(THREAD) I recently re-read MLK Jr.'s "The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement," one of my favorite speeches. Hoping to share a few highlight quotes & reactions over the next few days. Read & share the speech when you can! https://www.apa.org/monitor/features/king-challenge

1/ "... social scientists, unlike some of their colleagues in the physical sciences, have been spared the grim feelings of guilt that attended the invention of nuclear weapons of destruction. Social scientists ... are fortunate to be able to extirpate evil, not to invent it."

2/ Extirpate ="root out and destroy completely." But are we so fortunate? I find great irony in the observation that while psychology concepts can predict recent national events, we have been unable to use prior knowledge to "save ourselves" and produce different results.

3/ MLK continues on White America's link with racism: "The white majority, unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change, is resisting and producing chaos while complaining that if there were no chaos orderly change would come." Wow! Election2020/Jan. 6, anyone?

4/ Next, King takes social scientists to task for NOT documenting racism as a poison to society, NOT telling the truth and NOT revealing the "brutal facts" and reality of "Negro life":

5/ "Negroes want the social scientist to address the white community and 'tell it like it is.' ... The social scientist played little or no role in disclosing truth. The Negro action movement with raw courage did it virtually alone.

6/ "When the majority of the country could not live with the extremes of brutality they witnessed, political remedies were enacted and customs were altered."

7/ King, the clairvoyant, strikes again. The spirit of his observations here remind me of #BLM & the anti-racism sentiment that emerged in the aftermath of anti-Black police violence in 2020. King was saying, social scientists, I need y'all to step up, speak out & DO SOMETHING!

8/ Has anything changed? Are social scientists in 2021 doing a better job of telling the truth than in 1967? When COVID-19 disparities first emerged, many avoided naming racism. But then the levees broke, and assailing systemic racism became in vogue.

9/ On urban riots, King channels his inner psychologist. According to King, looting & other forms of violence reflect attempts to maintain social control in the face of structural disadvantages that deny Black Americans access to economic opportunities and upward social mobility.

10/ Says King: "(looting) enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking.

11/ "But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act."

12/ Borrowing from Hugo, King continues his case formulation and psychological assessment: "'If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness'.

13/ "The POLICYmakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty". Here, King incriminates racist policy, and not Negroes, as the root cause of violence.

14/ He continues: "It is contestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are DERIVATIVE crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law..."

15/ King 2020 translator: Y'all wanna talk about law & order? Then let's apply the same standard to the laws that violate "building codes & regulations," and "laws on equal employment & education & the provisions for civic services to amplify racial inequity. #SDOH BTW!

16/ King is unapologetic in his polemic: "Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man.

17/ "These are often difficult things to say, but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society." So, in case you were wondering, King said what he said!

18/ In the next section on Vietnam, King speaks on true leadership: "I can only say that I am not a consensus leader. I do not seek to determine what is right and wrong by taking a Gallop [sic] Poll to determine majority opinion.

19/ "..it is again my deep conviction that ultimately a genuine leader is not a leader of consensus, but a molder of consensus. On some positions cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?!' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, ' Is it popular?'

20/ "But conscience must ask the question, 'Is it right?!' And there comes a time when one must take a stand that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular. But one must take it because it is right." If only more of our nation's leaders would take King's admonishment to heart!

21/ King goes on to outline several roles for social scientists (e.g., research examining Negro leadership, political action, Negro psychological/ideological change), but not before again donning his honorary clinical psychologist cap:

22/ "Kenneth Clark has said that Negroes are moved by a suicide instinct in riots ... Social scientists should also disclose the suicide instinct that governs the administration and Congress in their total failure to respond constructively."

23/ I can't help thinking about recent increasing suicide rates for Black children and teenagers over the past generation, but notice how King again flips the script on where "pathology" and mental disorder reside. https://watsoncoleman.house.gov/uploadedfiles/full_taskforce_report.pdf

24/ The Negro "suicide instinct" may reflect psychological adaptation to racial trauma whereas what King describes as a suicide instinct governing the administration and Congress may reflect dysfunction and mental illness not situated in the Negro but, instead, in society.

25/ King, the research psychologist, suggests a few studies that social scientists should conduct. I was intrigued by the observation that some of his suggestions are topics my students & I have taken up in our research (e.g., mechanisms of Black unity/peoplehood)!

26/ Negroes were "conditioned into thinking within the context of the dominant white ideology" but now recognize racism as intimately connected with their plight. Though he does not use these words, I believe King is speaking of internalized racism & racial identity change!

27/ As King concludes his recommendations, he adds "There are some things concerning which we must always be MALADJUSTED if we are people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation.

28/ "We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry... never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few... never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence."

29/ King's recommendation that men and women should be maladjusted in the closing stanzas of his speech is clever and seems to suggest that "adjustment" to the status quo and failure to challenge racist policy and ideas is itself a malady.

30/ King ends his address on a positive note hoping that "the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man," will turn "into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

31/ "I have not lost hope. I must confess that these have been very difficult days for me personally. And these have been difficult days for every civil rights leader, for every lover of justice and peace."

32/ The difficult days (and inhumanity) continue 53+ years after King's challenge, and one might ask what, if anything, has changed. Yet, we can still be inspired and grateful for King's plea and call to action and his powerful reminder of our calling and charge. /END #MLK