Ironic Award

[NOTE: November 30. An important UPDATE has been added to this post!]

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is seeking nominations for its 2010 “Fulfilling the Dream” award, an annual honor bestowed upon those who personify and promote “the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” One of the 2009 winners was “Students United for Nebraska, the student coalition that fought a constitutional ban on race- and gender-based affirmative action (the ban passed).”

Giving an award honoring Martin Luther King’s goals to a group that opposed a measure prohibiting the state from discriminating on the basis of race suggests several other awards in the same spirit that could be given:

• A George Wallace “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” Award from the University of Alabama to the individual or group that has done the most to promote the racial integration of Alabama schools and colleges;
• A “Scientific Integrity and Transparency” Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science to the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit for its demonstrated devotion to protecting the openness and integrity of scientific research;
• A “Promoting Racial Equality” Award from DISCRIMINATIONS to BAMN for all its work defending the ideal of colorblindness….

I could go on, but will add only that I am available to consult with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Martin Luther King Jr. “Fulfilling the Dream” awards committee … for my usual fee.

UPDATE [30 November]

Thanks to Robert VerBruggen for his kind words this morning on National Review Online’s Phi Beta Cons, and welcome to those who followed his link here. Please make yourself at home.

VerBruggen’s post is so good that I even agree with his disagreement with me … or would if I believed what he attributes to me. Let me explain.

He writes “I’m a huge fan of Rosenberg and his blog, but I’m afraid I’m not convinced.” What he’s not convinced of, in effect, is that those of us opposed to racial preferences should put King on a pedestal.

No doubt, King was a great leader who helped urge the country to redress a serious wrong. He rightfully occupies a position of great respect in American history. But participants in our current racial debates often see him not just as worthy of respect but as infallible — they feel the need to claim he would have supported them, and see this support as crucial. The idea, so far as I can tell, is that King is the antithesis of racism — if you agree with King, you’re definitely not racist, and if you disagree, you might just be a racist. So whatever you believe, it really helps if you can argue plausibly that King believed the same thing.

Regarding affirmative action, the problem for modern conservatives is that their arguments aren’t all that plausible. If you not only respect and consult but defer to King on racial matters, you probably need to support something very close to racial preferences.

VerBruggen provides quotes from King’s later writings to support the view that he would probably support what we would now call preferential treatment, concluding:

Now, let’s put all this evidence together in context: (A) King supported what he called “compensatory or preferential treatment” for blacks and saw fit to use another country’s preference policy as a loose example of what America should do; (B) what King actually proposed was, in effect, a giant wealth transfer from whites to blacks for the purpose of atoning for slavery; (C) modern-style race-based preferences weren’t politically feasible back then, and King was a very astute politician. How likely is it really that King would oppose preferences if he were alive today?

Now I completely agree with this. That’s why I’ve always taken care to endorse the principle King expressed in his “I Have A Dream Speech,” rather than making any version of the “if King were alive today” attempt to enlist him personally in my cause. In fact, over the years I’ve made something of a big deal of rejecting the “if King were alive” argument, beginning with What Do We Honor When We Honor Martin Luther King? (And Who Are “We”?). And in Another Shallow “If Martin Luther King Were Alive Today”, I argued that

not only the appeal but even the actual meaning of that principle is not dependent on what King may have thought when he uttered it, and certainly not on what he may have come to think 45 years later if he had lived….

The fact (if it is a fact) that had King lived he might have abandoned his long-standing commitment to colorblind equality, as the NAACP et. al. did, neither changes the meaning of the principle he articulated in 1963 nor compels anyone else to join his ghost in abandoning it.

In between those two posts, in Original Intent And Original Meaning [And Martin Luther King], I developed this argument at some length. After discussing the “original meaning” (as opposed to “original intent”) school of Constitutional interpretation of Randy Barnett, Larry Solum, and others, I wrote (please excuse long quote):

In a recent post discussing some of the fallout from Martin Luther King’s birthday, I asked “What Do We Honor When We Honor Doctor King? (And Who Are ‘We?’).” There had been many protests of President Bush laying a wreath on King’s grave, nearly all of them criticizing him for betraying King by his opposition to racial preferences. Indeed, nothing seems to send preferentialists around the bend and over the top faster than critics of preferences quoting King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, as we always do.

And they always respond with one version or another off “if King were alive today” he would be a strong advocate of racial preferences. I have some reservations about this assertion, but on balance I suspect it is true. After all, all King’s followers, the NAACP (which had advocated a strong version of colorblindness in court for decade after decade), and virtually the entire Democratic party did an about face on colorblindness starting in the late 1960s, and there is no compelling reason to suppose that King himself would have stood against this trend.

Taking a page from the original meaning book, however, we can see that the proper response to the posthumous King’s probable position is, So what? King’s specific intent does not determine the meaning of the principle he evoked, either for his contemporaries or for subsequent generations. [P.S. It is also worth noting, however, … that when we play the “if X were alive today…” game, we are not talking about actual intent but predicted intent, which is far different.] Of course in this case the text in question is not so dense and opaque, like “due process” or even “equal protection.” What part of wanting people to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin is so difficult to understand?

Now, King’s speech is not a part of the Constitution (at least not of its text), but it has achieved a well-deserved iconic stature. It gave voice to an understanding of equality that traces it roots back at least to some of the abolitionists, that achieved partial but limited success in the Reconstruction Amendments, and that, finally, was embedded in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the year following King’s delivery on the Mall.

Thus I beg to differ with a commenter on my King’’s birthday post linked above. Begrudgingly, “[f]or arguments sake,” she was willing “to admit the possibility that one can disagree with another’s ideals while still honoring the person.” I believe those of us who continue to resent benefits or burdens being based on skin color are honoring the meaning of Martin Luther King’s ideals much more fully than preferentialists who argue that if he were alive today he would agree with them.

Writing, as I am, about fifteen minutes from Monticello, it seems all too obvious to me that there are some ideals that are not discredited simply because their authors fail to live up to them.

In short (and by now short will be welcome), I continue to think it ridiculous for the University of Nebraska to give an award honoring “the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” (emphasis added) to those who defend state agencies awarding benefits and burdens based on race.