The Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) holiday ironically honors values despised by many on the left. King’s intellectual and moral challenge to judge people by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin, is in direct opposition to leftists’ narrative that judging people’s value begins with their skin color.
Keep in mind that many on the left never agreed with MLK’s nonviolent movement of protest in the 1960s. Stokely Carmichael, the originator of the black nationalist movement (Black Power) and the Black Panthers, once stated, “When you talk of Black power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created.” Many followers of this movement enrolled in colleges in the 1970s, earned doctoral degrees in African studies (or grievance studies), and now lead or have major influence in local, state, and federal agencies, academia, the arts, and media.
While the radicals were developing leadership roles, the majority of Americans accepted MLK’s vision of judging people by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. Hence, many people would use the phrase, “I don’t see color” to confirm their buy-in of that vision. In fact, based on a Gallup poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans, black and white, rated race relations either good or very good back in 2002.
Ironically, it was in the first black president’s second term when race relations worsened. Now, less that 44 percent of Americans rate race rations as good or very
