Colorblind Ideology is a Form of Racism

[LostOne4Ever]

54. He dreamed of a FUTURE where people would be judged on the content of their character

But he knew that we were far far away from reaching that point. If you actually review kings works beyond one speech you would see that he recognized that one's skin color does matter in our current reality.

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]http://academic.udayton.edu/race/03justice/justice06.htm[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Was King opposed to explicitly race-conscious and color-aware laws and policies? In a 1965 interview, he was asked whether a proposal for a multi-billion dollar program providing preferential treatment for Blacks or any other minority group was fair. King's answer merits full quotation: I do indeed. Can any fair-minded citizen deny that the Negro has been deprived? Few people reflect that for two centuries the Negro was enslaved, and robbed of any wages--potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America's wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation. . . . Accordingly, King's support for affirmative action and the color-awareness of his views cannot be doubted. His response to the question of the fairness of affirmative action could not be more direct or explicit--King believed that affirmative action was appropriate given the centuries of slavery and the massive theft suffered by African Americans at the hands of those who oppressed them.

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]http://racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1109:affirm25-1&catid=42:affirmative-action&Itemid=171[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]he exploitation of King's name, the distortion of his teachings for political gain, is an ugly development. The term "affirmative action" did not come into currency until after King's death "but it was King himself, as chair of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who initiated the first successful national affirmative action campaign: "Operation Breadbasket."
In Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities, King staffers gathered data on the hiring patterns of corporations doing business in black communities, and called on companies to rectify disparities. "At present, SCLC has Operation Breadbasket functioning in some 12 cities, and the results have been remarkable," King wrote (quoted in Testament of Hope, James Washington, ed.), boasting of "800 new and upgraded jobs [and] several covenants with major industries."
King was well aware of the arguments used against affirmative action policies. As far back as 1964, he was writing in Why We Can't Wait: "Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic."

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]King supported affirmative action";type programs because he never confused the dream with American reality. As he put it, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro" to compete on a just and equal basis (quoted in Let the Trumpet Sound, by Stephen Oates)

Saying that MLK was colorblind or advocated color blind policies is a refuted rightwing talking point, along the lines of them trying to argue that he was a republican.

Truth be told, MLK was hated and demonized by the right as a socialist. If he were alive today, he would still be just as hated by the right and would be demonized in the same way that they demonize his successor Jesse Jackson today.