Opinion: What would Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Do?

As we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are reminded of how his legacy is a distinct one that transcends color, religion, class, and politics. His cause for equality and peace remains salient today, more than 50 years after he appeared on the national stage. Considering the events of the last year, with the three-week long race riots among the minority underclass in France, and the shocking inequalities between the black and white citizens of New Orleans exposed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it is clear that Dr. King's dream has not yet been fully realized.

The University of Michigan has been at the forefront of the battle for civil rights in last decade with the University and its laws school defending affirmative action in the 2003 Grutter and Gratz Supreme Court cases. The next decisive civil rights confrontation in Michigan is slated for the 2006 Election when the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative appears on the ballot. Instigated by former University of California regent Ward Connerly, the MCRI proposes to end racial preferences, and therefore many affirmative action programs. Proponents argue that the initiative's passage would ensure Dr. King's vision of a "colorblind society," while critics argue that doing so would slow advancement toward Dr. King's goal of racial equality. With both camps claiming ownership of Dr. King, I was left to wonder, what would MLK do?

Having successfuly pushed two similar initiatives in California (Proposition 209) and Washington (Initiative 200), Connerly would enjoy a "three-peat" in successfully using electoral politics to influence racial policy if the MCRI is passed in 2006. These policies' impact reveals that they are a step backward in the advancement of women and minorities. At UC Berkeley, enrollment of African-American students dropped dramatically from 7.8 percent to 3.7 percent between the years Proposition 209 was enacted, an over 50 percent drop. After I-200 was enacted in Washington, The Seattle Times reported that the share of Seattle public contracts awarded to female- or minority-owned businesses dropped by more than one quarter. With effects such as these, it seems dubious as to whether Dr. King would have supported the MCRI.

In contrast to the claims of MCRI proponents, Dr. King's less renowned teachings show that he supported race-based preferences. The campaign often cites King's famous call for individuals to be judged "not by the color of their skin" but by the "content of their character;" however, they have misappropriated the doctor's vision by excluding his other beliefs from their arguments.

According to Columbia professor Eric Foner, King promoted programs that boosted employment through racial quotas, as well as race-blind programs to lift up the poor in his last book, Where Do We Go From Here. He had no qualms about the "special treatment" these programs might afford to blacks: "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years," he wrote, "must now do something special for him." He justified these preferences because he did not believe the letter of the law alone could achieve equality. In King's 1964 writing "Negroes Are Not Moving Too Fast," he writes, "Despite new laws, little has changed...The Negro is still the poorest American -- walled in by color and poverty. The law pronounces him equal -- abstractly -- but his conditions of life are still far from equal."

Statistics on poverty, education levels, and employment among today's minorities evidence how the socioeconomic gap King wrote about in the 1960s still exists, with minorities and women continuing to comprise a disproportionate number of Americans living in poverty. In 2003 the National Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that African-Americans made up 11 percent of the total workforce, but over 20 percent of the working poor (employed individuals still living below the poverty line), while women compose 46 percent of the workforce but composed 52 percent of the working poor. Enacting the MCRI would not only end programs that address these inequalities, it would also make it essentially impossible to collect valuable gender and race data that help justify their need.

Dr. King did not view affirmative action as the only way to achieve equality, and neither do his modern political descendants. He saw racial classifications as one means to bring disadvantaged groups "into the mainstream of American life." Americans, and business students especially, consider merit-based economic and educational opportunity a central part of national life. However, we cannot ignore history or the "barriers to entry" that exist outside of individual control, and therefore must consider racial reality as one of many factors in some selective processes. Instead of lifting these barriers to equality, the MCRI would raise them. The bill's language is currently being revised for the ballot; but if you hear references to Dr. King amidst the political circus come November 2006, remember how he would have cast his vote.