Head to head: Bush supports equal opportunity

Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream to live in a nation that judged his children "not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character." Sadly, the very people who rally behind King's name and claim to carry his color-blind banner are the ones crushing his life-long aspirations and everything for which he stood.\nIn the 1960s, the civil rights movement sought the assistance of government to protect the fundamental right that all men are created equal. But today's so-called "civil rights" groups and leaders have abandoned this principle. They fly in the face of equality, favoring preferential treatment for groups defined by race, gender or sexual orientation. This is wrong. An injustice cannot be cured with another injustice.\nKing stood for nonviolence. He led peaceful civil disobedience marches to protest racist institutions. How far has the civil rights movement come from supporting King's peaceful demonstrations to hearing chants of "no justice, no peace" led by the likes of Al Sharpton outside the courthouse in Albany, N.Y.? Are these the words King would have chosen to protest the shooting of Amadou Diallo?\nExploiting the race card to further political agendas and creating a sense of racial angst is disgraceful. The truth is crimes against minorities are few relative to the number in America's past. In 1998's "Hate Crimes: Criminal Law & Identity Politics," legal scholars James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter analyze what they call the "social construction of a national hate crimes epidemic." They found no substantiation of a hate crime "epidemic" against any minority group, "despite a consensus to the contrary among journalists, politicians and academics." Their research concluded "there is less prejudice-motivated violence against minority groups than in many earlier periods of American history." Violence against minorities "is not new and is not on the rise."\nFortunately, the conservative cause has continued to be in accord with King's teachings. It was the Republicans in Congress who passed the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Acts despite the heated protests of Democrats. Al Gore calls his father a champion of civil rights, but in reality his father was one of the many Democrats to vote against the Act. And the Jim Crow South was overwhelmingly composed of Democrats, not Republicans. \nJesse Jackson mocked the Republican National Convention as an "inclusion illusion." The irony! If you want to talk about "inclusion illusion," let's look at the Democratic National Convention. The Democratic National Committee enforces one of the most stringent racial quota systems in America. It strongly "recommends" state delegations be comprised of 26 percent Latino, 16 percent black, 9 percent Asian-Pacific islander, 50 percent women and 10 percent homosexual (half gay, half lesbian). Rejoicing in dictated, involuntary diversity is shameful and shows how truly hollow the Democrat tent and quota systems can be.\nAs Alan Keyes, an African-American conservative, so eloquently puts it, "preferential affirmative action does not advance civil rights in this country. It divides us as a people, and draws attention away from the moral and family breakdown that is the chief cause of the despair and misery in which too many of our fellow citizens struggle to live decently."\nThis family factor cannot be overlooked when one discusses the usefulness of affirmative action in education. Author and speaker Dinesh D'Souza, in an address at Georgetown University in 1999, said 1 percent of Asian-American children (the ethnicity with the highest Bell curve) grow up in broken families, compared to 70 percent of African-American children (who have the lowest Bell curve) who grow up in broken families. The problem isn't that minorities can't learn or that a white racist majority is trying to keep minority groups from education. The problem is cultural, and rooted in traditional family values -- something for which government cannot mandate a top-down solution.\nRepublican presidential candidate George W. Bush understands this. He is pushing for school choice to empower parents -- a bottom-up approach to allow government to be responsive to the needs of parents and residents of inner cities. He opposes affirmative action based on quotas. He believes all crimes are hate crimes.\nI am a minority, and I can tell you about reality: Prejudice exists. But giving special rights to certain minority groups is not the answer. The answer is to educate everyone and enforce the right of equal opportunity. Only then will King's expectations for America be met.