HOUSTON, November, 23, 2013 — Fifty years ago last August, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered one of the most memorable speeches of modern history. “I have a dream,” he said, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
King will forever remain one of the most courageous and visionary Americans to have ever lived, but it is truly unfortunate that his vision of a colorblind, race-neutral society is no longer the goal of the black community or of white liberal elites.
King campaigned for and won the right of black men and women to be treated fairly and equally under the law. Today, however, he would not recognize the state of the black community and the racial lens through which many blacks view each and every situation. The following interaction from a recent cable news show acts as a perfect example.
On MSNBC this Wednesday, the “Martin Bashir Live” show featured guests Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller and Professor Michael Eric Dyson. They discussed Oprah Winfrey going around the world and making comments like this to the BBC: “There’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because [President Obama is] African American. There’s no question about that and it’s the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody’s thinking it.”
Dyson, a black man, interrupted Lewis, a white man, which led to a minute or so of confusing cross-talk. Dyson then loudly professed that Lewis was “deploy(ing) the very principles of white privilege to silence a black man on the panel because you don’t want to talk about race.“ Almost immediately following this exchange the host, Martin Bashir, took Dyson’s bait, and not wanting to be deemed a racist, deployed the very principle of black privilege to silence the white man, and allowed Dyson to finish his monologue.
Using the color of your skin to shut down your political opponent is the essence of what King fought against, yet now many blacks, and their condescending white, liberal allies, commonly do just that.
If America at large, and the black community in particular, is to succeed and prosper, blacks must not be made to feel as if they need and deserve special accommodations. White liberals have done extensive psychological damage to blacks by sending the message, through both government sanctioned affirmative action policies and cultural political correctness, that black people cannot compete at the same level as the rest of America.
To solve this illusory problem, white liberals make feeding, housing and clothing their black clients a government priority. They genuinely believe that blacks cannot do these things for themselves. This belief is contrary to history and to the facts, and has caused severe damage to the black community. It is time to recognize that another liberal idea with good intentions is greatly hurting the very people it is intended to help.
There is plenty of evidence that blacks can be extremely successful if government sanctioned racism is avoided. In the two industries where affirmative action is not applied — professional sports and entertainment — the percentage of black Americans is greater than their share of the overall population. In the two industries where a truly free market still exists, blacks are disproportionately successful.
There is no reason to believe that blacks would not be just as successful in other industries, if systemic and government sanctioned racism were removed from the equation. The facts, numbers and statistics that support the argument that race-based government and social policies are damaging to blacks are clear and are available here.
Conservatives believe that all men are equal in the eyes of their creator and under the law. Therefore, any law that treats anyone differently based upon skin color must be repealed, if we are to honor the legacy of Dr. King, as well as that of the founders.
Affirmative action is only one tool that white, liberal elites have used to force the black community into dependency. Teachers’ unions have destroyed education in lower income areas and put many black children at a huge educational disadvantage from the earliest grades. Minimum wage laws have guaranteed that individuals with less education will not be offered jobs they otherwise would have and will not develop marketable skills.
Welfare programs have sapped the spirit and destroyed the soul of many blacks who would otherwise be valuable contributing members of society. This trifecta of liberal ideas, intended to create dependency upon the federal government, have done just that. All three must be gradually replaced with policies that empower the individual.
Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, the only black person on the Court, directly and succinctly articulated the best argument against treating people differently based on skin color earlier this year. In his opinion in a case concerning affirmative action policies at a university he wrote, “Slaveholders argued that slavery was a ‘positive good’ that civilized blacks and elevated them in every dimension of life, a century later, segregationists similarly asserted that segregation was not only benign, but good for black students.”
He went on, “Following in these inauspicious footsteps, the University would have us believe that its discrimination is likewise benign. I think the lesson of history is clear enough: Racial discrimination is never benign.” He added, “The University’s professed good intentions cannot excuse its outright racial discrimination any more than such intentions justified the now-denounced arguments of slaveholders and segregationists.”
Facts and history are stubborn things; unfortunately, white, liberal elites are even more stubborn. They want and need the votes of the black community, and will do everything possible to keep blacks on what former U.S. Rep. Lt. Col. Allen West has repeatedly referred to as “the 21st century liberal plantation.” If white, liberal elites have their way, blacks will be completely dependent on the state, unless and until they rise up and demand to be treated equally, following in the giant footsteps of the great Dr. King.
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