What is justice?

I’m not sure what Justice merely as a word or a concept elicits, but diving into true meaning in action - as it is lived - is the only real way to find out what anything truly means. It is there where character is developed and decisions about who we want to be are made, or where we refuse to define the moment and forget ourselves.

I think most of our problems and atrocities may stem from many of us forgetting who we truly are, who we are meant to love, and who we thought ourselves to be.

But to be redeemed is also our birthright. As long as you have breath in your body, you can be redeemed. There is room in the fight for you, just make sure you’re fighting the right enemy.

Cornel West would say, “It is what love looks like in public.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said inferentially "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

He also said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”

More thoroughly, as an excerpt from a lecture by MLK, Jr. on “Justice without Violence” at Brandeis University elucidates:

“Martin Luther King: Pretty soon after that, he experienced a new kind of slavery, covered up with certain niceties of complexity. You remember in 1896 the Supreme Court came out with another decision known as the Plessy versus Ferguson decision. In this decision, the Supreme Court established the doctrine of separate but equal as the law of the land. We all know the results of the old Plessy doctrine. There was always a strict enforcement of the separate, without the slightest intention to abide by the equal. So as a result of the old Plessy doctrine, the Negro ended up being plunged across the abyss of exploitation, where he experienced the bleakness of night and despair. Living under these conditions, many Negroes lost faith in themselves. Many came to feel that perhaps they were less than human.

Martin Luther King: This is always a tragedy of physical slavery. It always ends up in the paralysis of mental slavery. And so long as the Negro accepted this place assigned to him, so long as he thought of himself in inferior terms, a sort of racial peace existed, but it was an uneasy peace. It was a negative peace. For you see, true peace is not merely the absence of some negative force. It is the presence of some positive force. Peace is not merely the absence of tension. It is the presence of justice, and the peace that existed at that time was a negative peace, an obnoxious peace, devoid of any positive meaning.

Martin Luther King: But then something happened to the Negro. Circumstances made it necessary for him to travel more. His rural plantation background was gradually being supplanted by migration to urban industrial communities. His cultural life was gradually arising through the steady decline of crippling illiteracy. Even the economic life of the Negro was gradually rising to decisive proportion. And all of these factors came together to cause the Negro to take a new look at himself.

Martin Luther King: Negro masses all over began to reevaluate themselves. The Negro came to feel that he was somebody. His religion revealed to him that God loves all of His children and that all men are made in His image. And so he came to see and to feel in his own soul, that the significant thing about a man is not his specificity, but his fundamentum, not the texture of his hair or the color of his skin, but the texture and quality of his soul.

Martin Luther King: With this new evaluation, with this new self respect, the negative peace of the nation and of the South was gradually undermined. The tension which we witness in the South land today can be explained in part by the revolutionary change in the Negro's evaluation of his nature and destiny and his determination to struggle and sacrifice and suffer until the sagging walls of segregation have finally been crushed by the battering rams of surging justice. This is the meaning of the crisis.

Martin Luther King: Now this determination on the part of American Negroes to free themselves from every form of discrimination and oppression stems from the same deep longing for human dignity and for freedom expressed by oppressed peoples all over the world. The rhythmic beat of the deep rumblings of discontent that we hear from Asia and Africa can be explained by the determination to break loose from the shackles of colonialism and imperialism and stand up with dignity and with honor.

Martin Luther King: As we face this problem, we must think of two basic facts. Whenever you have a struggle, sometimes it takes a long time to develop, and this struggle has taken a long time to develop certainly, and has been developing over the years. But let us remember this, that the struggle will continue. Why? On the one hand history seems to prove, and it seems to be sociologically true, that privileged classes do not give up their privileges without strong resistance.

Martin Luther King: It also seems to be historically and sociologically true that once oppressed people rise up against that oppression, there is no stopping point short of full freedom. So we must face the fact that the struggle will probably continue until freedom is a reality for the oppressed peoples of the world.

Martin Luther King: Now, the question that we face this evening is this. In the light of the fact that the oppressed peoples of the world are rising up against their oppression, in the light of the fact that the American Negro is rising up against his oppression. The question is this, how will the struggle for justice be waged? And I think that is one of the most important questions confronting our generation. As we move to make justice a reality on the international scale, as we move to make justice a reality in this nation, how will the struggle be waged?

Martin Luther King: It seems to me that there are two possible answers to this question. One is to use the all too prevalent method of physical violence. It is true that men throughout history have sought to achieve justice through violence. We all know the danger to this method. It seems to create many more social problems than it solves, and it seems to me that, in the struggle for justice, that this method is ultimately futile.

Martin Luther King: If the Negro succumbs to the temptation of using violence in his struggle for justice, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and his chief legacy to the future will be an endless rain of meaningless chaos. There is still a voice crying through the vistas of time, saying to every potential Peter, "Put up your sword," and history is replete with the bleached bones of nations and communities that failed to follow this command.

Martin Luther King: So let us move from this method. This is one method. This is one way to seek justice, through violence, but it seems to me that the weakness of this method is its futility. It creates many more problems than it solves.

Martin Luther King: But there is an alternative to violence. We may think of this alternative as a method of nonviolent resistance, for you see it as possible to achieve justice through nonviolence. This method has been made famous in our generation by the work of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who lived in India not many years ago, and who used this method to free his people from the political domination, the economic exploitation and humiliation inflicted upon them by Britain. He, I imagine, proved more than anybody else in the modern world that this can be an effective method in seeking justice, in seeking to break loose from oppression.

Martin Luther King: Now let us look at this method and analyze it a bit and see what it says and see if it might not be used in the midst of the crisis which we confront in race relations in America, and the crisis which we confront all over the world with oppressed people rising up against their oppression.

Martin Luther King: The first thing that we can say about this method that seeks justice without violence, is that it is not a method of power, that is a stagnant passivity. It's not a method to be used by persons filled with fear or persons who are merely lacking in weapons of violence. It is not a method of cowardice. As Mahatma Gandhi used to say, "If the only alternative is between violence and cowardice, I would say use violence," but it's good that there is another alternative.

Martin Luther King: This is not a method of cowardice, and I also said it's not a method of stagnant passivity. And sometimes the word passive misleads us because it gives the impression that this is a sort of sit down, do nothing method, the sort of a method that is non-active. But nonviolence does not mean non activity. The nonviolent resistant is just as opposed to the evil that he is protesting against as the violent resistor. This method does resist.

Martin Luther King: Now it is true that this method is passive in the sense that the nonviolent resistor is not aggressive toward his opponent in a physical sense with physical violence, but the mind and emotion are always active, at every moment seeking to convince and persuade the opponent that he is wrong. This method is passive physically but strongly active spiritually. It is non aggressive physically, but dynamically aggressive spiritually.

Martin Luther King: There is a second thing that we can say about this method that seeks justice without violence. It does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. I think this is one of the points, one of the basic points, one of the basic distinguishing points between violence and nonviolence. The ultimate end of violence is to defeat the opponent. The ultimate end of nonviolence is to win the friendship of the opponent.

Martin Luther King: It's necessary to boycott sometimes, but the nonviolent resistor realizes that a boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor, but the end is reconciliation. The end is redemption. So the aftermath of violence is bitterness, but the aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation. This is a method that seeks to transform and to redeem and win the friendship of the opponent, and make it possible for men to live together as brothers in a community and not continually live with bitterness and friction.

Martin Luther King: The third thing that we can say about this method is that it directs its attack at systems of evil rather than individuals who may be caught up in the system. In other words, this method seeks to defeat evil rather than individuals who may happen to be evil, who may happen to be victimized with evil. And this is a thing that we must see in race relations, it seems to me. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery, the tension in this city is not so much between Negro people and white people, but the tension is at bottom between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory in Montgomery, it will not be a victory merely for 50,000 Negroes, but it will be a victory for justice, a victory for the forces of light, a victory for good will.

Martin Luther King: And we must come to see that the festering sword of segregation debilitates the white man as well as the Negro. It gives the Negro a false sense of inferiority and it gives the white man a false sense of superiority, thereby distorting the personality of both. And as we seek to remove the barrier of segregation, it must always be stressed that it does not serve merely to straighten up conditions for the Negro, but for all people, for all people involved in the system are affected by it. We seek to defeat the evil system rather than individuals who happen to be caught up in the system. And I think that is a vital aspect of the method of nonviolence. Violence defeats individuals and so often fails to get back to the causal factor, but nonviolence goes beneath the surface and seeks to remove the causal basis, which is the evil system itself.

Martin Luther King: That is another basic thing about this method which seeks to achieve justice through nonviolence. It not only avoids external physical violence, but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resistor realizes that love should forever be at the forefront of his thinking. And as we struggle for justice, as oppressed people all over the world struggle for justice and freedom and human dignity, it is my great hope that we will never succumb to the temptation of indulging in hate campaigns or becoming bitter, for if we hate for hate, if we try to solve the problem by hating in return, we do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe, and somebody has to have some sense in this world and cut off the chain of hate. And that is done through loving.

Martin Luther King: So this is a method that not only avoids external physical violence, but also internal violence of spirit, which is hate and bitterness and malice. Oppressed people must continue to fight for justice, passionately, but fight at all times with clean hands, always avoiding malice and hate and bitterness and falsehood.

Martin Luther King: I know you were looking at me and saying, somebody is saying that this is pretty difficult, to say love your enemies, love those people who seek to oppress you, love those people who are trampling over you every day. That's almost impossible, as some of you are probably saying. Well, I guess it is pretty difficult and it's pretty impossible. And I guess it's almost absurd for me to say to anybody, love those who oppress you, in any affectionate and sentimental sense. And so when I speak of love here, I'm not talking about something affectionate and sentimental. I'm talking about understanding good will for all men, a type of love that seeks to redeem.

Martin Luther King: It's very interesting. If you will notice that the Greek language has three words for love, and it might give us a little clearance at this point. The Greek language talks, for instance, about Eros. You know Plato talks about Eros in his dialogues. In platonic philosophy there's a sort of yearning of the soul for the realm of the gods. For us it has come to be a sort of a romantic love. With Plato it was an aesthetic love. With us it has become a sort of romantic love, and it's vital. Eros is a vital type of love.

Martin Luther King: We read about a beautiful portrait and it seems to express something of Eros. I guess that's what Shakespeare was talking about when he said, "Love is not love as alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempers and is never shaken. It is a star to every wandering bark." You know, I can remember that because I used to quote it to my wife when we were courting. That's Eros.

Martin Luther King: Then the Greek talks again about phileo, a sort of, a love, the type of love that we have for personal friends, a sort of reciprocal love. And that's vital also, a love that loves because it is loved. On this level we love because we are loved. This is maybe the type of love that you have for your roommate, you see, a sort of ... This is, and it's an affectionate type of love, but here you love because you are loved. It's a reciprocal love that we have for personal friends.

Martin Luther King: But then the Greek language comes out and talks about agape. That's another interesting word. The New Testament places it as one of the highest forms of love. This is more than Eros, it's more than phileo. It's a redeeming type of love. It's a transforming type of love. Biblical theologians would say this is the love of God working in the lives of men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It loves everybody, not because they're particularly likable but because God loves them, and it is at this point that I think love can be very vital.

Martin Luther King: And so we come to love all men, not because they are likable, not because we like the way they act. And it's interesting that there's a passage in the Bible which says love your enemies, and I'm very happy it doesn't say like your enemies. It's pretty difficult to like some people. Like is an affectionate sort of thing. You like to be with some people. You like their attitude, you like the way they think, you like the way they act. That's an affectionate sort of thing, and you like them. But there's some, there's some people that it's pretty difficult to like. I find it rather difficult to like Senator Eastland. I find it difficult.

Martin Luther King: But there is an ethical something which says to me, love Senator Eastman, and love is greater than like. And this is what we seem to stress here when we talk about nonviolence on this level, of the eternal side where we cease not only to shoot a man but we cease to hate a man. It is a type of love that loves the individual who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does, and I think that when we rise to this level, nonviolence becomes quite meaningful in life.

Martin Luther King: There is a final thing that I want to say and then I will leave it with you to ask questions. That is a thing about this method that at least holds me together, and I have to stress it because I think it is very basic, at least it has been for my life. This method seems to stress the fact that the universe is on the side of justice. Sometimes it's very difficult to believe that. But this is why the nonviolent resistor can accept suffering without retaliating with violence, because he knows the universe is on the side of justice, and it gives one a great faith in the future.

Martin Luther King: The nonviolent resistor knows that in his struggle for justice, he is not alone, but that he has cosmic companionship, and that the moral laws of the universe somehow work together for the molding of justice and freedom and good will. Now I realize that there are those who believe in nonviolence who are not necessarily theists, who don't necessarily believe in a personal God. But I believe even those persons, if they believe firmly in nonviolence, believe that at least there is something that moves toward justice in the universe.

Martin Luther King: It so happens that I have deep faith and an abiding faith in a personal God, not some Aristotelian unmoved mover who merely contemplates upon himself. Not only a self knowing God, but an ever loving God who's concerned about the affairs of history, and it is my conviction that God works through history for the salvation of man, and there is something in this universe that works toward the molding of justice and good will and freedom.

Martin Luther King: There is something in this universe which justifies Carlyle in saying, "No lie can live forever." There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying, "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." There is something in this universe which justifies James Russell Lowell in saying, "True forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways of future, and behind the devil known stands God within the shadow keeping watch above his own." And I'm sure that is why down in Montgomery we could walk and never get weary, because we realized that there is a great camp meeting in the promised land of freedom and justice.

Martin Luther King: And so this is a method of nonviolent resistance. And it seems to me that this is a method that can achieve justice, a method, that can achieve it without violence, a method that can bring justice into being and bring us to the point that we can all live together as brothers. And it is my deep prayer as we struggle together in Montgomery and all over the South, as people all over the world struggle for justice and freedom, they will struggle with this weapon of love and nonviolence.

Martin Luther King: It seems to me that if we will do this with dignity, with the proper attitude and the proper discipline, we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice. That will be the day when we can all cry, figuratively speaking, that a new day has come into being. That will be the day, figuratively speaking, when the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy. Thank you.’