In a recent column, Thomas Sowell commented on the 40th anniversary observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech:

Both the speakers and the small numbers of people gathered to hear them were a sharp contrast with the multitudes who covered the whole area around the Lincoln Memorial 40 years ago, when Dr. King spoke the immortal words that he dreamed of a time when people would no longer be judged by “the color of their skin” but by “the content of their character.”

Yet the speakers on the 40th anniversary of that occasion clearly rejected the idea of a color-blind society. These were no longer demands for equal treatment but for special benefits, based on the color of their skin. Speakers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson certainly can’t afford to be judged by the content of their character.

The aging veterans of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s keep fighting the wars of the past with the rhetoric of the past, while the very different problems and opportunities of the present are either not addressed or are given prescriptions that fit an earlier time and a different disease.

Also in the column, Sowell provides an example of how the Democrats trump black interests for others:

The Democratic Party will still make its symbolic obeisance and even pretend to take race hustlers like Al Sharpton seriously. But the interests of its other constituents increasingly take precedence over the interests of blacks.

Nowhere is this more blatant than in the most vital of all black interests — the education of their children. Poll after poll shows blacks to be the strongest supporters of school choice to give their children a chance for a decent education, but vote after vote in Congress shows Democrats — black as well as white — to be the strongest opponents of such choice.

When push comes to shove, the teachers’ unions mean more to Democrats than the future of the next generation of blacks. [...]

What is vital to the interests of black “leaders” and the Democratic Party is to keep blacks paranoid and dependent. For that, everything must be blamed on “racism.”