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Peaceful Resistance: Black Boy By Richard Wright

569 Words3 Pages

Peaceful resistance is essential to a free society. It sets a good example, expresses interest groups' messages, and ensures those messages are considered and heard. Resistance will always exist. According to James Madison, it is impossible to destroy the root of factions, since that would take away the people's freedom. A free society takes its population's interests into account, so the factions that are not benefitted by a law are sure to resist, either peacefully, or violently. Peaceful protest, being better than violent protest in that it does less damage to infrastructure and the people's psychological states, positively impacts society. Since the alternative has a worse impact, that alternative not happening has a positive one. …show more content…

Peaceful resistance suggests that people's motives will be rooted purely out of opinion, not fear. It more honestly represents the feelings of the nation. Violence causes people in the immediate vicinity to fear the consequences of opposition. In Black Boy, Richard Wright mentions that none of his newspaper customers dared to tell him he was selling white supremacist propaganda, for fear that he was hired by the Ku Klux Klan. This type of tension divides communities; if people do not share their ideas, they will naturally be divided. They would not know what their neighbors are thinking, whether anyone else shares their sentiments, etc. Each person would be alone, and each could have the freedom of speech, but may still be unable to speak freely. Thus, the society cannot be a free one.
A free society, in order to call itself free, will have some resistance. That resistance, in taking the form of a peaceful protest, greatly benefits the society by allowing the people's opinions to be heard, without causing destruction. If that same resistance took the form of violence, the society would be greatly harmed, not just from the cost of destroyed infrastructure, but from the fear it strikes into the people's

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