I have a dream 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.
This quote comes from Dr. Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech which in itself argues that the concept of race is nothing but a social construct and that skin color isn't a reason for a man to be treated differently under the law. While King's movement made great strides (even in the face of government spies/plants and people who didn't want the challenge to the status quo) he died without seeing his vision fully realized.
While there will always be individual people who will see race and nothing else (Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Pat Buchanan, Frosty Wooldridge, David Duke, Louis Farrakhan to name a few) government should've supported the ideal which it doesn't. As far as I'm concerned there is no point in 2012 to release data or even engage in the collection of data that divides people based on race. What relevance does it have to say the Asian males are more unemployed than Black males? Last time I checked being unemployed is not a desired situation to be in no matter who you are. It's not just unemployment data, high school graduation rates, college attendance rates, poverty rates, abortion rates, the most recent census, etc, etc, etc. Yes I understand that news organizations and others will publish figures and polls based on race as well but the principal applies to them as well. Such data based on race does nothing but help the people King fought against since they'll likely use it for their various class/race warfare based agendas.
Did King advocate things that sounded good on paper but wrong in practice yes he did but that shouldn't discount what he tried to achieve as a whole. Programs such as affirmative action perhaps made sense of the time (I was born in 1984 and I'm 27) but really have no place in 2012. Does it hurt not to get a job based on your skin color yes but it's better for a bigot to reveal themselves off the bat than further down the road which could make one's life a living nightmare. It's not just applying for a job, would you eat somewhere in which the restaurant manager uses a racial slur at you? I sure as hell wouldn't I rather the SOB call me a spic right off the bat then try to poison me later. As the saying goes, your enemies will stab you in the face, while your "friends" will stab you in the back. Using the government gun on a person because of their skin color is bad but is as well forcing people to like each other. People are assholes and thats the way it will always be, it's wrong headed to think that a government gun can change that. Government is supposed to be colorblind, not hindering one group of people while helping another.
Will King's vision ever be fully realized maybe, maybe not, I can't predict the future. Government seems to benefit from the race baiting and affirmative action baiting industries who paints the other as the enemy of the people.
