When Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech on August 28, 1963, “Negroes” were second-class citizens in America: often denied the right to vote, denied the right to marry outside “their race” in most parts of the nation, deemed inferior to whites, consigned to the most menial of jobs, denied access to the tennis courts and golf courses of our nation, not allowed to obtain lodging in most hotels and motels, and otherwise constrained in nearly every facet of American life, solely because of skin color. In Dr. King’s words, “the Negro . . . finds himself an exile in his own land.”

At the time of Dr. King’s “dream” that his four little children would “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,” Sen. Barack Obama — a man whose mother was white and whose father was black — was just two years old.

Although he often said that he might not be with us when we got to the “Promised Land” of full freedom, Dr. King gave the country that he loved so much an assignment. Telling us that his dream was “deeply rooted in the American dream,” Dr. King urged America to “rise up and live out the true meaning of your creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

In the fullness of time, the American people have done precisely what Dr. King urged us to do: We have worked diligently to create a nation in which skin color is not a barrier to opportunity.

All Americans owe a debt to Martin Luther King Jr. It was his “dream” that altered America’s approach to race and profoundly changed our nation from one with different levels of citizenship for blacks and for whites to one in which equality is the law and “colorblindness” remains the national objective, despite the intrusion of “diversity” pursuits at all levels of our lives.

And, yet, despite our progress, there is one issue that stands in the way of our completely fulfilling King’s dream; and that is race-based affirmative-action preferences. On this issue, Sen. Obama has cast his lot with those who seek to ignore America’s racial progress and who, instead, prefer to sustain race and ethnic preferences that impede our progress.

When Obama takes center stage on August 28, 2008, to accept the nomination of the Democratic party to be its candidate for president of the United States of America, the symbolism of the moment, in the context of King’s dream, cannot be overstated. While it would be a gross overstatement to suggest that all the demons of America’s racial history have been exorcised, it is indisputable that the American people have traveled far down the road toward the attainment of King’s colorblind dream.

In his insightful book, What Would Martin Say?, Clarence B. Jones poses the question of what Dr. King would say about affirmative action were he alive today. As King’s personal lawyer and speechwriter, one of his closest advisers and confidants, Jones is certainly in a position to answer this question.

Here is what Jones has to say:

Because he didn’t live long enough to see these policies implemented as they are now, his [King’s] allegiance to intellectual honesty would have led him to consider the totality of what affirmative action has wrought. . . . The real question is what Martin would say now, after taking inventory of where we are today. And where we are, he’d undoubtedly admit, is far from where we were on the day he was murdered. There has indeed been progress, an astonishing amount of it. . . .
In his absence, the country [has] become as colorblind as any society of human beings ever could be, and . . . young black Americans lucky enough to come of age early in the twenty-first century can participate fully in the American Dream without the manacles of racism holding them down. . . .
After applauding the programs, quotas, set-asides, and preferences that helped make at least some of this progress possible, he’d end them all — every last program — by shouting, “Thank God almighty, we’re free at last.”

The question that screams out at us is why, in the face of all of America’s progress with regard to race, Sen. Obama does not fully embrace the complete fulfillment of King’s dream by supporting efforts to ensure that all Americans are “judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Anyone who truly wants to pay homage to Dr. King should complete the journey that he charted.

– Ward Connerly is president of the American Civil Rights Institute, a 2005 recipient of the prestigious Bradley Prize, and author of Lessons from My Uncle James: Beyond Skin Color to Content of Character.