The nation’s foremost opponent of government-mandated race-based preferences, Ward Connerly, takes aim at fellow African-American Barack Obama in a piece for National Review Online. Connerly says Obama stands with those who would not allow the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream of a color-blind society.
[D]espite our progress, there is one issue that stands in the
way of our completely fulfilling King?s dream; and that is race-based
affirmative-action preferences. On this issue, Sen. Obama has cast his
lot with those who seek to ignore America?s racial progress and who,
instead, prefer to sustain race and ethnic preferences that impede our
progress.…
The question that screams out at us is why, in the face of all of
America?s progress with regard to race, Sen. Obama does not fully
embrace the complete fulfillment of King?s dream by supporting efforts
to ensure that all Americans are ?judged not by the color of their skin
but by the content of their character.? Anyone who truly wants to pay
homage to Dr. King should complete the journey that he charted.
