Martin Luther King And Affirmative Action

Eve Tushnet and Ampersand have had several exchanges over whether or not Martin Luther King supported, or would support, affirmative action.(Thanks to Geitner Simmons for the lead.)

Although most debates over what so-and-so would do if he were alive today don’t take us very far, this one is interesting, in part because it has been conducted with good grace on both sides. Briefly, Eve Tushnet emphasizes the colorblind ideal expressed in King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, and Ampersand cites several sources indicating that in fact King did support special compensatory programs targeted to blacks. Read the whole thing, including the comments on Ampersand’s site.

There has always been a certain amount of tension in the civil rights movement, as there was with King personally, over the degree to which it emphasized living up to the traditional, neutral, non-discriminatory principle that everyone should be treated “without regard” to race, on the one hand, or advocating special, compensatory treatment for blacks, on the other. These approaches are not necessarily at odds in every particular, but they often are, and the arguments underlying them usually are at least somewhat inconsistent.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to resolve that tension here. I do want to point out that here, as in most historical debates, context is everything, or at least almost everything. The term “affirmative action” had not become the hot button issue it is today by the time King died. In large part that’s because it was not then understood to imply racial favoritism as it is today.

The phrase was first used in the context of race in President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925, signed March 6, 1961. Its first two “Whereas” clauses were:

WHEREAS discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin is contrary to the Constitutional principles and policies of the United States; and 13 CFR 1960 Supp.

WHEREAS it is the plain and positive obligation of the United States Government to promote and ensure equal opportunity for all qualified persons, without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin, employed or seeking employment with the Federal Government and on government contracts…

And it then specified:

The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. (Emphasis added)

Executive Order 11246, signed by President Johnson on September 28, 1965, was almost identical. Under “Contractors’ Agreements,” it specified:

(1) The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. (Emphasis added)

Thus, even if MLK had affirmatively supported “affirmative action,” it would not have meant what support for affirmative action means today, which is racial preferences. Ampersand is correct in pointing out that MLK supported programs targeted specifically at blacks, but it does not follow that he supported whites and blacks being judged by different standards, a practice that is at the core of preferential admissions.

This is of course all speculative, but I can easily imagine King supporting, say, a scholarship program for poor blacks. It is much harder for me to imagine him supporting the University of Michigan (or any other) admissions office having a different standard for white and blacks, lowering its standards for blacks in order to admit a fixed (or, in Michigan’s term, a “critical mass”).

But even if I’m wrong about what King would have supported, I still feel right about what I support.

Say What? (1)

  1. Xrlq January 8, 2003 at 2:23 pm | | Reply

    “This is of course all speculative, but I can easily imagine King supporting, say, a scholarship program for poor blacks. It is much harder for me to imagine him supporting the University of Michigan (or any other) admissions office having a different standard for white and blacks, lowering its standards for blacks in order to admit a fixed (or, in Michigan’s term, a ‘critical mass’).”

    A third possibility is that King would have supported some racial preferences as a transitional measure to right past wrongs (at least as to those indivduals who had been personally discriminated against in the 1960s and earlier), but would have opposed subsequent efforts to prolong these preferences decades after the fact. This view is consistent with the oft-quoted colorblind passage of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, at least to the extent that MLK did identify it as a dream, and not necessarily as a reality that could be achieved overnight.

Say What?