[flagged]
> I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
>There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
>We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only.
>We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
Since then, most of these problems have been greatly reduced.
Consider police brutality, for instance. On the scale of the entire population, it is small. The Washington Post says they know of 7 unarmed Black people killed by police in 2022. Of those, the majority were fleeing the scene of the crime. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
There are about 45 million Black people in the US, so those 7 victims represent around 0.00001% of the Black population.
And we can hardly say that "basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one" after a 2-term Black president, who many Black people (including in New York) voted for.
Since injustice has shrunk since King's day, it follows that our concern for that injustice should be smaller as well. Same way it wouldn't be reasonable to murder a clerk who didn't give you the proper amount of change after a purchase.