Dr. Johnathan Flowers
What's interesting about my use of "violence" here is that, for Freire, the attempts by the oppressed to restrict the oppressor's capacity to oppressed are experienced AS violence because they enact a restriction on a way of life predicated on the oppression of the oppressed.
In modernity, we can see this experience of "violence," or the reality of what Freire is saying, through the vocal complaints about "censorship" online.
Dr. Johnathan Flowers
Pragmatically, it is nigh impossible to engage in any moral transformation when you're constantly under the threat of violence, when you can be killed with impunity. You need to restrain the capacity to do violence before you can enact cultural change to end the causes of violence.
Now, King wasn't alone in this: Paulo Freire had a similar perspective articulated through the "violence" of the oppressed against the oppressor.
Dr. Johnathan Flowers
On my reading, King Jr. is not presenting legislation, or legislating morality, as an ultimate end. Rather, King Jr. recognizes that legislation can be used as a tool to prevent violence through the imposition of sanctions, or the threat of sanctions. It is a tool that can ensure people live long enough to engage in other kinds of transformative acts.
This is, as King Jr. says "pretty important also."
Dr. Johnathan Flowers
I like these kinds of responses because I can say a thing from MLK about the value of legislative solutions:
"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important also. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless, and this is what we often say we have to do in society through legislation."
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