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Martin Luther King Fight Against Social Control Essay

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Recommended: Martin Luther King Jr.'s influence on the Civil Rights Movement

Martin Luther King Jr. and His Fight Against Social Control
Social control can be both helpful and harmful. Helpful for instance because it helps us set expectations and teaches us how to behave in society. However, it can also be harmful when people are socialized into believing that one race is superior to another. When talking about freedom-fighters Martin Luther King Jr. is often one of the first to be mentioned, along with Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. The influential Martin Luther King Jr. will be the topic of my essay, and I will discuss his fight against racial segregation, the type of opposition he opposed, and I will reflect around opposing social control.
Martin Luther King Jr. was the leading figure in the struggle against racial segregation and for the civil rights movement in America in the 1950’s and 60’s. King was born in 1929 and was a Baptist minister. He admired Gandhi’s …show more content…

fought against both informal means of social control and formal means of social control. Informal means of social control is norms, rules and values learned through socialization. Socialization is a process where people learn the expectations of society, and they absorb their own culture and form an own identity. Formal means of social control is external sanctions through law and regulations (4). As mentioned in the introduction to this essay, social control can be harmful if someone is socialized into thinking one race is superior to another. Humans are pack animals; we strive to conform in order to be a part of a group. When one group of people excludes another group this will lead to uproar. Because people were told from an early age that blacks were less worth then whites, and because they were very rarely exposed to blacks, they were inclined to believe this. They inherited racist thoughts from their parents and passed it on to their own children. This led to a vicious cycle, with ignorance and preconceived bias, also known as

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In his writing, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King Jr. asserts that corrupt segregation laws throughout the United States need to be reformed. King supports his argument by employing analogies, anaphoras and pathetic appeal. The author’s purpose is to highlight the injustices and oppression which black Americans face in everyday America in order to reform segregation laws in the southern United States. He writes to an audience of white church leaders, supporters of segregation and American society. Martin Luther King Jr.’s argument is a reflection of decades of work pursuing social justice as a civil rights activist.

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Web. 26 Jan. 2011. Reed, Harry A. “Martin Luther King, Jr.: History and Memory, Reflections on Dreams and Silences” The Journal of Negro History. 8.2 (1999): 150. Academic Search Complete.

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