For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my "race," unless I was permitted to put "human." The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put "white," which is not even a color let alone a "race," and I sternly declined to put "Caucasian," which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King's campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you "black."
20 January 2008
MLK day thoughts
Provided by Christopher Hitchens in the Wall Street Journal. Key quote:
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I like what Ron Paul says on the subject: People are individuals. It is a collectivist idea that labels should be put on groups. Rights belong to individuals. The Constitution protects the rights of individuals.
It is no wonder that the grassroots fundraising efforts for the Ron Paul presidential campaign has picked MLK day as a day to drop a lot of contributions at the campaign online contribution web page.
A slogan used by the Ron Paul campaign is Peace, Prosperity, and Freedom. This is the same as what Martin Luther King, Jr. called for.
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