Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. ... We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the dark history of America's treatment of Native Americans, emphasizing a need for acknowledgment and remorse.
In this quote, Martin Luther King, Jr. addresses the horrific legacy of genocide against Native Americans, stating that the United States was founded upon the belief of racial superiority that justified the extermination of indigenous peoples. He underscores the hypocrisy of glorifying this brutal chapter as a noble endeavor and highlights the ongoing refusal to confront and regret this shameful history, urging a critical reflection on the past and its implications for present and future generations.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about racial injustices in history classes.
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
Music is the best consolation for a despaired man
We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
Israel... is one of the great outpost of democracy in the world
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus - mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.
The Great War was nobody's fault - or everybody's.
The men who founded and governed Massachusetts and Connecticut took themselves so seriously that they kept track of everything they did for the benefit of posterity and hoarded their papers so carefully that the whole history of the United States, recounted mainly by their descendants, has often appeared to be the history of New England writ large.
When the early Europeans first met Africans, at the crossroads of history, it was a respectful meeting and the Africans were not slaves. Their nations were old before Europe was born.
There are two kinds of man: the ones who make history and the ones who endure it.
An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.
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