John Locke Essay

On May 26, 2020, the streets of Minneapolis flooded with peaceful demonstrators protesting George Floyd’s unjustified death wrought by police brutality. Only three days after Floyd's passing, the National Guard filled those same Minneapolis streets due to the eruption of riots and looting at night (Tayor). News outlets captured footage of the looters and burning buildings, which smeared the movement as an extreme fringe and quickly turned public sentiment away from the anti-racist movement. In the end, the BLM movement failed to make a lasting impact on police reform. Almost a century prior, on the other side of the world, Mahatma Gandhi fought for the rights of the Dalit, otherwise known as the “untouchables.” While imprisoned in the city of Pune, on September 16, 1932, Gandhi announced that he would starve himself til death to protest the British government’s segregation of the Dalit (Sullivan). After six days of fasting, the British government reluctantly gave in and accepted Gandhi’s settlement terms, which undid the segregation of the “untouchables” caste. His actions successfully made a lasting impact on the Dalit class of India.

The outcomes of these two movements delineate due to one clear distinction between the movements: the level of violence. The Black Lives Matter movement devolved into sporadic pockets of violence in the wake of its protests, which fueled the eventual downfall of the entire movement. On the other hand, Gandhi’s peaceful protests, which stayed on the path of non-violence, achieved historic success and have been heralded in the history books as the model for achieving nonviolent social change. In contrasting these movements, BLM and the Harijans Campaign (Gandhi’s movement for Dalit rights), it becomes clear that for an anti-racist movement to be successful, the aggrieved minority needs to be perceived by the majority as blameless victims, which places an undue burden on the minority to be nonviolent in the face of continued oppression.

When discussing non-violent anti-racist movements, two model examples come to mind: The Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. The Civil Rights Movement, the campaign to gain civil, economic and political equality for African Americans, was famously characterized by Martin Luther King’s non-violent ideology. One of the most prominent examples of this statement comes from the Bloody Sunday event, during King’s march from Selma to Montgomery, a protest for black voting rights. On March 7th, 1965, six hundred demonstrators were attacked and horrifically beaten by the police, leaving peaceful protesters bloody and injured on the Edmund Pettus Bridge (Yang 83). Yet, these protestors refused to fight back and remained steadfast in their non-violence. The horrifying images of police brutality from that day flooded newspapers, even scattered throughout the world, which roused public support for the Selma Voting Rights Campaign. Just a few months after the march, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, prohibiting racial discrimination in voting and allowing high numbers of racial minorities to register to vote.

Another famously successful anti-racist movement was the Anti-Apartheid Movement. The anti-apartheid movement was a movement spearheaded by Nelson Mandela that peacefully achieved the end of apartheid—racial segregation enacted by the South African government. Stephen Zunes states, “Against enormous odds, nonviolent action proved to be a major factor in the downfall of apartheid and the establishment of a democratic black majority government” (Zunes 137). The nonviolent action Zunes refers to came as peaceful protests; two noticeable anti-apartheid protests were the Sewoto and Sharpeville protests. The Sewoto protest, an uprising led by students, resulted in 595 deaths and 2900 injuries among primarily young black students. The news and the gruesome images of the mass killing of youth flooded news articles around the globe (Mashinini). The Sharpeville massacre, where approximately 5000 civilians gathered around a police station, resulted in 69 casualties and 180 in critical condition (Pheko). These protests jump-started the end of apartheid by raising international criticism and skepticism about South Africa’s apartheid policy; the pressure led to a referendum in 1992 that ultimately banned apartheid in 1994 (Magubane).

From the exemplars of the Civil Rights movement and the Anti-Apartheid movement emerges a common principle; in successful anti-racist movements, the leaders understood that to achieve lasting social change, they had to employ the doctrine of non-violence. This doctrine is often credited as a machination of visionary Mahatma Gandhi. His principle of non-violence—known to him asSatyagraha—stems from the combination of the two Sanskrit words, Satya (Truth) and Graha (nonviolence), which Gandhi used to describe his unique non-violent mechanism to bring forth social change. In The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi writes, “I can proclaim from the house-top that nonviolence has not, has never failed. The people failed to rise to it” (Gandhi 243). In his view, non- violence is effectual in creating social change, but the difficulty of implementing it and adhering to the doctrine can lead to failure; if one upholds the practice of nonviolence, it will indubitably lead to success.

After his passing, Gandhi inspired many successors who pursued nonviolence as a stratagem to achieve strides towards anti-racism. His most notable devotee is civil rights leader Martin Luther King, a figure who directly credits Gandhi as his inspiration for his own principles of non-violence. In Stride Towards Freedom: The Montgomery Story, King declares, “The Gandhian method of nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their struggle for

freedom” (King 79). King intentionally implemented Gandhi’s philosophy of Satyagraha through non- violent tactics throughout the civil rights movement, as he firmly believed in its potency. When the public eye views the minority as nonviolent, they become sympathetic to the minority, causing the public to sway their opinions to advocate for the oppressed. This is precisely why King stated that non-violence “accepts suffering without retaliation.” He believed that undeserved suffering has the significant ability to educate the masses. Furthermore, civil resistance succeeds because it can attract a broader base of supporters due to its lack of polarizing, extremist actors (Chenweth and Stephan 96). Just as King’s March on Washington attracted white and black marchers, other nonviolent movements also have the power to employ mass participation.

Suppose a scenario where the minority rises and resists the majority through violent action. In that case, the slightest instances of violence will be used by the media to paint the minority as the “wrongdoers.” This is why an unfair burden is placed on the minority to be non-violent, even as they are being beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Regardless of how sporadic or ‘justified’ violent resistance may be, propaganda forces can highlight the violent incidents, mischaracterizing the entire movement. A prominent example of this occurring is the prelude to the Rohingya genocide. The Rohingya people of the Rakhine state of Myanmar have been oppressed by the state military since the 1940s through acts such as the discriminatory 1948 Citizenship Law of Myanmar (Anwary 92). On October 9, 2016, armed individuals of the Rohingya insurgent group ARSA attacked several military posts in Rakhine and killed nine police officers (Khin 43). Subsequently, the Rohingya were depicted to have caused a massacre throughout social media, which gave the Myanmarese military the excuse to begin a genocide of the Rohingya. In the wake of the genocide, more than nine thousand Rohingya were murdered, 392 villages were destroyed, and over 688,000 Rohingya fled the country (Barany 2).

The BLM movement is another notable example of a movement ending in failure due to the introduction of violent elements. After the protests slowly resorted to violence, public sentiment for the movement fell off a polling cliff: data from the Pew Research Center shows that support for BLM, which reached a high of 67% in June 2020 after the death of George Floyd, fell to 55% in September. This rapid change in sentiment among the American people was preceded by protests that deteriorated into clashes between police and protestors. Even though a minority of the BLM protests involved elements of violence, the media—especially right-wing outlets—depicted the entire movement as a violent fringe, as having lost control and burning towns by the dozens. BLM subsequently lost the public’s advocacy, causing the movement to deplete in support.

Nonviolence has succeeded over violence because nonviolent action engenders sympathy and compassion from the public. In “Neurobiological Mechanisms of Responding to Justice,” researchers published the findings of a test they performed on fifty-five participants and measured people’s reactions to injustice; this test revealed that people have strong emotional responses when they witness injustice enacted on victims and want to punish the perpetrators. When the participants were third-party viewers of injustice, enhanced neural activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

(DLPFC) preceded a decision to punish the instigators of the injustice. The DLPFC integrated the information about whether the wrongdoer was justified, a subconscious mechanism that occurs whenever we witness injustice.

As we examine the dichotomy of successful and unsuccessful anti-racist movements, another apparent delineating factor separates the successful from the unsuccessful. Successful anti-racist movements were often led by visible leaders who steered their movements towards non-violent strategies; a leader was an indispensable element in these movements to organize demonstrations and protests. The March on Washington would never have occurred if not for the organizational might of Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, both faithful lieutenants of Martin Luther King. However, in the 21st century, many movements are decentralized and lack clear leadership structures and figures at the top. History shows that notable and successful movements consist of superintendents pushing protestants to be nonviolent; however, contemporary movements tend to decentralize power amongst many smaller groups. The absence of leaders such as MLK, Mandela or Gandhi is evident in today's movements. To achieve nonviolent, anti-racist ends, we need to return strong, charismatic leaders who will continue the fight for equality. Suppose a contemporary leader who understands the core principle of Satyagraha, of nonviolence in the face of oppression, can emerge. In that case, that leader will enact powerful change in the fabric of our society.

Works Cited

“SATYAGRAHA IN MAHATMA GANDHI’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY onJSTOR.” www.jstor.org. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23607222.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3Adbc4fc8ad1273dd1b3689abe43e26dea&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1.

Stallen, Mirre, et al. “Neurobiological Mechanisms of Responding to Injustice.” ˜the ˜Journal ofNeuroscience/˜the ˜Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 38, no. 12, Feb. 2018, pp. 2944–54. https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.1242-17.2018.

Gandhi, Mahatma, et al. “The mind of Mahatma Gandhi.” Oxford University Press eBooks,1946, ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB02332487.

Chenoweth, Erica, and Maria J. Stephan. Why Civil Resistance Works. Columbia UP,2011, books.google.ie/books?id=kGW8cops3GcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Drop+Your+Weapons:+When+and+Why+Civil+Resistance+Works&hl=&cd=1&source=gbs_api.

Khin, Tun. “Rohingya: A Preventable Genocide Allowed to Happen.” Insight Turkey, vol. 19, no. 4,Oct. 2017, pp. 43–53. https://doi.org/10.25253/99.2017194.03.

Blazina, Carrie. “Support for Black Lives Matter has decreased since June but remains strong amongBlack Americans.” Pew Research Center, 14 Apr. 2024, www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/09/16/support-for-black-lives-matter-has-decreased-since-june-but-remains-strong-among-black-americans.

King, Martin Luther. Stride Toward Freedom.1960, books.google.ie/books?id=gIQGAQAAIAAJ&q=King,+Stride+Toward+Freedom&dq=King,+Stride+Toward+Freedom&hl=&cd=3&source=gbs_api.

Godrej, Farah. “Nonviolence and Gandhi’s truth: A Method for Moral and Political Arbitration.” ˜the˜Review of Politics, vol. 68, no. 2, May 2006, pp. 287–317. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0034670506000118.

Klitgaard, Robert E. “Gandhi’s Non-Violence as a Tactic.” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 8, no. 2,June 1971, pp. 143–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/002234337100800203.Gist, Conra D., and Karsonya Wise Whitehead. “Deconstructing Dr. Martin Luther King’s ‘Letterfrom a Birmingham Jail’ and the Strategy of Nonviolent Resistance.” Black History Bulletin, vol. 76,

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Letter From The John Locke Institute