On March 22, I was in the public square in front of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and stood with the crowd protesting against hate and violence directed at Asian Americans. Many speakers of every race and color took turns to break the silence to speak out against hate based on race and national origin.
The crowd listened silently and yet, in their own way, broke the silence against violence with their small placards and large signs. As a Chinese American, I was moved to tears. In March, six women — four women of Korean ancestry and two of Chinese — were mercilessly shot to death at their workplaces near Atlanta by a white gunman seeking relief from his self-proclaimed “sex addiction.”
Regarding the massacre in Georgia, President Biden said, “Our silence is complicity.” These powerful words are an echo of the even more powerful words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a native son of Atlanta, who on April 4, 1967 affirmed that “Silence is betrayal.”
Speaking to a packed house of people of many races and faiths at the Riverside Church in New York City, Dr. King began by saying, “I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice.”
To me, an Asian American, Dr. King’s words resonate in my soul.
That night, Dr. King spoke to stop the violence being inflicted in Vietnam by America. We must never forget the full caption of that speech: “Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break Silence.”
Dr. King found himself called to speak out against the brutality of sending the young men of this country — white and Black — to kill "yellow" men, women and children, and in turn to be killed and maimed. In his own words, Dr. King said: “This business of…injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.”
For Dr. King, this speech was politically incorrect and personally dangerous. He was very much dependent on the support of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was the principal advocate for sending more troops and escalating the war. It was dangerous because he crossed the Rubicon to becoming a prophet of peace and love for all people without regard of color or national origin. This speech sought to transform the war in Vietnam into a war against poverty. Dr. King added, “I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.” He was on the threshold of becoming an immortal prophet for his country, if not a prophet for all humanity.
Truly, Dr. King was not silenced by political correctness or by personal fear. He was called to speak out against hate, a demon he knew only too well: “We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”
He was well aware of the extreme danger he had placed on his own life: “And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.”
In 1967, Dr. King was pained not only by the violence against his race, but also by the violence that was gathering within his own supporters.
Today, in the year 2021, the United States is still in the grip of hate and manipulated by purveyors of cruelty. With the uncontrolled proliferation of guns, hate very easily is acted out as lethal mass violence. Unless we turn away from hate, the murders of the six humble Asian women will not be the last mass shooting to bedevil and torture this nation.
No one in America will be safe — no man, woman or child — from the scourge of hate. We must recall that, as Dr. King said, “returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Now, all the people of this diverse nation cannot remain silent; instead, our rising voices must come together in peace to say: “Violence will be resisted, but only with non-violence, poverty with opportunity, disease with health care, injustice with justice, alienation with community, ignorance with wisdom, and most importantly, hate with love,”
On April 4, 1968, exactly one year of breaking his silence to stop the war against Asians, Dr. King was shot and killed by a gunman in Memphis, Tennessee, when he stepped out from his motel room to speak in support the underpaid sanitation workers of that city. As an Asian American today, the American Prophet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. occupies a sacred space in my heart and mind.
Charleston C.K. Wang is a Cincinnati attorney who practices immigration and nationality law. He was a former president of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission.
This story was lightly edited for clarity and space
