Within a few months, companies agreed to hire, promote and train a percentage of African Americans. Dr. King supported affirmative action because he never confused the dream with American reality. Despite new laws, little has changed. The Negro is walled in by color and poverty. Unlike Connerly, King never pitted need-based programs against programs to achieve integration.
Integration makes America whole.
Justice cannot be achieved without changes in the structure of society. There is no white path to power, short of social disaster, that does not share power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity. In 1965, a reporter chided King about so-called preferences. We have ample precedents for special compensatory programs. America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of veterans.