We Don’t Need to Agree With MLK About Everything to Hold His Dream

AMAC Exclusive – By David P. Deavel

Reports are now in informing Americans that, as with the lie about Critical Race Theory not being taught in schools, so too the common claim that children are not being treated differently in our educational system. First, schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, and now several schools in nearby Loudoun County have been revealed to have not notified students of winning National Merit Awards. Why? Well, if the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology’s case, in which most of the students who were harmed are Asian, is any indication of the rest, it seems to have been done based on an “equity” strategy that is aiming at “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.” Racial disparities in outcomes are so bad that these students who put in a lot of work to succeed must be denied their prizes.

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. think?

Oh, right, we’re not supposed to ask that question.

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Monday and many conservatives will indeed quote the line from his “I Have a Dream” speech. You know the line: it’s his wish that his “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.” They should quote it even though people on the left will say they shouldn’t.

Last year syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts dedicated a column to urging, “Dear white conservatives, stop using MLK quotes.” The reason why? Because Dr. King also had other quotes that were not necessarily things with which conservatives would agree. King seemed to think the system was often rigged against the poor and that solutions included a “guaranteed income” and possibly “democratic socialism.” King believed that white Americans had a long way to go in understanding the challenges of black Americans. He believed racist police brutality was a real problem. He believed white racism was much more than just a few token extremists. He believed that there might be an obligation to help black people achieve equality in America after slavery and then Jim Crow. He believed that America should “be true to what you said on paper.”

Of course on those political ideas, many conservatives actually do believe the system is often rigged against the little guys in practice. But we’ll take a pass on any guaranteed income schemes or democratic socialism. Those don’t raise people up so much as they make everybody miserable.

And we have no problem admitting that King was right that many Americans did not realize all of the barriers that had been put in place to keep black Americans down or that there was more racism in white society than just a few extremists. Nor do we even deny that, as a society, there might have been a need to do something extra to help black Americans. But, let’s face it: that was fifty-five years ago. Since then the difficulties of black Americans have been covered in depth in school for several decades now and there is indeed much less anti-black racism in society. Police brutality may still be a problem in some places, but the much greater problem is the skyrocketing crime that comes from a lack of policing—and those that pay the price for that crime are primarily black people. Last year a report showed that in 2020 when the “Defund the Police” movement really got moving, there was a 43% increase in murders of black people. And while murders seem to have slightly decreased from 2021 to 2022, overall violent crime has continued to rise in the U. S.

But what conservatives really do agree with is the last line Pitts quotes from King about being true to what the country put on paper. And that is precisely where conservatives return to King’s famous line. What the country put on paper was precisely a dedication to equal treatment under the law and the proposition that people should indeed be judged as individuals and not simply as members of a race or possessors of the proper skin color.

Yet the Fairfax and Loudoun County Schools—and no doubt revelations of many more schools that have done similar things will be forthcoming—have seen that statistical disparities exist between races and have decided to punish mostly Asian students for succeeding.

This kind of thing is far from an anomaly. In Arkansas, Steven Haile, who has fostered over 300 children, applied for a position on the State Social Work Licensing Board because he is white and there are racial quotas to meet. So too in almost all American universities. Most people know about the case before the U. S. Supreme Court challenging affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina that discriminate on the basis of race. So too a new lawsuit filed against six Texas medical schools by a white male denied admission in the 21-22 school year uses data obtained from the schools about applicants that shows that whites, Asians, and males must have significantly higher scores to gain admission than non-white Asians and females.

Are these people being judged according to the content of their character? Or are they being judged by their skin color and their sex? Whatever our society might owe to black people to make up for past discrimination, is present discrimination the answer? Or is this sort of policy creating new divisions in our society?

Most of us know the answer. No matter what left-liberals such as Leonard Pitts think, we don’t need to agree with every view of Dr. King in order to affirm and keep quoting his words about a society in which racial discrimination is past.

That was what our country put on paper. That was his dream. And it should be ours.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative.