Idag är det tydligen Martin Luther King Day i USA. För mer än fyrtio år sedan sade han i sitt berömda ”I have a dream”-tal följande: ”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”. Till detta säger jag bara: ”Amen!”

Tyvärr har det emellertid inte blivit så i USA. Varför? Edwin A Locke skriver i sin artikel ”What We Should Remember on Martin Luther King Day”:

What has happened in the years following King’s murder is the opposite of the ”I Have a Dream” quote above. Color blindness now has been replaced with color preference in the form of affirmative action. No amount of rationalizing can disguise the fact that affirmative action involves implicit or explicit racial quotas, i.e., racism.

Consider the realm of work as a case in point. Taking jobs away from one group in order to compensate a second group to correct injustices caused by a third group who mistreated a fourth group at an earlier point in history (e.g., 1860) is absurd on the face of it and does not promote justice; rather, it does the opposite. It promotes racism. You cannot cure racism with more racism. Singling out one group for special favors (through affirmative action) ignores the fact that people are individuals–not interchangeable ciphers in an amorphous collective.

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