The ensuing legacy of slavery and overt discrimination have led some to call for “reparations” for African-Americans. Essentially as we have gradually stripped away the shackles of that nasty past, some seem determined to bring it back.

We can see this not only in reparations demands, but also efforts to “race norm” admission to elite public schools, as in New York City, or to adjust the SAT scores along racial lines. This violates the basic idea that people should, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. , be judged not on their race, but on content of their character.

In academia it is increasingly common, as Harvard College’s dean Rakesh Khurana told graduates recently, that individual achievement is seen as less important than the “dynastic” forces of race. This underpins the notion that students “of color” need to be treated differently than others. This follows from the notion that “group rights,” not individual rights, are what matters. As one liberal observer noted, the West is “now inculcating in a new generation ideas where the whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse. The very Enlightenment principles that underlay the liberal ideal are being largely cast away.”