Pseudo-pacifism: Why Priviledged People Love Quoting MLK

Last updated on: October 5, 2014 at 6:26 am by Guest Contributor

Pseudo-pacifism: Why Priviledged People Love Quoting MLK 2014-10-05T06:26:00-05:00 Guest Contributor

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If you’re someone that is outspoken on the issue of race chances are, at one point or another, you’ve had a conversation with a so-called “pacifist” who has cited MLK as a pacifistic example. They then use MLK’s life as a means in which you need to be exactly like. This quickly turns from a back and forth dialogue to a dead-end conversation. To say that the way in which Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Jesus, or Nelson Mandela are the only options in which the marginalized can choose from when fighting against an oppression and for their humanity is ridiculous [1].

This is both an intentional and unintentional means in which silences the “opposition” and it propagates an oppressive mission, that they label as pacifism, but I’ll refer to as “pseudo-pacifism.”

Before I go any further, I want three things to be known:
I am for Martin Luther King Jr. et al.
I am for “intersectionality.”
I am for pacifism.

What I am against is this close minded conflation of pacifism with indifference in which equates doing nothing about injustice with pacifism. This imposes an unrealistic expectation that the marginalized [poor and powerless] must reach the same level of self-actualization in the same exact way these men have. I think the Social Justice League Blog says it best stating, “The reason why Nelson Mandela is so famous is because what he did is fucking incredible. It is simply not right to ask all oppressed people to morph into a cross between Buddha and Jesus in order to live in this world.”

I think many privileged pacifists are remiss because of their failure to mention the tainted American history, that gun control was originally a method used to lessen the irrational fears of whites by disarming oppressed blacks.

So when many so-called “pacifists” speak of pacifism they are not truly speaking of pacifism but rather referring to a shallow thoughtless ideology that is justifying their indifference.

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