus, he says, "sometimes poison is used to kill poison" and for that reason as long as machinery is viewed as bad it can be used to undo itself.

Satyagraha versus duragraha

The essence of satyagraha is that it seeks to eliminate antagonisms without harming the antagonists themselves, as opposed to violent resistance, which is meant to cause harm to the antagonist. A satyagrahi therefore does not seek to end or destroy the relationship with the antagonist, but instead seeks to transform or “purify” it to a higher level. A euphemism sometimes used for satyagraha is that it is a “silent force” or a “soul force” (a term also used by Martin Luther King Jr. during his famous “I Have a Dream” speech). It arms the individual with moral power rather than physical power. Satyagraha is also termed a “universal force,” as it essentially “makes no distinction between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe.”

Gandhi contrasted satyagraha (holding on to truth) with “duragraha” (holding on by force), as in protest meant more to harass than enlighten opponents. He wrote: “There must be no impatience, no barbarity, no insolence, no undue pressure. If we want to cultivate a true spirit of democracy, we cannot afford to be intolerant. Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.”

Civil disobedience and non-cooperation as practised under satyagraha are based on the “law of suffering”, a doctrine that the endurance of suffering is a means to an end. This end usually implies a moral upliftment or progress of an individual or society. Therefore, the non-cooperation of satyagraha is in fact a means to secure the cooperation of the opponent that is consistent with truth and justice.

Satyagraha

When using satyagraha in a large-scale political conflict involving civil disobedience, Gandhi believed that the satyagrahis must undergo training to ensure discipline. He wrote that it is “only when people have proved their active loyalty by obeying the many laws of the State that they acquire the right of Civil Disobedience.”

He therefore made part of the discipline that satyagrahis:

1. Appreciate the other laws of the State and obey them voluntarily
2. Tolerate these laws, even when they are inconvenient
3. Be willing to undergo suffering, loss of property, and to endure the suffering that might be inflicted on family and friends

This obedience has to be not merely grudging, but extraordinary:

...an honest, respectable man will not suddenly take to stealing whether there is a law against stealing or not, but this very man will not feel any remorse for failure to observe the rule about carrying headlights on bicycles after dark.... But he would observe any obligatory rule of this kind, if only to escape the inconvenience of facing a prosecution for a breach of the rule. Such compliance is not, however, the willing and spontaneous obedience that is required of a Satyagrahi.

Principles

Gandhi envisioned satyagraha as not only a tactic to be used in acute political struggle, but as a universal solvent for injustice and harm. 

He founded the Sabarmati Ashram to teach satyagraha. He asked satyagrahis to follow the following principles (Yamas described in Yoga Sutra):

1. Nonviolence (ahimsa)
2. Truth – this includes honesty, but goes beyond it to mean living fully in accord with and in devotion to that which is true
3. Not stealing
4. Non-possession (not the same as poverty)
5. Body-labour or bread-labour
6. Control of desires (gluttony)
7. Fearlessness
8. Equal respect for all religions
9. Economic strategy such as boycott of imported goods (swadeshi)

On another occasion, he listed these rules as “essential for every Satyagrahi in India”:

1. Must have a living faith in God
2. Must be leading a chaste life, and be willing to die or lose all his possessions
3. Must be a habitual khadi weaver and spinner
4. Must abstain from alcohol and other intoxicants

Rules for satyagraha campaigns

Gandhi proposed a series of rules for satyagrahis to follow in a resistance campaign:

1. Harbour no anger.
2. Suffer the anger of the opponent.
3. Never retaliate to assaults or punishment; but do not submit, out of fear of punishment or assault, to an order given in anger.
4. Voluntarily submit to arrest or confiscation of your own property.
5. If you are a trustee of property, defend that property (non-violently) from confiscation with your life.
6. Do not curse or swear.
7. Do not insult the opponent.
8. Neither salute nor insult the flag of your opponent or your opponent’s leaders.
9. If anyone attempts to insult or assault your opponent, defend your opponent (non-violently) with your life.
10. As a prisoner, behave courteously and obey prison regulations (except any that are contrary to self-respect).
11. As a prisoner, do not ask for special favourable treatment.
12. As a prisoner, do not fast in an attempt to gain conveniences whose deprivation does not involve any injury to your self-respect.
13. Joyfully obey the orders of the leaders of the civil disobedience action.

American Civil Rights Movement

Satyagraha theory also influenced many other movements of nonviolence and civil resistance. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his autobiography about Gandhi's influence on his developing ideas regarding the Civil Rights Movement in the United States:

Like most people, I had heard of Gandhi, but I had never studied him seriously. As I read I became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. I was particularly moved by his Salt March to the Sea and his numerous fasts. The whole concept of Satyagraha (Satya is truth which equals love, and agraha is force; Satyagraha, therefore, means truth force or love force) was profoundly significant to me. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform. ... It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking.

Satyagraha in relation to genocide

In view of the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany, Gandhi offered satyagraha as a method of combating oppression and genocide, stating:

If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy [...] the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror.

When Gandhi was criticized for these statements, he responded in another article entitled “Some Questions Answered”:

Friends have sent me two newspaper cuttings criticizing my appeal to the Jews. The two critics suggest that in presenting non-violence to the Jews as a remedy against the wrong done to them, I have suggested nothing new... What I have pleaded for is renunciation of violence of the heart and consequent active exercise of the force generated by the great renunciation.”

In a similar vein, anticipating a possible attack on India by Japan during World War II, Gandhi recommended satyagraha as a means of national defense (what is now sometimes called "Civilian Based Defense (CBD) or "social defence"):

...there should be unadulterated non-violent non-cooperation, and if the whole of India responded and unanimously offered it, I should show that, without shedding a single drop of blood, Japanese arms – or any combination of arms – can be sterilized. That involves the determination of India not to give quarter on any point whatsoever and to be ready to risk loss of several million lives. But I would consider that cost very cheap and victory won at that cost glorious. That India may not be ready to pay that price may be true. I hope it is not true, but some such price must be paid by any country that wants to retain its independence. After all, the sacrifice made by the Russians and the Chinese is enormous, and they are ready to risk all. The same could be said of the other countries also, whether aggressors or defenders. The cost is enormous. Therefore, in the non-violent technique I am asking India to risk no more than other countries are risking and which India would have to risk even if she offered armed resistance.