Post-racialism Threatens Equal Protection Jurisprudence, Legal Scholars Say: WASHINGTON – When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned his dream of the “beloved community” where his children “would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” did he imagine the millennial post-racial society? Is King’s promised land a place where race plays no role in qualifying individuals in the U.S.?Professor Trina Jones of the University of California Irvine School of Law prefers a contextual reading of King’s words, giving them meaning within the framework of Jim Crow America.
“This brand of colorblindness was in fact useful at a certain point of time in a segregated society … it was a powerful progressive tool for people of color who were subordinated because at least it brought them to the level of Whites in the eyes of the law,” she said. “So colorblindness had some utility but it’s problematic today.”
