Black Lives Matter: The Paradox of Injustice—“If We Must Die…”

In the poem “If We Must Die,” by Claude McKay, the African American poet writes that “If we must die, let it not be like hogs / Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, / While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, / Making their mock at our accursèd lot.” He states if blacks must be persecuted, let it not be in vain—but rather let them fight back. This was essentially the directive of Malcolm X as well (Fiero, 2010). However, Martin Luther King, Jr., had a different take on the plight of black people in America. He believed they should use non-violent means of protest. He based his idea on Thoreau’s (1849) “Civil Disobedience.” McKay’s poem does not promote civil disobedience but rather actual physical confrontation. McKay did not want his people to be passive. He wanted them to be aggressive—to make the oppressors work for their murder, if that was what they were committed to doing.

“O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! / Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, / And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!” wrote McKay. His message was that blacks had to stand up for themselves and fight back—not sit down and let themselves be pushed around. However, what helped to bring about civil rights legislation was MLK’s approach of civil disobedience. For that reason, one could argue that Buddhism and Buddhist meditation could be useful in helping blacks to engage in peaceful protest, especially for the Black Lives Matter movement where there is a lot of anger and animosity raging. A lot of blacks feel strongly, the way McKay did—but it is important to remember that MLK had the right idea and the right approach. Thus, applying Buddhist meditation to the plight of black oppression in America should be considered as a viable approach to helping blacks address the issue of inequality once more (Curtis, 2015).

References

Curtis, T. (2015). Born into This Body: Black Women’s Use of Buddhism in Autobiographical Narratives. In New Media in Black Women’s Autobiography (pp. 87-109). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Fiero, G. (2010). The Humanistic Tradition. NY: McGraw-Hill.

McKay, C. (n.d.). If We Must Die. Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44694/if-we-must-die

Thoreau, H. D. (1849). Civil Disobedience. Retrieved from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper2/thoreau/civil.html