The Negro is walled in by color and poverty. The law pronounces him equal abstractly but his conditions of life are still far from equal. I cannot see how the Negro will be totally liberated from the crushing weight of poor education and economic strangulation until he is integrated with power into every level of American life. Unlike Connerly, King never pitted need-based programs against programs achieving integration. King insisted that white Americans are beneficiaries, not victims, of social policies that bring alienated Americans together.
Integration makes America whole.
Chaos or Community. Justice cannot be achieved without changes in the structure of society. This is a multiracial nation where all groups are dependent on each other. There is no white path to power, short of social disaster, that does not share power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity. Opponents of affirmative action, who reject King's vision of shared power, should not pretend to be King's missionaries.