Robert's "long game" is to dismantle affirmative action

[Enrique]

47. that is RW disinformation

I hate to see it spread at DU, but at least it gives the opportunity to set the record straight.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1292

(...)

The 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."

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).

In a 1965 Playboy interview, King compared affirmative action-style policies to the GI Bill: "Within common law we have ample precedents for special compensatory programs.... And you will remember that America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of veterans after the war."