Dr. King and the Modern Diversity Movement on Campus
by Mick Paskiewicz
As Martin Luther King Jr. Day passed, I took a moment to reflect on what this man's dream really was about and how so called proponents of his message today are contributing to the issues of race and society. I found myself reading his most famous "I Have a Dream" speech and realize just how far people have escaped his ideas almost as much as those who he spoke out against in his time of injustice. I first think back on the setting of this great expression of justice and equality. He delivered it in 1963 beneath the statue of a man who one hundred years prior liberated a whole race of people and to a group of people not bound by skin color but ideas.
By examining the setting alone, I realized this alone tells me a great deal the reasons for why he fought so hard. The Lincoln Memorial represented a man who freed black slaves so they could make something for themselves in this nation, not so he could make it for them. Abraham Lincoln was a man who firmly believed in American principles such as all men being created equal in the eyes of God and that every man should be viewed equally under the law as well. Such beliefs empower people to make of themselves what they could regardless superficial characteristics but with regard to what they so choose to make with their opportunity.
The audience who had joined Dr. King in his quest for justice: they did not consist solely of black Americans who had been oppressed under Jim Crow laws but with white Americans as well. If race was not the common thread, what was? As I said earlier, it was ideas and also principles that united these individuals. Martin Luther King Jr. saw a nation which the focus should have been placed on ideas, principles, and character, not a nation build on racial unification and division. This is because when one race unites it burns bridges between the other races in our society. Ideas and principles are the only common thread this nation shares and emphasis should be placed on those more than anything else.
I finally actually read the transcript of the speech and am flattered to see that my assumptions about Dr. King are true. He came to Washington with thousands at his side as equal people under God but not under local laws, despite that the founding documents of this nation prescribed such rights to them. All he wanted for all people was the equality the God and the constitution promised so they could make something for themselves and reap the benefits of the greatest nation much as Lincoln had tried to do a century prior to this occasion. He wanted "to make justice a reality for all God's children."
Let us place this in the context of our current society. While I cannot speak for the "red hills of Georgia", "the snow capped peaks of Colorado", or "ever hill and mole hill of Mississippi", I can speak for my community which is an American university, more namely DePaul, where the issues of race burn in the cauldron of ideas more than anywhere else. How is this university adhering the King's ideals when it helps shape the its students' principles and knowledge as they pursue truth? If he was looking for an institution where his children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" I would reluctantly tell him to look elsewhere.
I could write a novel about the events that indicate the departure from Dr. King's dream, if DePaul ever adhered to them to begin with. However, it has almost become common knowledge that faculty and staff roam this campus like thugs and bullies, strong-arming administrators of the integrity and purpose of an university with the force of collective guilt. Today, on the other hand, I want to look at the ideas and tactics that drive this shallow diversity movement and how they are the extreme opposite of the intentions of the Civil Rights Movement's greatest and most noble figure and how they pervert the true purpose of the university.
We now know King fought for individuals being "not judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character," but what do these proponents of diversity stand for? They wish people be appointed, accepted, and hired due to their race, and they believe ideas and merit should be rendered meaningless in the eyes of others since skin color, in their eyes, defines a person more than the contents of their heart and mind. While under their policies, race can grant someone a position in a company, an enrollment at college, sympathy from liberal academics, and even the assignment of an university's president's council, but as long as their ideals are in place, people will be tied to their skin color shackling their diverse ideas and individual accomplishments.
Other adverse effects of their message is the elimination of equality as seen in Martin Luther King's dream. By judging by skin color, one establishes race preferences, automatically destroying any notion of racial equity. Racial inequity in any sense fosters hatred towards others based on the superficial traits of their skin, something they cannot choose. Focus on race suppresses ideas alone, and the more sickening aspect of the diversity movement is the deliberate intent to suppress speech and expression in favor of race and the extent to which they will implement their will. Such tactics and motivation also strike against the core of King's model for how this nation can provide its promise that all men are created equal.
Dr. King said himself, "In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred." Facilitators of diversity on American campuses indulge in the "cup of bitterness and hatred" in order to not advance humanity but advanced individual races, while simultaneously holding them back from their full potential as Americans and individuals. What does such removal from true ideas of equality do to institutions where young individuals are shaped and pursue knowledge?
First of all, the purpose of the university is to engage in all ideas in order to seek a higher truth. Notice, the purpose is to engage in all ideas not all races. Ideas and truth are the fundamental core of the university's existence in society. One attends these higher institutions in order to gain knowledge about the world and themselves. If indoctrination continues in this country that the core of learning is about skin color and such, then this nation is headed down a dark path of varying forms of racism and suppression of ideas and speech. While race is the focus of such a developmental period of ones life, such emphasis will tie someone more to their race, rather than their principles and ideas that can propel them much further in society.
Equality stems from God and the people who have laid the framework for this country's founding and those who still lead it today. If equality is not our God given right then where else would it come from? No man has the power to make us all equal, only God, and if we abandon such a notion we leave ourselves vulnerable to future oppressors. Our founding fathers began to implement these rights from God and Dr. King believed that. King's dream sets us all free to make of ourselves what we please as much as possible, but the restricting protectionist policies of the diversity movement take us all back to the time of King in the most negative sense of those times.
Mick Paskiewicz is the Vice President of the DePaul Conservative Alliance
On Tuesday, January 15, the DCA will be hosting Conservative Coming Out Day, taking place in the Student Center during day classes. 