Essential Snobbery 101: The Slow Death of Proper Address

A Stringent Beginning

It was almost a decade ago when I underwent a stringent vetting process with all the officialdom that extracted more information from me than I would willingly have volunteered. This process was supervised by a department within the organisation to which I was contracted to offer professional services.

When the process was completed, I received a notice from a member of staff confirming that I had passed all the requirements. It began with "Hi!" Just "Hi", without a name, stripped of all formality, dignity, and function, as though we shared the familiarity born of mutual friendship going back decades, rather than mere acquaintance.

I was reeling and altogether taken aback; this could not seriously have come from within the company with which I held a formal contractual engagement.

Insult and Injury

To add insult to injury, the person who signed off the message bore names suggesting a common Nigerian heritage, where the expectation is that a modicum of formality should greet those with whom you have never interacted before. Only after you have introduced yourself and established communication through a cordial response and acknowledgement should informality be considered.

This was analogous to an ingénue who had abandoned the sophistication of speech for grunts and howls.

From that day, I wanted nothing to do with that individual, and I made a point of expressing my displeasure at such an approach to their manager. My own manager attempted to apologise on her behalf, then suggested that we might have become old-fashioned.

Manners Never Age

Maybe we were; but good manners, in my view, can never be old-fashioned. They should always be fashionable and properly taught. Comportment, decorum, respectful address, honour, regard, and etiquette make the person and exude character.

I have worked in places where informality is the culture, yet I would still address you by name, and with deference, because I was brought up that way, and what you give out comes back to you in spades.

The Order of Greetings

Whilst I have spent four decades in the corporate world, any first contact with a person would always come with a greeting for the time of day: good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Good night is usually goodbye.

Then comes the person's name, which might be preceded by a standard, academic, religious, military, royal, or political title. Professions deployed as titles, apart from "Dr" for medical doctors, are an exercise in pompous superfluity and self-aggrandisement.

At other times, it is "Dear" and the person's name. "Hello" is for friends. Then I close my messages properly, with a variation of "regards" and my name. In speech, it is formally the greeting for the time of day; I introduce myself with purpose if required, or await a response with names and preferences.

Pronouns and Coherence

On the new trend of pronouns, especially those that challenge the natural flow of the English grammar I learnt from well-appointed schooling, I would rather use a name than defeat the ends of coherence and adherence.

Good and traditional forms of address will always establish the standard of communication and the protocols of language. If someone is too well-spoken to use expletives in any way, it is unlikely others would deploy them when speaking to you; or at least they are guarded, and moderate their language with apologies for any unfortunate slips of the tongue.

The Art of Subtlety

Maybe, indeed, I am old-fashioned. I would rather be that than uncouth and uncultured. From my youth, my mode of address has earned me consideration, respect, and a hearing. Yet if I am overly formal in beginning a message with "Dear Mr Jones", when we have always been on first-name terms, you need not read any further to know that this is an expression of great displeasure.

Subtlety and discretion; the polite turn of expression that, on first reading, seems complimentary, until some thought is put to it. It is the way of the English, an art of communication lost to many for whom a good education might have been a luxury. It is not their fault.

Curiously another courier

Someone calling me

It could have been a case of cross-communication, I would hate to think it was one of impersonation. I was expecting a courier to pick up a parcel in the one-hour window between 11:18 and 12:18, but at 11:55, I received an SMS text message that he would arrive in 5 to 10 minutes.

30 minutes later and beyond the window, I go a call that he was outside Primark waiting for me, that seemed quite strange. Why would a courier end up about a kilometre from where he was to pick up a parcel? I could hardly keep my voice down when the person at the other end of the phone said he was not familiar with the terrain.

His apparently halting and incoherent English with incomprehensible enunciation did not help me properly identify or appreciate who I was talking to as I told the person off and proceeded to write a letter to the courier company about their unprofessional service.

Not the same person

Just over an hour beyond their proposed collection window, my doorbell rang and the courier I heard through the video intercom system then eventually chatted to outside my apartment who arrived in a van with the courier company sign on it was not the person I was talking to on the phone, earlier.

At one point, I thought the courier company had called the other greenhorn off and sent this more articulate courier in his place. I wanted to be sure, so I asked. Whoever contacted me earlier was not this courier and that left me wondering who it was. I have not received a response to my inquiry on that phone number of who was apparently arriving in 5 to 10 minutes, almost 3 hours ago.

Care and consideration

It meant I had to send an updated email to the courier cancelling my broader complaint apart from the late retrieval of my parcel that should be delivered to Wales by noon tomorrow. Rather strange and concerning, I have blocked that number, now.

I cannot account for who called me when I was expecting someone else, I could have given away my address in the process of getting this lost courier to my residence and be endangered. I definitely have to pay more attention to the kinds of messages I receive and verify with clarity who is calling, making no allowances or excuses for poor communication that might feed wrong assumptions. Phew!

I am not pleased

My letter conveying my dissatisfaction went thus (Names changed to conceal identities):

Dear Mary,

I am supposed to have had John visit my residence to collect a parcel for delivery by noon tomorrow in Swansea between 11:18 and 12:18 today.

At 11:55, I received a message that he would be with me in 5 to 10 minutes, 30 minutes later he called to say he will be with me in 5 minutes only for me to receive another call that he is waiting for me at Primark.

That bears no semblance to my address which is another location with the postcode [redacted] in Manchester. That from all appearances suggests John cannot use a satellite navigator, is completely clueless about directions, or doesn't know what he is supposed to be doing.

I paid for this service and he is supposed to be a courier, if he can't find simple addresses, he is probably in the wrong job.

I am now sat in front of my house wondering what is going to happen now, it has hardly been a professional outing for your company.

Maybe someone can contact him on this number [redacted] to determine what he is up to.

To say this is untenable as a service would be suppressing my utter displeasure.

I hope you can help.

Signed

My keynote address to FEGO Class of 98

An Unexpected Invitation

I was invited to give a keynote address to the Federal Government College Odogbolu, Class of '98, on the general topics of alumni, networking, life and purpose. After a few light jokes about how I had been surreptitiously co-opted into the activity, I began my address.

This cohort of successful people are entering middle age; they are mid-career, raising families and will face challenges ahead. I suppose there was a view that I could share some of my life experiences to help them avoid a mid-life crisis and attend to healthy life choices.

It was an honour to meet the Class of '98, and I wish them Godspeed.

My Lead-in

FEGO Class of '98, you graduated in the Silver Jubilee year of your school's founding; quite auspicious.

My history with Odogbolu is somewhat long and interesting. In January 1976, we were living in Kaduna when my parents had the crazy idea of sending me to a secondary school close to where they were born, in Ijesha-Ijebu, so that I might be imbibed with Yoruba culture.

Baptist Academy, Mayflower School, Odogbolu Grammar School, Remo Secondary School (RSS); I cannot remember the school in Ibadan where I sat the common entrance examination. Did I have a life of privilege? I flew in from Kaduna, and there was someone to collect me and take care of me for the duration of my visit.

I do not know why I was not put forward for any of the unity schools, even though I realise there were opportunities for those. I suppose my primary school environment in Jos and Kaduna was a disadvantage to my becoming integrated into Nigeria. The schools were international, with a high percentage of Europeans, Chinese and Japanese, so I was not really growing into a Nigerian per se.

Odogbolu Grammar School and Remo Secondary School both offered me admission. I took the latter because the former's campus bordered on a graveyard; I had had the strangest things happen to me at ten, and that settled my decision.

Two years ago, my nephew was admitted to the Federal Government College Odogbolu (FEGO) at the age of nine. A year later, his brother, with whom he shares a birthday though they are two years apart, joined him. They are probably the youngest in their year group, just as I was in primary school and then in secondary school.

I find it strange that I am giving an address to an alumni association because, whilst I made a few friends at RSS, my memories of the five years I spent there are not ones I cherish that much. We had to be street smart, even as we stood out because of our accents. We were bedwetters; back then it was thought a weakness rather than something psychological. There was the occasional bully, and the use of collective punishment was rife. Thankfully, the core of individuality, inquisitiveness and fearlessness could not be beaten out of me.

Apart from on Facebook, I have no enduring friends from the RSS Class of '81. I met up with old schoolmates from my primary school after 41 years in 2016. I still have friends from Lacostech; from YabaTech, where no one believed I was 16 when I was admitted; and from the Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, where, on my first day, I met a junior from secondary school who was in his final year whilst I was starting afresh.

Have Your Purpose

Considering the good fortune and opportunities I had from birth through secondary school, the four years afterwards were sobering. I attended two polytechnics and ended up with nothing. My third attempt, born of travail and raw experience, widened my perspective on what I could achieve. I was no longer haunted by my past or fearful of the future. I simply determined that, by 35, I would be able to stand amongst my peers unashamed of what I had done with my life. I began to see good results already at 24.

Do Something Radical

In 2000, just after the Millennium bug issue, I was having trouble finding a new job. I was attending interviews and getting good reviews, but no offers. A mentor advised me to speak to an occupational psychotherapist, who concluded that I was suffering a mid-life crisis ten years early. His advice was to consider a career change, perhaps go back to school, or even emigrate to another country.

I took the hint and started looking for opportunities in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, I got a job in the UK and, on a day off, flew out to the Netherlands for an interview. I got that job, and with it 13 years of life in Holland.

Have a plan, do things in the interim, but do not lose your focus and do not be distracted.

Embrace Youthful Aspirations

When I was about to buy an apartment in Amsterdam, the first thing I did was ask the estate agent to feel my hands. She said they were soft. Indeed, I retorted, I do not do DIY; I want a place I need not do anything to, and please complete the deal in six weeks. She did.

The couple I bought my home from were in their mid-70s. They had lived in Eindhoven for 25 years and could easily have lived out the rest of their days there, but they bought an apartment in Amsterdam off the plan and came to live there for almost four years. During that time, she became the chairman of the homeowners' association.

Then they decided that, because of their age, they needed a place where they could receive better care. They sold up in Amsterdam for a healthy profit and bought a riverside residential care apartment in Arnhem. I still wish I could make decisions like that, whatever age I am.

Then there is my uncle, who was and still is the playful adult in my life, someone I can talk to about anything. I can be utterly irreverent, yet always respectful. He was one of the foremost insurers in Nigeria, a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Insurers and an examiner for the council.

In the space of a few years, he lost his car a couple of times to armed robbers, so he decided to move to the UK, where he is now settled. He called me one day and said he wanted to go back to school to study petroleum engineering. I asked whether he was going for a master's programme; he said he was applying for a bachelor's degree.

Obviously, I thought him too distinguished for such a somewhat lowly pursuit, but he expressed such humility in his decision to take it on.

He was already 60. He tells me the course was one of the hardest he ever attended. He had failed so many examinations from adolescence into adulthood that my father, on returning from the UK, promised him £10 if he passed. That £10 debt is still a running joke in our conversations.

He stood out throughout the course, the older man, wise from a world of experience in C-suite jobs. Students and faculty alike were always seeking his viewpoint on many things. By graduation, he had been gravely ill and was recuperating, so the university arranged to collect him from hospital to attend the ceremony. When his name was called, along with the citations, he received a standing ovation.

Such a thing can never happen if you are not ready to embrace your youth and your youthful aspirations. Do something new; assess yourself against your aspirations rather than against others; believe in yourself even if no one else does; and never let your failures define you today or in your future.

Recently, on the radio, I heard Isabel Allende asked, "How do you fall in love at 76?" She answered, "Like 26, only with a little more urgency."

Identity Is a Construct

I have a keen sense of my identity: I am an Englishman of Nigerian heritage. I arrived at that idea of who I am when I lived in the Netherlands and had to answer the question of where I was originally from.

I was born in England, grew up in England and Nigeria, then lived in the Netherlands for almost 13 years. Why am I not Nigerian? I was like everyone else until my accent betrayed me. To so many, I was the child born abroad; I was not entirely accepted in Nigeria.

My mother tongue is English, but my mother's tongue is Yoruba. I am proud to say that, even as an Aje-butter, I speak Yoruba to a very good standard. My Hausa, however, needs some work; I was in the North only until 1977.

Identity is a construct of influences: many good, some bad, and a few you need to discard completely. Accept who you are, and do not let anyone question the legitimate version of you.

On an Uber ride last week, the driver told me about his extraordinarily brilliant nephew, who had excellent A-level results but could not make it through the Oxbridge interviews to gain admission. I knew what the problem was: much had gone into academic achievement but very little into identity and personality development. The poor chap was cowed by the environment.

Community is good, but you also need to interact with wider society and have a sense of confidence, completely different from arrogance; a healthy self-esteem, completely different from feeling an impostor; and the ability to express yourself clearly, completely different from being loud and vulgar.

When I returned to the UK from Nigeria in 1990, I already had a good sense of who I was. My blackness was always part of me; anyone who had an issue with it, that was their problem, not mine. I also had a good sense of history. So, when someone trying to be offensively racist said to me, "100 years ago I would have shot you," I was immediately able to respond, "200 years ago, I would have eaten you."

Be a sleeping dog, but be ready to bite when kicked; probably take the leg off, if you must.

Let the best influences of culture, of beliefs, of location, of friendships, of communication, of reading and of learning define who you are in personality, in expression, in empathy, in humanity and in the pursuit of happiness.

Your Health Is Wealth

Ten years ago, what appeared to be athlete's foot had become painful and was beginning to weep. At the back of my mind, I thought it was serious, but I was willing it away. A residual element of my religious upbringing was interfering with my reasoning; thoughts about faith, miracles and so on.

Then I decided to visit my GP. She took one look at the sole of my foot and said, "This looks serious, I need to refer you." The first referral, two days later, led to another four days after that, because of the intervening weekend.

The professor came to examine me and said, "You cannot go home; we have a bed for you upstairs." That is how my treatment for cancer started. I did not realise how serious it was until the eighth day in hospital, when the professor came round to tell me: "We can treat this, but it depends on how your body takes the treatment. If it can, you'll be fine; otherwise, you probably have five weeks." Five weeks!

I spent 18 days in hospital and then five months of gruelling chemotherapy. Sometimes I could not keep my food down for days.

Because of cancer, I lost everything: status, wealth, my home of ten and a half years, prospects. But I did not lose hope, and definitely not the will to live.

Part of my life education had been the ability to let go of things, not to let things have a hold on me. Because of that, I have been able to go on to new things, do new things, think new things, achieve new things and prosper in life, despite the old things of the past; because they pass, and in the process you are given a better story. In learning to let go, I realised that an open hand is one that is ready to receive.

Consider your health; go for scheduled and regular check-ups. I have a better idea of my health situation than my medical notes can provide. I have been fortunate to be treated as an intelligent patient, even though, with hindsight, I have been foolish.

One identity construct that has helped me get the best outcomes for my health and treatment was telling two professors of medicine, "It is my body first, before it is your guinea pig." They listened and backed down from the intrusive and uncomfortable course they had planned.

Key Points

These are some of the key points from my address.

·       Do not be afraid of failure; be afraid of never trying.

o   I have failed at many things; the lessons have become part of my world of experience.

o   I say do it, rather than regret not doing it at all.

·       An opportunity once lost can be regained after a temporary setback.

o   I have had many setbacks, but never entirely lost opportunities.

·       Accept your vulnerabilities; they are part of your humanity.

o   I needed therapy, and when I went for it, it helped me and enriched the therapist too.

·       Embrace change and be prepared for it in every area of your life, because if you hate change, you will hate irrelevance even more.

o   I have not survived 31 years in IT by being stagnant; I have had to adapt and improve continually. I have been a self-employed contractor since 1995.

·       Learn to rest, learn to play, find time for yourself and do new things.

o   And suddenly I found this liking for classical music; travel calms me down; I love quirky things.

·       The greatest thing you can pass down is example: an example of contentment, which is not the lack of ambition; an example of resilience, so that you never fold in adversity; an example of empathy, walking a long, hard mile in another's shoes before you dare assume you know better.

o   I will probably not inherit much from my parents, but these are things that have stood the test of time.

·       Everyone has a story; you can tell yours too.

o   In the ordinariness of our lives, when you begin to count your blessings, you realise how extraordinary your life has been.

In Closing

In speaking to this alumni gathering, it is 21 years since you left FEGO. I hope it is more than the mere fact that you attended school together that has brought you here. I hope there is a friendliness that goes beyond acquaintance; a love deeper than mere concern; an engagement that ensures no one of you falls to the ground; a brotherliness and sisterliness that means each of you has another to whom you can turn for advice, direction and even admonition.

Yes, you can gather to laugh and play, but there must also be times when you speak the truth frankly and without equivocation. We all need some tough talk alongside the support to see it through. We cannot afford to be ashamed amongst true friends.

FEGO Class of 1998, I commend you: live well, live strong, live long and live happily.

Thank you.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Essential Snobbery 101: Revisting the age of respectful address and proper communication

Fathering odds

As one's age begins to reach significant numbers, you begin to realise some changes in how you are viewed and addressed.

In my case, I guess my style of formal dressing has made me stand out to be respected and accorded courtesies in ways that could be rather inconvenient for some.

The other day, I was out to a Nigerian restaurant in a Manchester suburb with a colleague from work who is, well, two-thirds my age, whilst I stepped away from our table, the restaurateur asked him if I was his father.

Chaps on the lip

Apparently, she surmised that my dressing put me in an age bracket to be his dad, and with that, some banter mixed with mirth ensued, yet it was a bit revealing. Where some people are suspicious of being addressed as ‘Sir’, it does not really bother me; yet, there are places where I expect to be addressed properly.

I remember calling a repair service, a few weeks ago, and the receptionist calling back to ask if I was the ‘chap’ – the effrontery – you wonder where they get such uncultured people from; I do not think I paused to correct her by saying I was indeed, the ‘gentleman’, with emphasis, ‘that called earlier’.

A mugshot to pose for

Then, the descent into familiarity with strangers, people addressing me as mate, whilst it might be customary for certain people to do that, I take exception to being called mate because the first image that comes to mind of ‘mate’ is more of a cellmate than a schoolmate. That Australians have ‘mate’ as a standard form of address is no attempt to point to elements of interesting history.

However, as an information technology consultant, I get many calls from recruitment consultants, and you can imagine, any recruiter who addresses me as ‘mate’ has lost me from the get-go; we will not be doing business based on that call. Certain standards of address and decorum have to be kept, and in my case, when abused or infringed, demanded – I have no qualms about such old-fashioned views.

Back to basic English-speaking

Recently, the attempt to keep standards of communication up has gone to dating forums where you get messages that leave you in near-shock. You are hailed with ‘Hey!’ and then this, ‘Wruu2’. At first, I pretended not to understand it, then I decided I should start as I meant to go. So, I responded with, “Hello, Can we try English, please?” and the response was, “Sorry, I meant, ‘what are you up to?’” It makes you wonder how technology and the ease of communication have taken us back to the equivalent of when smoke signals were the best technology of the time.

Obviously, you then realise that since many in my age range are already parents and even grandparents, ‘uncle’ and even ‘daddy’ are expected forms of address one has to accommodate without quibble. The lesson or moral of the tale being, whilst a few of us might well be old-fashioned, we do not intend to go out of fashion. Until we are gone, some things will just have to be right and proper.

Thought Picnic: Returnee Woes

This is pain

There is an interesting aspect of being a returnee that is quite uncomfortable and disconcerting. When you return home from another country after so many years away, the only thing you probably have is your identity and not much else.

The process of reintegration is being fraught by rules that do not seem to have exceptions. Resettlement is not easy and planning it depends on how you are able to leave where you were to where you want to be and the attendant responsibilities that come with it.

Soul destroyers

In my case, I am caught in a Catch-22 situation that is growing ridiculous by the day. Normally, on arrival in the UK one is to register as looking for work. My experience of the literally soul-destroying concept of being told you are not doing enough to find work that you are matched to jobs that demand nothing of you than to demean and depress you from over 20 years ago was job not what I needed at this time.

Recently, I read of the experience of a PhD holder expected to do menial jobs and not considered to be utilising his job-searching time productively if he was researching and preparing for interviews belying an inferior and pedestrian system in the UK whereas in the Netherlands they fully appreciated your skills and offered help and advice to job-seekers to help them flourish in what they really do know how to do.

Hitting the ground running

I arrived on a Friday and took temporary accommodation with a relation, by Sunday, I had obtained a mobile phone SIM and a new phone number that allowed me to update my CV with an address and number – enough to give it some freshness.

On Monday, I was getting calls and by Tuesday the inquiries were gaining traction that I landed an interview on Thursday after which I was offered a job, what had to follow were mere formalities – terms, contract and other essential personal details.

Proving an improbable

No one on entering a country within days is able to provide a proof of address in that country without exceptional circumstances to that effect. The social services will only consider a returnee habitually resident in the UK only after 3 months of arrival, before which that have no obligations though asylum seekers in dire need seem to get prompt attention.

I could not open a bank account without a proof of address and the company that was supposed to handle my payroll then said they will not release payments for my work until I could prove where I lived, however, I cannot claim many of the official documents like utility bills, job centre correspondence or government agency letters when I am in temporary residence still trying to find my feet.

Exceptionally unique circumstances

In essence, even though I am ready, able and engaged to contribute my bit to society, I am being treated like a homeless man, my independent streak to just get up and do not appreciated and there does not seem to be some exception to cater for people with my kind of unique circumstances.

The unintended consequence of anti-money laundering laws are hitting on honest and innocent persons ready to earn a living but frustrated by the system. Meanwhile, we read of looters of African treasuries washing their ill-gotten wealth through British banks with amazingly breath-taking ease.

Do something

I have put the onus back on my employer and Payroll Company, having offered my identification and met with their personnel, they know what I will be earning and it is unlikely that with the contracts I have signed with both, I can at the same time be an agent of money laundering at their behest.

What is required is a bit of common sense and intuitiveness on their part to validate my existence and facilitate my reintegration.

When I moved to the Netherlands over a decade ago, my employer stood as surety guaranteeing the necessity I had for opening a bank account and consequently securing rental property – that is what I am asking of them – the emails will go back and forth until I have gotten them to stand and stand tall on my behalf. I should not be agonising about these things, I want to concentrate on my new job and perform excellently in what I know to do.

Thought Picnic: MLK suffers another misquote

A pastime of quotes

When I was an adolescent I collected quotes, I had an old diary which was just well suited to recording quotes from many sources including newspapers. We had at least six daily newspapers and I voraciously devoured the content from the news to reviews of issues and opinion pieces.

It was a time that you could trust Nigerian newspapers to pay attention to quality of news, quality of copy, objective analysis and most of all proofreading, I suppose the phrase will be they were committed professions of the art of communication and journalism.

Now, I have always risked a level of facetiousness that has had some label me as pedantic, I will beg to differ; there is no pedantry in the verification and confirmation process, having an engineering education just compels you as a matter of course to be procedural and to avoid approximation when precision, exactness and accuracy is required.

Quotes awry

Once again on my Facebook news feed provided another gem for a blog which is topical as it is essential in the way we communicate on the social networking space.

A quote was posted thus: “If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

I had no reason to doubt this was spoken from the lips of Martin Luther King, Jr. but considering recent events about wrongly attributed quotes [1], I felt anything attributed should and must be scrutinised and verified, more so, I expect everyone to be alert to that fact and go the extra mile to ensure they are not caught in another urban legend of misinformation.

Trust, but verify

So, I searched for the quote on Google and it revealed a number of interesting points that I tried to highlight in the Facebook post I made to the author of that Facebook status. My Facebook entry appears within brackets the rest of the text serves as a running commentary.

[I think is essential following the quote attributed to MLK following Osama bin Laden's death to ensure that he is quoted correctly, completely and in context.]

I suppose I have already introduced the context of this blog, but this is how I tried to address the issue.

[The exact excerpt of what you have posted is - "If the Negro succumbs to the temptation of using violence in his struggle for justice, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate life of bitterness, and his chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos."]

I have emboldened the differences between the quote on Facebook and the original quote itself; whilst the context seems to have been maintained, it has been generalised and it has shifted from a struggle for justice to just the struggle.

Retracing the context

[The quote was specific about the Negro, hence the one you published being paraphrased should have said so.]

It is probably pedantic to dwell on the person of the Negro but I have opportunity in this blog to flesh out the issue and contend that there was more to this quote than had been offered and then for the changes made to the quote which itself had been used by others it has lost its literality, however, on reflection it had not become a paraphrase but at the same time it was incorrect because the specific context had changed.

[It was part of a longer speech delivered on the 3rd of April 1957, titled, Justice without Violence http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/liberation_curriculum/pdfs/justicewithoutviolence.pdf ]

Martin Luther King, Jr. had just returned from the Independence Day celebrations in Ghana and he gave an address to the Institute of Adult Education at Brandeis University for the Helmsley Lecture series and this quote appears towards the bottom of the second paragraph on the third page.

Giving the quote a body

[And when the Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project uses it, it publishes a much longer contextual quote of which you have published just a quarter.]

[The second in the list at this site http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/quotes_contents ]

The authoritative archives [3] of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s works are kept at Stanford University and that is where one should go for anything attributed to the great man.

When using this quote it is placed in the context of the paragraph in which it was made.

“Now the question that we face this evening is this: In the light of the fact that the oppressed people of the world are rising up against that oppression; in the light of the fact that the American Negro is rising up against his oppression, the question is this: How will the struggle for justice be waged? And I think that is one of the most important questions confronting our generation. As we move to make justice a reality on the international scale, as we move to make justice a reality in this nation, how will the struggle be waged? It seems to me that there are two possible answers to this question. One is to use the all [too] prevalent method of physical violence. And it is true that man throughout history has sought to achieve justice through violence. And we all know the danger of this method. It seems to create many more social problems than it solves. And it seems to me that in the struggle for justice that this method is ultimately futile. If the Negro succumbs to the temptation of using violence in his struggle for justice, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate life of bitterness, and his chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. And there is still a voice crying into the vista of time saying to every potential Peter put up your sword. And history is replete with the bleached bones of nations and communities that failed to follow this command.”

Nuances of speech to text

I will not begin an exegesis the grammatical correctness of any of the text but it goes without saying and it the speech the use of “and” is conjunctive throughout the paragraph linking clauses and thoughts even though they inappropriately appear to commence sentences.

The “Now” at the beginning of the paragraph infers that the speaker was about to make some statements based on the groundwork laid earlier in his speech and the crux of the whole paragraph is balanced on one basic question. How will the struggle for justice be waged?

What he says from then on should be the fundamental guiding principle for non-violent struggle and it shows why the excerpted quote does no justice in correctness, completeness and context to what Martin Luther King, Jr. said on that day.

[Thank you :D ]

I think I have made my point, always seek the authoritative source of quotes you intent to share and I will also add if Bible verses are being shared the specific translation used should be shown.

Sources

[1] Anatomy of a Fake Quotation - Megan McArdle - National - The Atlantic

[2] Paraphrase - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] King Institute Home @ The Stanford University