“Letter from Birmingham” by Dr. King focuses more on
expressing his motives on non-violent actions while Obama’s letter is to inform
the audience about how racism still exists and as a whole country we can stop
it. Both, Dr. King and Obama greatly express on racism and segregation along
with using historical events to back up their argument. I find Dr. King’s
letter to be more compelling due to more examples and even though he is only
administrating to the clergymen he does a good job at explaining how he feels,
what is going on in Birmingham, and the tone he has throughout his letter. Dr. King
greatly expresses how disappointed he is in how his movement was defined
“unwise and untimely” just because he wants to put an end to the injustice
going on Birmingham. Upon reading his letter I felt as if I was one of the
clergymen dealing with the situation. The similarities that I found in the two
passages were that they both promote to stop racism. Obama’s letter deals more
with explaining his background history connecting it with racism which I found
quite interesting. The reason why is because he grew up in an era where
segregation was barely lifting off. It was sad that he couldn’t be seen in
public with his father because he was a white man. He faced many adversities
due to that. Obama’s letter makes a strong point due to his story and using
many historical events like the Jim Crow Laws, and Brown vs. Board of
Education.
I personally agree with what Maria has to say when contrasting Dr.King’s “Letter from Birmingham” to President Obama’s “A More Perfect Union”. Dr. King constantly is stressing and lecturing in his letter how he is so against the violence and wants to stop the violence. President Obama on the other hand focuses mainly on how as a nation, a a whole we need to come together to stop racism and lets all act as a nation should. In comparison, both of these authors, King and Obama support each of their arguments by backing up what they have to say with facts that have happened in past history, mainly having to deal with the issue of segregation. Personally, I am going to have to say that King’s “Letter from Birmingham” presents a more compelling argument. The reason why I say this is because all of MLK’s points are valid and a lot of people can simply relate to what he is saying. Any age,gender,ect. I do personally think that Obama’s letter was very effective and he as well as King made very strong, concrete, and valid points in his letter. I give them both a round of applause and I believe that both of them did a very excellent job at standing their ground and defending their arguments with cold hard facts that a lot of people in this world can relate to. They both touched on very important subjects in this world, that of course need to be looked at and hopefully fixed!
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