The Negative Peace of White Moderation & How to Uproot it in Your Organization

Have you ever stayed silent to protect your funding?

Have you ever watched your organization soften its language, avoid a difficult conversation, or stand down from a fight it knew it should take on — because the cost of speaking up felt too high?

If so, you're not alone.

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. named this dynamic, which many now call white moderation. He wrote:

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says:

'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.'

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."

To bring forth the loving justice and collective liberation that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought so hard for, we must be willing to step into the fray and experience the tension that has always been part of the fight for justice.

To transform the conflicts we face in our society, our organizations, our communities, and our homes, we must muster the courage to speak the unspeakable and name what needs naming.

Too often, however, people avoid saying the thing, preferring to remain in an absence of tension — that negative peace that Dr. King wrote about.

In today's episode, my guest Vu Le and I discuss white moderation in depth — how it keeps us silent, how to be more aware of when it’s showing up at work, and how to move beyond it so that we can fight fascism far more effectively, both in our organizations and in the rest of our lives.

You don’t have to work in a nonprofit to love this conversation — I certainly did. And I’m especially grateful for all the inspiring stories that Vu shares. I think you will too.