Monday’s reading is from the text book. Select an argument you find in King’s essay–either inductive or deductive–and analyze it. Remember, that means to break it down into parts. If it’s an inductive argument, you should find a conclusion and evidence. If it’s a deductive argument, you should find premises–major and minor premises–and a conclusion.
Academic Writing
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Major premise: An unjust law is a law that is out of harmony with the moral law
Minor premise: Segregation violates moral law because it made blacks inferior to the majority white population and denied them their basic rights, such as voting and peaceful assembly and protest.
Conclusion: Segregation is an unjust law
Deductive argument. Major Premise: Uninvolved bystanders are silently choosing the side of the majority by not standing up for the minority.
Minor Premise: Moderate whites are silent, uninvolved, and are not standing up for the black minority.
Conclusion: Moderate whites are standing on the side of the majority (segregation) by not standing up for the minority.
Deductive Argument
Major Premise: extremists break social norms to show injustices in society
Minor Premise: MLK Jr breaks “unjust laws” via nonviolent protests to prove how nasty segregation is
Conclusion: Extremists for love inspire change for the greater good
Deductive Argument:
Major premise: “Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”
Minor premise: “All segregation statutes…… distorts the soul and damages the personality.”
Conclusion: “All segregation statutes are unjust” because they degrade human personality.
Inductive Argument:
Conclusion: Racial injustice is rampant in Birmingham.
Evidence: Birmingham has a widely known record of brutality and is one of the most segregated cities in the United States, African Americans are treated unjustly in the court system, there have been more unsolved bombings of African American churches and homes than in any other city in the nation, and city fathers refused to engage in “good-faith negotiation” with African American leaders.
Inductive argument seen on page 156, first paragraph.
Conclusion: “Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.
Evidence: African Americans have experienced unjust treatment in court trials. “There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation.”
inductive argument-
Conclusion: Dr. King is justified in participating in the nonviolent direct action program (which is what landed him in Birmingham Jail).
Evidence: 1.) “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” 2.) all communities and states (in the USA) are interrelated. 3.) all interrelated communities have interrelated destinies. 4.) what affects one, in turn affects many. 5.) Dr. King cannot avoid taking action in Birmingham just because he resides in Atlanta, because he is indirectly affected by the events there as well.
Inductive Argument- Seagull Reader Page 158-159
Evidence:
1. “We [African Americas] have waited 340 years from constitutional and god given rights”
2. Opponents to the civil rights movement have the luxury of saying “wait” because they don’t know what it’s like to be dehumanized and humiliated by segregation and racism
3. Things like lynch mobs, slurs, poverty, and segregation are intolerable and make “waiting” for equality impossible
4. Other nations are making great strides towards equality while the United States lags behind.
Conclusion: People of color are suffering too dearly during segregation for simply waiting and being patient to be an option for people of color and proponents of the civil rights movement
Conclusion: It is not contradictory to advocate the breaking of some laws and not others if the laws being broken are unjust.
Evidence:
1. “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws, conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
2. a just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of god
3. an unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law, a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.
4. any law that uplifts human personality is just and any lay that degrades human personality is unjust
5. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.
Inductive argument:
Support-
1. “Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts.”
2. “There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation.”
3. “city leaders….consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.”
4. “Its ugly record of brutality is widely known.”
Conclusion: “Racial injustice engulfs” the Birmingham “community”.
Deductive argument.
Major Premise: Injustices anywhere will threaten justice everywhere.
Minor Premise: The black community in Birmingham was not treated justly.
Minor Premise: The United States is boundless enough to be considered an “everywhere”.
Minor Premise: Dr. King had a right to be concerned about injustices in Birmingham because they would go on to affect the entire United States.
Inductive argument. Page 156
Conclusion- “Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.”
Evidence- African Americans have experienced legal injustice in the courts. More acts of racial terrorism occur in Birmingham than any other city in the United States. The local government refuses to peacefully negotiate with the local African American leaders. And, Martin Luther King Jr. says that the Movement for Human Rights organization “broke promises” towards blacks many times.
Inductive Argument
Comes from the deductive argument stated above:
Major: “Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”
Minor: Segregation laws degrade human personality
Conclusion: Segregation laws are unjust
Conclusion: “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality …” In short, the unjust segregation laws degrade the personality.
Evidence:
1. “Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”
2. African American’s are not allowed into motels
3. “when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity”
4. ” vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim”
5. African American children not allowed in Amusement Parks
6. “vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society”
Inductive Argument: On page 158 Martin Luther King jr. makes an argument. His conclusion is: African Americans are justified in their impatience for relief from oppression because they have been waiting for over 340 years to receive their God-given and constitutional rights and they have been continually denied these rights.
Evidence: 1st example: The nations of Asia and Africa are declaring total freedom from their European conquerors, but African Americans in the United States cannot even be served at local lunch counters.
2nd Example: Vicious lynch mobs have for years lynched mothers and fathers, and they have drowned many more whenever it pleased them to do so.
3rd Example: Policemen filled with hate have have cursed, kicked, and absolutely abused African American citizens.
4th Example: Twenty million African Americans are living in poverty in the midst of a wealthy society.
5th Example: African American children are not allowed to go to certain amusement parks because they are segregated, and this injustice plants in their head that they are inherently unequal from a young age.
6th Example: African Americans have to explain to their children why white people are so mean to colored people.
7th Example: African Americans cannot sleep in any motel they want, and are therefore subject to cramped quarters within their automobiles when they should deserve a hotel room.
8th Example: African Americans have their character defamed when they are continually addressed with racial slurs.
9th Example: African Americans live in constant fear.
10th Example: They have to forever fight a sense of “nobodiness”
King uses all these examples to prove to his audience that African Americans have been oppressed for too long, and he makes the reader believe that they have an honest claim to be impatient about receiving these rights.
Inductive argument:
Conclusion: Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application.
Evidence:
There is nothing wrong with an ordinance, which requires a permit for a parade.
It is unjust to use an ordinance to maintain segregation and deny citizens the right to peaceful assembly and protest.
At the beginning of the letter, King states his first inductive argument.
Inductive: King proves that he is not an outsider and has a right to be in Birmingham because of these reasons:
Evidence #1. He is a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which is a organization throughout the South, and the Alabama chapter invited him to Birmingham.
Evidence #2. King’s journey to spread freedom to Birmingham and the rest of the South is compared to the Apostle Paul’s journey to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ outside his village.
Evidence #3. King says “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” This means that is there is injustice in Birmingham he feels it necessary to stop it so it will not spread everywhere.
Deductive Argument:
Major Premise: Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
Minor Premise: Segregation laws do not uplift, but degrade and damage the human personality.
Conclusion: All segregation laws are unjust.
Deductive Argument:
Major Premise: When a law is unjust, it is the responsibility of the people to make a change.
Minor Premise: Laws were unjust during this time period because of segregation. African American people could not go to amusement parks, rent motel rooms, use the same bathrooms.
Conclusion: Peaceful protest must occur to achieve a just system.
Pg. 158
Deductive Argument:
Major Premise: “Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.”
Minor Premise: “We know through painful experience that freedom… must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Conclusion: Segregated and oppressed groups must demand privileges from the privileged groups.
This inductive argument can be found on page 156.
Conclusion: “Racial injustice engulfs this community.”
Evidence: 1. “Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.”
2. “Its ugly record of brutality is widely known.”
3. “Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts.”
4. “There have been more unsolved bombings in of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham . than in any other city in the nation.”
5. “Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers…. But the latter consistently . refused to engage in good faith negotioation.”