ed over a period of time that not all whitesare evil, King entered the scene already fully aware that "good" whitesexisted. In fact, where Malcolm underestimated the goodness in whites,King seems to have overestimated it. He talks about his overestimating ofgoodness in "Letter from Birmingham Jail." "I guess I should have realizedthat few members of a race that has oppressed another race canunderstand...the deep groans and passionate yearnings of those that havebeen oppressed" (244). Yet, even after he found that he did not receive asmuch white support as he had hoped for, King never lost faith in the whitecommunity. Altogether, these views of white society as expressed by Malcolm andKing are reflected in their methods of fighting racism. Malcolm, whosupported the use of violence to achieve equality, most likely reached theconclusion that this was the only way to fight the whites based on hisoriginal view of them as heartless and uncaring. One place in Malcolm's"Ballot or Bullet," where his categorizing of whites with violence andcruelty can be found, is during a passage in which he compares the whiteman with a Guerrilla warrior. "You've got to have a heart to be aGuerrilla warrior, and he (the white man) hasn't got any heart" (267). Malcolm sees the whites as a violent group. He most likely came to histheory, that nothing important could be accomplished without violence,through the reasoning that only violence can be used to stop a violentgroup. Violent people would not understand the use of peaceful means toreach an agreement. Therefore, it is not really the violence itself whichhe supports as much as it is the reason for using it. He justifies his useof violence by trying to explain that there is no other way to get throughto the white people. In contrast, King sees the whites more as victims of violence thancreators of violence. He blames the violence, itself, on evil forces. In"Pilgrimage to Nonviolence," Kin...
