Dr. Martin Luther King, in his most famous speech, spoke of his dream wherein men would be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their hearts. Dr. King’s speech challenged us to live up to the true meaning of “All men are created equal”. That’s a reasonable expectation in a democratic society. Now, some forty years later, are we living up to that value?President Lyndon Johnson pushed legislation that established quotas for minority hiring and enrollment in colleges and universities. The reasoning was something like: “since the population of the country is about 12 percent black…the makeup of educational institutions and businesses should be about 12 percent black”. That, in affect, meant lowering the standards that most businesses used for hiring and the standards that most colleges and universities used for enrolling new students. This was all done in the name of ‘making up for past injustices’. Perhaps it was necessary for our society to be forced into accepting blacks into mainstream institutions. Racial prejudices that had endured for decades and even centuries, had to be confronted and challenged.
Dr. King was right that we needed to live up to the true meaning of our Democratic principles. All men and women are created equal in their rights and ought to be so treated in the eyes of the law.
I believe, if I were a black American, I would be offended by the very concept of affirmative action. Why should the bar not be held as high for someone whose ancestry goes back to Africa instead of Europe or Asia? It is an insult! Were I to be hired in a job or accepted in a college or university I would never know if it was because I had earned it or because I was being judged merely “by the color of my skin”.
Surely this has done more to harm the cause of equality and justice than to promote it because it assumes that black Americans aren’t ‘good enough’ to judged on equal grounds with whites and Asians.
Even though white Americans fought a civil war in which half a million died to end slavery. And, in a huge act of affirmative action, white Americans elected a president with black skin, cries of racism still abound. There are still those who demand that the government do everything for them.
The government is supposed to change the perception that non-blacks have about blacks. This is a trap that most minorities fall in to. It is something that the government will never do…nor is it the function of government to do so. If black, and other minority, Americans want to change their image in the perception of others then they need to clean up their own communities instead of whining that the government should do everything for them.
Black Americans voted overwhelmingly for Barak Obama…because he was black! It is just as racist to vote for someone solely for the color of his skin as it is to vote against someone for the same reason. The fact is that white Americans elected a black president and it still isn’t enough for blacks!
It is time all Americans pay heed to what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood for. It is time for us to live up to those ideals and judge each other, not by the color of our skins, but by the content of our hearts. The REAL affirmative action is affirming that it is what is in our hearts that matters.
