A Time to Break the Silence

I really enjoyed this reading by Dr. King. The way he speaks is great for me because he is not only really insightful, but he makes things incredibly relatable and he appeals to our innate sense of good and humanity. Perhaps the most powerful things that he says is that "there comes a time when silence is betrayal." I find this to be incredibly true in almost every situation where something bad is going on. If your boyfriend was cheating on you and your best friend knew but didn't say anything- that's betrayal. If you know that somebody cheated on an exam but don't say anything, you are betraying your university and its honor code. That is why we have laws stating that if you know of a crime going on, you are required to report it, or you will be help partly responsible. When we do nothing or say nothing, we become part of that crime, and are partly ok with it happening, and letting others know that as well. This is another way that he is able to relate it to civil rights so well. Our passiveness about Vietnam would just translate to other internal aspects of our nation. If we allowed that to go by without questioning its correctness, we are even showing others that it is ok to not care about certain things and just let them keep happening. I also really liked the three points he made in respect to the relation between civil rights and the war. It is even just common sense that, although these black and white men can fight and die next to each other on a foreign land, they can not share a bathroom or live on the same street back at home. For the black man to have more equal rights while he is at war than when he is not, is just completely absurd. It is easy to see how Dr. King had such an influence on the country.