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Photo by Hilary Schwab

Were he alive today, Martin Luther King Jr. would fight for affirmative action, said U.S. District judge Reggie Walton, WCL ’74, at the Washington College of Law’s Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Commemoration on Jan. 16. Though affirmative action opponents often argue that equal opportunity champions like King would decry the policy as reverse racism, Brown used his own experience to argue that King would see affirmative action as both necessary and just.

“A lot of people have used Dr. King’s words . . . [that he] hoped one day his children would be judged based on the ‘content of their character’ rather than the ‘color of the skin’ as an indication that Dr. King would have been against affirmative action,” said Walton. “Well, he was talking about a dream, a dream that has not yet come true.”

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Because America hasn’t yet realized the dream of racial equality, Walton argued, we need affirmative action to create the kind of diversity King was fighting for. “Diversity is important,” said Walton, but if you judge by the racial make up of American high schools, “we’re about as segregated a society today as we were on the day Dr. King was murdered.” —MG