Is There a Secret to Justice?

Justice The human race has been face-to-face with inequality and injustice since the beginning of time. First there was the inequality of religion, than there was the inequality of gender, the inequality of social status and most recently the inequality of color. All of these inequalities have been eliminated one by one with the belief in freedom. Looking over all of the events that eliminated inequality such as the French revolution and Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech a question comes to the mind.

A question asking whether there is a "secret" to justice and if there is one what is it? If there is a secret to justice, perhaps poets will be the first to tell. Maya Angelou, one of America's foremost poets, talks about the spiritual secrets of African-Americans in her essay "Graduation." At the close of the autobiographical essay, Angelou states, "If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness," (134).

What Angelou means is that poets are the protectors of deep wisdom, and that wisdom is to be considered sacred. Just as a shaman protects the secrets of his or her trade, a poet also cloaks secrets within the powerful disguise of imagery. Angelou's reference to idol worship of poets is a sly reference to the ways that African culture has traditionally valued the poet's power to protect the secrets that keep a people strong.

White culture has been hostile to African culture, partly because whites are not privy to the secrets that African-Americans possess. Those secrets are directly related to justice, because they are the secrets of how to overcome oppression. "Slavery cured us of that weakness," Angelou says with sarcasm (134). Worshipping poets as the protectors of secrets is far from being a weakness; it is instead the greatest strength of a people to value poetry. It is poetry that bolsters the spirits of young African-Americans who might otherwise believe the white person's lies.

The white person believes that there is no secret to justice because it has been taken for granted that whites are born free and in possession of political, economic, and social power. Known as white privilege, this apparently occult knowledge of how to gain power is not available for people of color. Angelou understands that people of color have their own secrets, and those secrets are equally as valid and important as the secrets of the whites -- which are not secrets at all.

The only secret to white power and privilege is the use of force over others. Sometimes the things that seem most esoteric or secretive are actually not secrets at all. In "Where Do You Get Your Ideas From" Ursula LeGuin eliminates two of the most common myths about how fiction is written. The first myth is that there is some sort of "secret" to being a writer, and that writing is a mystical activity. The second myth is that stories start from ideas. LeGuin breaks down both of these myths.

She claims that stories do not come from ideas, but from psychic material that has been digested and finally "composted" before it is possible to "grow a story" (537). The myth that writing requires knowledge of a secret is false for the plain reason that writing is real work. Writing requires skill, time, and commitment like any other job. Being a good writer does not involve any secret other than the understanding the importance of practice, passion, and dedication.

Just as there is no secret to being a writer, there is also no secret to justice. Freedom is earned with hard work. In "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. says "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."(613) There is no secret to freedom, justice, and equality. African-Americans "waited for more than 340 years"(613) for that secret to be revealed, and finally it was clear that justice demands hard work, and passion.

Just as there is no secret to writing fiction, there is also no secret to equality. One must catch the opportunity to demand social justice, and work hard to ensure that justice. From Angelou's perspective, the hard work of ensuring social justice is a psychological struggle requiring collective action to ensure victory. In this way, her message is identical to that of Dr. King. African-Americans must bind together in the face of tremendous oppression. Not only must they bind together, they must generate together a sense of pride and conviction.

As King states, freedom "must be demanded by the oppressed," (613). Angelou shows how African-Americans demanded their freedom: by becoming a "proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race," (134). Although Angelou makes it sound like there might be a "secret" to overcoming oppression, that secret is simply the "dedication of our poets" to communicating the wealth and power that lies within the soul (134). Poets, a category including "preachers, musicians, and blues singers," according to Angelou, possess a sort of magical power that delivers the oppressed into the light of justice (134).

According to LeGuin, there persists a myth that anything that seems difficult is achieved with magical powers. Allowing the public to believe in the myth that writing is something magical allows the writer power over the reader. The writer does in fact have the power to "control" the reader, when the skill of writing has been mastered, as Le Guin states. A story from real life can illustrate the ways that keeping secrets confers a great degree of power. My grandmother baked delicious cookies.

Her cookies were so delicious, that many people would drive a long way just to come to our parties and have the legendary cookies. Many people would ask my grandmother what her "secret" was, because their cookies were never as gooey or perfectly sweet. My grandmother would laugh and say, "It's a secret," and this way, people would continue to believe that her cookies were endowed with some magical power. One day, I asked my grandmother why she did not divulge her recipe.

She said, "They wouldn't taste as good if they knew." In this way, my grandmother had a little power over other people. King also implies that making something seem a secret is a way to have power over them. Whites have allowed blacks to persist in the myth that skin color is magically conferred onto specific groups of people. Religious leaders have gone far as to suggest that God supports inequality.

This is why King directly refers to a primary sources for religious arguments that show that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."(612) From Augustine to the Bible, the religious references King uses prove his claims that inequality is wrong. Angelou also mentions the way that African-American preachers have used the Bible to teach messages of hope, equality, justice, and truth. White power is a myth; and white power did not come about in some secret way.

The only reason why whites are in power is with the use of systematic force. Slavery was a grand system that enforced white power. The methods by which whites have retained a position of political, economic, and social power is no secret. It is also no secret how and why non-whites in America can achieve justice. This is not to say King supports the use of force to take back power and create social justice.

On the contrary, King's program of social activism refuses violence altogether to encourage a new vision of justice and equality. "For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest," (614). The way "the bright sun spoke to our souls" in Angelou's graduating class was through poetry and song (133). According to King, some African-American leaders hoped to use the same skills and techniques that whites had used over the years, including violence.

King says that "normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action."(613) The secret to justice is no secret at all: it is hard work. In many ways, it is easier to release anger with aggressive actions. It is far harder to control yourself. It requires spending time in jail and listening to the patronizing words of those who would continue to insult.

The hard work of social justice pays off eventually, just as the hard work of writing often pays off for authors like Ursula LeGuin. For Angelou's graduating class, it almost seemed like hard work in school was all for nothing. Slavery was over, but blacks had no chance of becoming "Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins," (130). Whites had forever banished African-Americans to a position of perpetual servitude. "We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous," (131).

The graduating class was filled with elation and excitement about what the future might bring, and the spirit of the young children was high because they had worked hard. Some students, like Angelou, was at the top of her graduating class.

The white men who spoke at the address tried to crush the spirits of the young people by informing them that their schools would forever be inferior to whites, and that whites would only be too happy to sit back and be entertained by black athletes rather than work alongside them in the business or political arenas. Therefore, hard work is not the only thing that brings about success either on the literary arena or the political arena.

LeGuin states, "my gift for and interest in music and sewing were weak; so that I doubt that I would ever have been a good seamstress or pianist, no matter how hard I worked," (537). Passion and interest are keystones for success in social justice too. Angelou's passion for poetry is what allowed her to eventually rise above oppression and become the poet of presidents. Dr. King likewise agrees that passion is important for the achievement of social justice.

"The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained."(615) Without the "yearning for freedom," there would be no motivation to change. There must be a sense of longing, need, and desire.

"Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."(616) The situation needs to be felt not just by African-Americans but also by the whole nation, which suffers from "injustice everywhere." The belief in justice is important for social change. Activists would not march on the streets if they did not care; they would stay comfortably at home. They would not risk being locked up in prison if they did not believe.

As King points out, the African-American community has long waited for freedom that was promised to them in the Emancipation Proclamation. The "white moderates" that King addresses his letter have not "seen the need" so the need remains. King and hos fellow activists work in whatever way they can to achieve social justice, and their work is structured in a strong personal desire for freedom. The desire for freedom is both personal and collective.

The "Negro National Anthem" sung at Angelou's school graduation is the collective expression of passion and desire for the freedom of all oppressed people. Le Guin also states that, "there are so many variables, so many 'secrets,' some teachable and some not, that you can learn them only by methodical, repeated, long-continued practice," (536). A simple task can be mastered easily, and whites were mistaken to assume that justice is something simple. From a position of whites, it is easy to claim that justice does not require activism.

Justice requires a lot of hard work. In fact, African-Americans have had to work harder than whites to prove their capabilities just as women have had to work harder than men. In reality, there are no shortcuts. The settlers in the United States struggled a great deal for their justice. They fought with the Native Americans. The European settlers then fought with the British, in order to secure the birth of a new nation conceived in freedom.

Discounting the hard work of the settlers is something that white Americans will not do; rather, white Americans celebrate their Revolutionary War heroes to the point of mythologizing them. Then it is powerfully ironic that white Americans would deny the right of black Americans to also fight for their rights and demand their freedoms. When the two white men deign to speak at Angelou's graduation, they try hard to maintain a position of power.

They leave assuming that the community will laud their great efforts, believing the poor blacks to be gullible and willing to remain in a position of servitude. For a few minutes after they leave, the graduating class sits under a cloud of despair. Then they start to sing together. The singing raises their spirits. Poetry provides not only hope, but also knowledge, that personal and collective triumph is on the horizon. For Angelou, triumph in the form of justice is something that does seem to.