	On the other hand, there are aspects of King’s ethos that could conceivably cause the white moderates he hopes to win over to reject his message. When he says that, “the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler 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.” By being so overt in his belief that white moderates are the main obstacle of social justice reform, King could alienate the less moderate whites who may have supported him. King’s pathos or passion which he directs towards white moderates may come across as a condemnation rather than a call to action. Compared to his ethos, in which he interprets the struggle for civil rights through the lens of Nazi Germany, King opens himself up to potential criticism from the people he is attempting to persuade. Everybody likes to imagine that they would aid the Jews if they lived in Nazi Germany; few people, especially white moderates, like to imagine themselves as agents of oppression in America. They are comfortable believing that they would help the oppressed in times of need, but to tell them that they aren’t may be too stark a reality for some white moderates to handle.
	This rhetoric used by King is very direct and intense. Whether he was effective or ineffective in appealing to the white moderate, King realized that this intense message to his audience was to help bring recognition to the injustices that had been occurring for seemingly too long. African-American communities’ previous pleas for change have been constantly ignored, and King feels that the only appropriate response to the injustices that have continued to occur is to hold these people accountable through direct action.
