The Supreme Court of the United States has again visited the use of race-based preferential treatment in the application and selection process of prospective students for several State-sponsored institutions of higher learning and will render a decision later this year that will probably impact the whole concept of the government policy known as "affirmative-action." Proponents for the continuation of affirmative-action demand that it is the duty of government to provide remedies for those races that have been "historically discriminated" against. Since they brought up the subject, let us take a closer look at History.
On the continent of Africa, one tribe of black Africans would wage war against another. They fought for land. They fought for water. They sometimes fought to get even with their enemies for the time their enemies got even with them. As usual in war, there were prisoners captured from the ranks of the enemy's military forces and there were those innocents - women and children - who would be captured by the opposing side and carried off as the spoils of war. All of these people would be made into slaves.
The slave's owners would trade their slaves just as they would any other commodity with other peoples they would come into contact with. The tribes from the inner portion of the continent would trade with those tribes on the outer portions. The tribes along the coasts would trade with seafaring people from all around the world. Black slaves ended up in Rome, India, China, and eventually in the Americas.
This process of enslavement was not unique to black Africans. The several tribes, clans, and nations of Europe, Asia, the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Americas would also make war with each other and the vanquished would often become the slaves of the conquerors. Since there was a market for slaves, there was a trade in slaves amongst all the peoples of the world, regardless of the race or ethnicity of the seller or buyer. Native Americans traded their fellow Native American slaves with the white settlers in exchange for blankets, tools, and "fire-water." The Chinese who came to America brought with them their Korean, Japanese, and fellow Chinese slaves to sell to whomever had the funds to pay the price they demanded.
The main point of my little History lesson is to show that no race or ethnicity has a monopoly on being the victims of the crime of slavery, or even racial discrimination, and, at the same time, none has a monopoly on being the perpetrator either. To suggest that some have to be compensated for what was done to them in the past is to be particularly selective, subjective, and childishly unrealistic. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
"Affirmative-action," broken down into in basic components, is preferential treatment through discrimination by the government for one race or ethnic groups at the expense of others. It is not a remedy for past transgressions but merely the continuation of that which it is supposed to resolve with the roles merely reversed between who is the winner and who is the loser. When the government is allowed to dictate how we all will associate, accommodate, and interact with each other, then we all are losers. It is like trying to make a "Right" by adding two "Wrongs" and it cannot be good for the "Gander" if what was originally done to the "Goose" is considered an act of evil.
"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. "
I hate to say it, Martin, but there are people, invoking your name, that are turning your dream into a nightmare and causing greater animosity between the races which is leading to the disunion of our nation and the break-up of our modern American society. This could have been their plan all along...