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THE RIDICULOUS NATURE OF PUBLIC POLICY AND ITS ANALYSIS
Savannah Nalls
GOVT 475
February 27th, 2018
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FACTS
Every aspect of public policy making seems to be utterly ridiculous to most people
especially those who are living in the present during any time of policy change. Throughout
American history, America have undergone significant policy changes which at first seemed
unconventional, unnecessary, and to some; even a little ridiculous. However, over the passage of
time, it has been the American experience that policies which were once controversial gradually
evolve into policies that are mainstream with very little, if any debate of its validity.
The most significant piece of American history which displays this phenomenon is the
passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration which had a
lot to do with the natural law arguments of Martin Luther King Jr. Natural law, King argued, was
a set of principles which superseded those of the government as they were bestowed to all
individuals by God. Therefore, because all people were born equally under the theories of natural
law, he was justified in civil disobedience against the oppressive American government. In fact,
in many areas in the United States in the 1960s, to even utter that African Americans were equal
to Caucasians was deemed to be completely absurd. However, if an individual would hold that
same sentiment today, they most likely would be ostracized from the community.
The creation of public policy is also seemingly absurd in its very nature as well. In fact,
because public policy is typically formed by public opinion, media has more influence on public
policy than actual factual scientific studies. Therefore, most public opinions of policy are
morphed from media which perpetuate the individual’s confirmation bias based on a subject.
Whereas, while public policy drafted within academics often (or at least attempt) to display
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factual findings without a strong bias, the media often displays exaggerated truths and even
sometimes boldface lies.
DECISION
As history will prove, nearly all civil rights have resulted from a period of a political
tension on public policy in an effort to get public policy to change in some way. These displays
of either civil disobedience or protests ultimately resulted in altering the laws which provided for
more civil rights and legislative action for those previously oppressed. It is also important to
note that most rights enjoyed today in American democracy were once viewed as
unconventional. In fact, the American experience can be summed up simply as everything was
once unconventional, until it wasn’t.
SOLUTION
I. Political Tension as Predictor of Civil Right Adjustments
When looking at American history or even world history, it can be easily seen that nearly
every civil right progression where citizens are granted significant liberties has resulted from the
addition of political pressure and tension from civil disobedience.
In recent history, political pressure through gay right parades and the coverage these events
received, eventually resulted in equivalent rights for gay marriage which finally allowed gay
individuals to have the same tax benefits and inheritance as their heterosexual counterparts.
Currently, school aged protestors are forming demonstrations to protest the lack of gun control in
the country and black lives matter protestors are placing public scrutiny of the existence of
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systematic racism of some police officers. As of February 2018, these demonstrations have
resulted in President Trump’s consideration of creating more restrictive gun regulations including
banning all bump stocks which alter semi-automatic guns into guns which resemble automatic
weapons and creating an age restriction of 21 on purchasing AR-15’s in the United States
(Lockie, 2018).
Just as black power became the new focus of the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s,
other groups were growing similarly impatient with incremental reforms. Student activists grew
more radical. They took over college campuses with organized massive anti-war demonstrations
and occupied parks and other public places. Some even constructed bombs and set campus
buildings on fire. At the same time young women who had read The Feminine Mystique,
celebrated the passage of the 1963 Equal Pay Act and joined the moderate National Organization
for women were so increasingly annoyed with the slow progress of reform that they too became
more militant in nature (Williams, 2018).
The spring of 1963 witnessed the publication of one of the most significant documents in the
history of the American civil rights movement; Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from
Birmingham Jail”. Like many great political documents, the “Letter From Birmingham Jail” was
composed during a time of immense crisis. Throughout April and May of 1963, national
attention was focused on Birmingham, Alabama as King and his followers led a series of
demonstrations that resulted in the overthrow of the city’s segregation ordinances (Hobby et al.,
2010). The nonviolent events in Birmingham aroused the nation’s conscience by exposing the
evils of racism. While the demonstrators remained committed to nonviolence, millions of
Americans were shocked by scenes on television and in the press of city policy, led by
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commissioner Eugene “Bull” Conner, subjecting black to night sticks, high-pressure fire hoses,
and fierce attack dogs (Hobby et al., 2010).
King’s philosophy of nonviolence was a synthesis of the teachings of Jesus Christ and
Mahatma Gandhi. While Jesus provided the motivating idea of love, Gandhi provided the
method of mass nonviolent direct action (Hobby et al., 2010). King was aware that some people
interpreted Christianity to mean passive nonresistance to evil. Yet if this were the correct view of
Christ’s teaching, a solution to the problem of racial injustice was hopeless. Moreover, King
believed that to accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with the evil of that system
(Hobby et al., 2010). His study of Gandhi convinced him that Christianity did not mean
nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil (Hobby et al., 2010).
II. Alabama Protests as a Case Study for Black Lives Matter
Experts agree that the successful undertakings of Martin Luther King were mostly due to the
fact that the media was present to record the violence on blacks who were protesting peacefully.
In fact, King was aware that the tactic of nonviolent direct actions involves the inherent paradox
of the fact that his nonviolent methods were most successful when they provoked violence from
oppressors (Hobby et al., 2010). Despite the fact that King and his followers hoped to not
become the victims of violence, the racist community was unyielding and civil rights activists
found that when they used soul force, they were often met with more physical force (Hobby et
al., 2010). Segregationists declared that the protestors should be blamed because they provoked
the violence. They argued that the protestors deserved to be beaten and arrested because their
actions precipitated violence and destroyed law and order. But these arguments rests on the
dangerous assumption that the lack of conflict in a community is evidence of the presence of
justice (Hobby et al., 2010).
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The main lessons of the focus of Martin Luther King still resonates today. As Black Lives
matter groups have recently protested the over exertion of force of citizens by police officers,
particularly minorities, and social injustice, the parallels of racist criticism of others like that in
the 1960s are still thriving today. Born as a Twitter hashtag, Black Lives Matter has evolved into
a potent alternative to the political paralysis and isolation that racial justice proponents have
faced since the election of Obama (Rickford, 2016). The movement’s participants have refused to
engage in victim blaming as they have resisted dead-end narratives that emphasize “black-on-
black crime” Such perspective reinforces the racist premise that black pathology, not while
supremacy, is chiefly responsible for the state’s systematic assault on black people (Rickford,
2016).
While the protestors are justified in their convictions of the racist attacks on minorities from
some officers, they have been incapable of keeping all of their protests nonviolent like that of
Walton, F. (2014). “Fox: Distorting the Stats on Police Killings of Black People Again”.
Daily Kos. Reference from https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/12/02/1348891/-Fox-
Distorting-the-Stats-on-Police-Killings-of-Black-People-Again.
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Martin Luther King. Despite the fact that only a small part of the community is participating in
violent actions against police officers and other individuals, even a small amount of violence by
a few people undermines the entire movement’s credibility (Russell, 2016). Similarly, to the
segregationists in the 1960s, people are viewing their misbehavior as proof that many blacks are
violent individuals incapable of dignified conduct. This behavior, they argue, is what causes
police officers to shoot them even when unprovoked. Their violence additionally motivated the
counter-movement of “All Lives Matter”. While the “All Lives Matter” seems to not be a
counter-movement of the Black Lives Matter movement on its surface, it was as All Lives Matter
was trying to take the spotlight off of the significance of the systematic racism and to undermine
the idea of it all together (Loken, 2017).
Ultimately, while public policy can change after the addition of friction and pressure based
on either civil disobedience or public protesting, it is important for political protestors to keep in
mind that violent protests against the government are not going to result in the conclusion that he
or she are searching for.
III. The Christian Paradox
Among the more difficult problems facing historians of Christianity is confronting those
topics in which the ideas of Christianity, as understood today, stand in stark contrast to the
practices of Christians in the past (Thomas et al., 2009). Within American history, no greater
contradiction exists than the treatment of black African slaves by white evangelical Christians
and then how the argument of evangelic Christianity, through the leadership of Martin Luther
King, would then support the Civil Rights Act and banning Jim Crow laws.
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The Christian paradox where slavery was used as an argument to promote slavery and then
Christianity was used as an argument to rid the society of racial segregation laws reinforces some
key concepts of the religion. Christianity ultimately assumes that all people are born self-
interested and are sinful in nature. Therefore, because many people are self-interested, there is a
large danger that Scripture can be manipulated to fit around the personal needs of those who
stand to gain from such manipulation.
While the majority of Christians during early world history, advocated that slavery was
promoted within the Bible, there were a few Christians who rejected this worldview. In the late
fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa spoke out against the institution of slavery in a way that none
had before, vilifying it as in compatible with Christianity. The true offense of slavery, Gregory of
Nyssa argued, is that God created humans to be free.
“If man is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over
everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this
power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Romans
11:29). God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had
been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free,
who is he that sets his own power above God’s.” (Hamilton, 2010).
Although Gregory was not the only individual to share a view of the injustice of slavery
during this era, his conclusion to the attack of the institution as a whole was revolutionary. Some
Christians had argued before him, that slaves were to be treated with dignity and they were not
meant to be abused; however, Gregory asserted that slavery as an institution was completely
incompatible with Christianity as humans were all the image of God. While his remarks were
truly groundbreaking for his time, unfortunately they did not have any impact of laws on the
fourth century and many people continued to argue that God approved of slaves.
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It would be centuries later until Martin Luther King would make the same argument with the
existence of segregation laws. However, some of his peaceful notions were stifled by Malcolm X
and his interpretation of Islam. As the Nation’s most visible proponent of black nationalists,
Malcolm X’s challenge to multiracial, nonviolent approach of Martin Luther King Jr. helped set
the tone for the ideological and tactical conflicts that took place back within the black freedom
struggle of the 1960s (Malcolm, 1965). While Malcolm X condemned Christianity as being the
“white man’s religion” and Islam as being the religion for his people. His views on religion could
ultimately be one of the reasons why he promoted violence a way that was not supported by
Martin Luther King Jr.
Conclusion
Thomas Jefferson once said, “If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is
obligated to do so.” This concept, founded in natural law, the main argument for the separation of
the American colonies from Britain, advocates that there are laws which govern all people apply
to people equally despite the government’s willingness to recognize them.
Natural law is inherently biblical in nature as it establishes the existence of God. The Lord
informs Christians that he or she ought to aspire to apply laws which establishes liberty. “But the
one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who
forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:25). Christians have a duty
to nonviolently disobey laws which reject natural liberties and freedoms to every man and
woman.
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References
Hamilton, K. (2010). “Gregory of Nyssa and the Culture of Oppression”. Center of Christian
Ethics at Baylor University.
Hobby, B., & Bloom, H. (2010). Civil Disobedience. New York: Facts on File, Inc.
Lockie, A. (2018). “Trump Reportedly Doesn’t Think High-School Kids Should be able to Buy
Guns and May Seek Law Raising the Age Limit.” Business Insider. Reference from
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-considering-raising-legal-gun-age-2018-2 .
Loken, S. (2017). The Black Lives Matter Movement and Why the Response of All Lives Matter
Is Misleading. Ethnic Studies Review, 37-38(1), 63+. Retrieved from
http://link.galegroup.com.ezproxy.liberty.edu/apps/doc/A525421437/ITOF?
u=vic_liberty&sid=ITOF&xid=2f05b99b.
Malcolm, X. (1965). "Message to the Grassroots," in Malcolm X Speaks, ed. George Breitman,.
Rickford, R. (2016). Black Lives Matter. New Labor Forum (Sage Publications Inc.), 25(1), 34-
42. doi:10.1177/1095796015620171.
Russell, N. (2016). “Black Lives Matter’s Violence Undermines Its Credibility”. The Federalist.
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Thomas, J., Fides, H., & Terre, H. (2009). “The Origins of Pro-Slavery Christianity: White and
Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia”. The Conference on Faith and
History.
Walton, F. (2014). “Fox: Distorting the Stats on Police Killings of Black People Again”. Daily
Kos. Reference from https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/12/02/1348891/-Fox-
Distorting-the-Stats-on-Police-Killings-of-Black-People-Again.
Williams, Y. (2018). “Historian Yohuru Williams sums up the Tumultuous Political and
Cultureal Movements of the 1960s”. The History Channel. Reference from
http://www.history.com/topics/1960s.
