Speak On It: A Call for Social Action (Part 2 in a series)
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
by Roderick Vereen
Keynote address delivered at the Church of the Incarnation in Miami, FL on the occasion of the observation of Social Justice Sunday, November 14 2010.
(From Part 1 of 4) In Sociology “social action” refers to an act which takes into account the actions and reactions of individuals. The concept was primarily developed in the non-positivist theory of Max Weber to observe how human behaviors relate to cause and effect in the social realm. For Weber, sociology was the study of society and behavior and must therefore look at the heart of interaction. The theory of social action, more than structural functionalist positions, accepts and assumes that humans vary their actions according to social contexts and how it will affect other people; when a potential reaction is not desirable, the action is modified accordingly. Action can mean either a basic action (one that has a meaning) or an advanced social action, which not only has a meaning but is directed at others and causes action (or inaction).
As a child growing up in a military family, I learned first-hand what one’s commitment to service meant. My father was in the United States Army and was stationed in Germany when I was born. We resided in Germany for 7 years, but as I reflected back on my early years I didn’t recall my father’s presence in the home that often. My mother would often advise me that he was away in Vietnam.
In 1969, our family moved to Miami, Florida and I attended public school in Lake Lucerne, Opa-Locka and then in Carol City. One of my elementary teachers at North Carol City Elementary, Mr. Thomas, gave me this book “Why we can’t wait” written by Dr. Martin Luther King, when I became the Student Council President and he would make me stay after class every day and read from it. This was my first book I had ever owned outside of class and I’ve had it ever since.
Here it is, 41 years later and the writings of Dr. King are still relevant today. At that age, I really did not have a grasp as to who Dr. King was, but I knew he was important because Mr. Thomas would not have kept me after school all that time reading about someone insignificant. And the more I read about Dr. King the more I understood Dr. King did not necessarily want to lead the civil rights movement, he was chosen by the people to be their leader. Dr. King himself said “It was the people who moved their leaders, not the leaders who moved the people.” “When such a people began to move, they create their own theories, shape their own destinies, and choose the leaders who share their own philosophy.”
Many of us today, benefit from the civil rights movement, but how many of us actually participated in the movement? How many of you actually marched? How many of you subjected yourselves to being hit with police batons, hit with stones, bit by dogs, sprayed with water hoses, spat on by racists, or arrested? The truth is, not many, yet we feel entitled to the benefits of another’s labor. Their “Social action.”
How many of you heard the saying “everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die”? The same holds true regarding the civil rights movement. Everybody wants equal and civil rights but nobody wants to fight for them. They want everyone else to fight for them and then reap the benefits. That’s called Social inaction! And where there is social inaction, there is no movement.
Another thing I learned over the years was that Dr. King was not alone in his struggles for equality for Negroes. In fact, there were those that came before him that set the ball in motion. Specifically, there was Dorothy Height, who recently died at the age of 98. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the name, Dorothy Height is considered to be the “Godmother” of civil rights. She was a leading civil rights pioneer of the 1960’s. President Obama called her a hero and the “godmother” of the movement, noting she “served as the only woman at the highest level of the civil rights movement—witnessing every march and milestone along the way. She was an American administrator, educator, and social activist. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for forty years and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. She believed in social action. She would meet with white women and black women to discuss the issues they both faced in order to bring about unity among the races. That was Social action! (Part 3 of 4 continues tomorrow...)
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