"Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our
common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept
newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify
killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We
make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and
ammunition they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too
often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the
shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad
fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting
riots have by their own conduct invited them.
Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this
much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation,
and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from
our soul.
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly,
destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence
of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the
violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men
because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a
child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in
the winter.
This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to
stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us
all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is
there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must
be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you
teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the
policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you
threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to
confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies - to be met not
with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with
whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common
dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear
- only a common desire to retreat from each other - only a common
impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final
answers.
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our
fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to
enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our
own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the
terrible truths of our existence.
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and
learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of
all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be
built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short
life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too
great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we
cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those
who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same
short movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the
chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what
satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin
to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those
around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder
to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and
countrymen once again."
-Robert F. Kennedy
