ABSTRACT
Questions about race are almost always raised in such a way as to deny the reality and severity of racial oppression as a fundamental force in American life and culture. On matters involving relations between European and other peoples of the world, the United States was founded on a fundamental contradiction. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution adopted subsequently to bring about the new state envisaged in the Declaration spoke of the rights of man as the major pillar of human society. This chapter comments on the arguments of some of the critics of affirmative action and other so-called race-specific remedies. However, a few decades later, after fighting tooth and nail all efforts to overturn the racist order, these erstwhile proponents of state-mandated segregation declared that racism had indeed ended and that the question of race and oppression should no longer be a public concern.
