Response to Why We Can't Wait

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Why We Can’t Wait touches on several points that authors we have read throughout this semester have brought up. The way King talks about life of African Americans in the United States in 1963 almost mimics the way Ta-Nehisi Coates and Melissa Harris-Perry describe discrimination against African Americans in recent years. For example, King explores, “The pen of the Great Emancipator had moved the Negro into the sunlight of physical freedom, butactaul conditions had left him behind in the shadow of political, psychological, social, economic and intellectual bondage” (pg 12). He is saying that physically African Americans are free but they are truly not because they’re minds are still enslaved. This relates to Coates when he says in his book, Between the World and Me, that African Americans are not truly free until they learn to think like Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Nanny, Cudjoe, and Malcolm X so their bodies can be truly their own. In addition to that, King talks about the unequal opportunities for African American in the education system and in the workforce. This relates to Harris-Perry’s article, “What It’s Like to Be Black on Campus Now”, because in her article she explains how African Americans are still being discriminated against in the education systems and workforce. The hard part to swallow about this is it’s about the same type of discrimination that African Americans were facing in 1963. King also brings up a problem that is very relevant to today. King explains, “...the license that our society allows unjust officials who implement their authority in the name of justice to practice injustice against minorities” (pg 20). This is very relevant to today’s world because of the many injustices and prejudices that take place everyday. Everyday you can look on the news and see unjust police brutality against African Americans and then the policemen get no consequences. Or you look on the news and see a court hearing where a white women ran over 3 people and gets on probation where as a black man is caught with weed and gets jail time. Either way, this quote by King is extremely relevant to today’s world. It makes you think how far we have actually grown towards equality since the year 1963.

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