Does This Mean King Was Wrong?!

On August 28th 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. ascended to the forepart of the Lincoln Memorial and gave an oration to the people of the nation which mirrored the universal principles found in the Declaration of Independence. King proclaimed on that summer day,”that all men should be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. “ From this great address, a Civil Rights Act ending the scourge of segregation and Jim Crow was passed with bipartisan support and national acclaim. The nation believed it had created proper legislation that would match the ideals and hardships of the Civil Rights Movement. As the generations have passed and a new era has unfolded, the nation finds itself with new challenges with an old but very odd flavor. The hope of a color blind society is questioned and mocked by the new vanguards of antiracism. To argue for an individual to be judged by the content of his character is now perceived to be a vestige of racism and oppression. What?! Did I hear that correctly? Essentially the meaning, themes and goals of the civil rights movement were not only misguided, they were foolhardy. Did you get that! The new vocabulary of the antiracist movement essentially turns the notion of the colorblind society on its head and calls such idealistic language fallacious and racist. But why is it so? The new priestly class of race relations explain even though personal examples of overt prejudice may not be forthcoming, discrimination has now taken on a more odious form. They further philosophize that discrimination is not only found lingering within the established institutions of society, it is embedded and is a part of the daily routines and operations of these institutions such as the criminal justice system, the educational system and the mass media. This primarily explains why people of color are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and why local public schools are ill preparing young people. The concept of institutional racism defines people by race and gender and takes agency away from the individual and puts the locus of results on the society. An individual is in jail not because he has committed a crime (probably against someone of his own race) but because the overt discrimination previously found in individuals in society is now perpetuated in far less subtle forms within the insitutions of society. Such a philosophy is the extreme opposite of the traditional goals of the civil rights movement and of the American liberal compact. Belief and acceptance of the philosophy of institutional racism undermines the basic tenets of the concepts of individual freedom and equality. The baleful notion of institutional racism contorts individuals into large amorphous collectives where one’s identity has been reduced to race or gender. Your place in society is determined by your race and gender and the outcomes are not the results of the fruits of exercising your personal liberty but by the constraints that have been placed on you by the institutions of society. Therefore, the new purveyors of race have turned the entire American experiment on its head and the defenders against these attacks have quivered and cowered in fear in the face of threats and intimidation.