On Martin Luther King Jr Day yesterday, for the store's social media I wanted to emphasize that MLK message was about waaaay more than "let's play nice & fair"*, which is how he's often portrayed.
MLK was not "nice" about it. He wrote,
"The contemporary tendency in our society is ... to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity.
If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity.""
And, further, I wanted to point out that the Society of St Vincent itself calls for change far more radical than supplying clothes and food. The founder of the Society, Frederic Ozanam, wrote,
"I condemn... the exploitation of all for the good of the few."**
I made this macro and wrote out the quotes. It got far fewer "likes" on our FB than the "you are a good white person because you give to charity" kind of quotes do.
*Re Niceness: An article in the Guardian:
"White people assume niceness is the answer to racial inequality. It's not" by Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility.
**Ozanam quote from "Faith Charity Justice and Civic Learning, the Lessons and Legacy of Frederic Ozanam"
https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1364&context=vhj
MLK was not "nice" about it. He wrote,
"The contemporary tendency in our society is ... to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity.
If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity.""
And, further, I wanted to point out that the Society of St Vincent itself calls for change far more radical than supplying clothes and food. The founder of the Society, Frederic Ozanam, wrote,
"I condemn... the exploitation of all for the good of the few."**
I made this macro and wrote out the quotes. It got far fewer "likes" on our FB than the "you are a good white person because you give to charity" kind of quotes do.
*Re Niceness: An article in the Guardian:
"White people assume niceness is the answer to racial inequality. It's not" by Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility.
**Ozanam quote from "Faith Charity Justice and Civic Learning, the Lessons and Legacy of Frederic Ozanam"
https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1364&context=vhj
No comments:
Post a Comment