Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society. They are contrary to our constitution and laws.
--Thurgood Marshall on behalf of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 1954
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.
--Dr. M. L. King, Jr., at the Lincoln Memorial, 1963
Free your mind, and the rest will follow.
Be colorblind, don't be so shallow.
--En Vogue, Free Your Mind, 1992
Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man. And I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You’re not going to say, “I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.” Hear what I’m saying?
--Morgan Freeman, interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, 2005
The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
--Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the Court in Parents Involved, 2007
I don't pretend I don't see a person's skin color any more than their height, their build, or their attractiveness. What I do believe is that justice should be colorblind, that the law should be colorblind, and that we should treat people in accordance with the Golden Rule--as individuals. Such a belief is anathema to today's left.
One of my favorite moments when the kids were growing up came when a cohort of kids joined the school at the junior high level, and one had a fairly obvious African-American name.
ReplyDeleteOur kid was standing in a group, including a couple new kids, when I went to pick him up. I hadn't put names to faces yet, so I mentioned the name of the of probable African American and asked our kid which one he was.
He said: "he's the one who plays basketball" (totally unhelpful for identification purposes when none of them were playing basketball at the time), "he's the one from xx school" (again, unhelpful).
He kept answering in ways didn't actually visually identify the kid, and it didn't seem to cross his mind that one of the easiest ways to identify him would have been to say "he's the black kid".
That made me happy.