The Two Americas

"An injustice somewhere, is a threat to justice everywhere" (King). Martin Luther King's words were a calling to those oppressed in the United States. In addition, he also calls out the "Guilty Bystander", the individual who does not speak out against injustice when he or she is witnessing it against a fellow human being (Ling 1998). King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) would have argues that fighting the injustices of segregation and racial inequality was a Christian mission, and that committing civil disobedience was upholding good laws by breaking an unjust one. As King stated, "I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all'" (King 1963). While King, the SCLC, and other civil rights groups were pivotal in pressing for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, they were not strong enough in tackling economic issues that hurt racial equality in terms of income.

According to Peter Ling, the areas that King and SCLC failed were creating a big enough coalition to take on economic inequality, as well as having a strategy in building a coalition around this issue. While King did speak out against the Vietnam War and advocating a radical redistribution of wealth, these ideas never really took off; after all, the coalition that King helped build was centered on a decade-long struggle against Southern segregation (Ling 1998). Other organizations lasted longer than the SCLC because they had broader agendas. Take for instance the NAACP; Adam Faiclough argues that the NAACP lasted longer than SCLC because it had long-term goals that tackled more than just the segregation and voting rights questions (Mathisen 730).

The Civil Rights Movement did advance African-Americans to a level never before seen at the political level; racial equality was the most advanced it had ever been. However, this did not change race relations in the South in the decades after King's murder. "White Flight" and the increasing plight of America's ghettos proved there to be a gap between Black America and White America in terms of income.
All of this is proof that society can ban racism in its laws, it cannot ban racism in the hearts of people. While we have progress as a people, Americans have a long way to go in grasping the troubling issue of race in this society. And it certainly has a long way to go regarding alleviating the vast inequality in wealth in the United States. This, above all, formalizes the reality of "two Americas".

References:
1. Mathesin, Robert, R. Critical Issues in American Religious History: A Reader (2nd
Revised Edition). Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006. Print.

2. King Jr., Martin Luther. "Letter from Birmingham Jail". April 16, 1963

3. Ling, Peter. "Martin Luther King's Half-Forgotten Dream". April 1998.
http://web.ebscohost.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ehost/pdf?vid=3&hid=11&sid=3b768fde-bc33-41c1-8352-a55aaa93b6aa%40sessionmgr10