Segregation

First of all, I’d like to precise that power is the influence, the domination which is exercised on a person or a group of individuals. It allows an individual or a group to apply, to make execute or to impose decisions.

We studied in class various documents about the black racial segregation in United States which explain us that a legal but illegitimate power limited the black people’s rights and created huge inequalities.

During more than 80 years, racial discrimination was regulated by the so-called Jim Crow laws, which mandated strict segregation of races. Black and white people lived separated and benefited from different rights, for example, they couldn’t go to the same schools, in the buses, black people couldn’t sit next to one another white, and they had to sit on the back…

Power is revealing of the tensions and conflicts in social groups when it is imposed. So, the power implies also opposition. We are going to wonder how is power limited, how can we resist to someone’s power?

Legal but illegitimate power limited the black people’s rights and created huge inequalities. The fight against segregation was materialized by very strong social protester movement led by charismatic personalities who could be considered as anti-establishment.

Rosa Parks’s rebellion in the bus marked the symbolic beginning of black revolt against racial segregation. There was different way to protest against this power: we can act either with violence or pacifically.

After Rosa Parks’s affair, a lot of movement emerged Such as, violent anti-establishment led for example by the Black Muslim.

But, I think that it was especially MLK’s revolt which marked and made change mentalities.

Indeed, MLK with other black activists made pacifist actions, and they embarked on a boycott of the buses of the city, an effective boycott because buses were practically empty the following day. They organize also sit-ins on restaurants where black people were not allowed to stay.

So MLK’s action was acts of non-violent civil disobedience aimed at violate the enforcement of racial segregation rules and laws.

Personally, I think that the better way to protest against an illegitimate power is pacifically as MLK did it. In my opinion, when we act pacifically we are more chance to be listen and more person adhere to (agree with) our opinions (cause). Moreover, we can be supported by politician like MLK was supported by the president Lyndon B. Johnson. That is why the pacifically resistance is better. I thing that is bad to answer to the violence by violence, a good example could be a good example for the future.

So the better way to resist to someone’s power when it is bad an unmoral, it is the pacifism.

...