1.) In attempting to solve any serious problem, the first and most important step is to identify and define the problem's fundamental nature. In this case the problem is racism and the sociopolitical corruption that results from it. So first: What, specifically, are race and racism?
Like a lot of people, when I was a kid my parents taught me a simple maxim: "Race is no more important than your shoe size." We generally take that statement figuratively, but what few people think about is the fact that the statement is also literally true.
What is the actual substance of your race? Of mine? Of anyone's?
In a word, it's: A measurement.
It's an aggregate of physical and facial dimensions that bear a superficial similarity to those of some others: The shape of one's eyes, the length and width of one's nose, etc. Even skin color is only a measurement - of the wavelengths of visible light that are alternately reflected or absorbed by one's pigmentation. (The measurement in this case is in the "nano" scale, but it remains: a measurement.) Similarly, even complex three-dimensional shapes, such as the curvature of one's cheekbones, jawline, etc., are functions of geometry. They too are just: measurements.
So there you have it. Your and my precious "racial ethnicity" is every bit as important as ...our shoe sizes. Which is to say: "Not very."
Race is, in fact, trivia.
The essential defining attribute of a human being is, as Dr. King correctly stated, the content of one's character. Unlike race, our character is not an inborn trait over which we have no control, it's a function of the values we consciously accept and internalize throughout our lifetimes, and of the choices we make on the basis of those values. Racism, by definition, is the futile and destructive attempt to elevate a trivial collection of measurements to the status of an essential - as a perceptual-level substitute, or trump, to overrule and obliterate what truly is essential: one's values. That is why racism - like fascism, socialism, communism, tribalism and every other form of collectivism - is evil and must itself be obliterated.
So what, exactly, is the "antidote" to racism? It can be named in a single word, a word that is avoided by politicians of virtually every stripe as a kind of Kryptonite. Yet it remains the sole antidote to the evil that is racism. So what is this word? In a minute...
2.) Classified philosophically, racism is a variant of collectivism, a.k.a. "group-think." It's the belief that some group - again, with one's unchosen membership being based on the perceptual trivia of measurement - somehow can trump the individual constituents of that group.
A group has no concrete, tangible form in reality. It's an abstract concept we use to denote two or more... what, exactly?
Individuals.
The individual is a concrete, tangible, real physical entity. It is, along with other individuals, the sole existential (real) content of the figure of speech we call a "group." To assert that an abstract concept ("group") can somehow take precedence over the actual physical referents (individuals) of that very concept, is self-contradictory and logically null - the fallacy of the Stolen Concept. Which means that collectivism, at its very root, is illogical and therefore impracticable at best.
The sole antidote to the problem of racism is, in a word: Individualism.
The sole course of action toward eliminating racism and racial division, is this:
- Each of us must become an Individualist, proudly;
- Each of us must fight for an Individualist politico-economic system - i.e., a Constitutional, representative republic in which laissez faire capitalism (which again is only: the free choices of individual traders in the marketplace,) is left free to flourish.
A fact to contemplate: It is no accident that the Apartheid regime in South Africa was rabidly anti-capitalist. Traders don't care about the trivia of your physical measurements, they only care how productive and how honest you are - therefore capitalism, where it's allowed to flourish, ultimately drives out the irrationality of racism over time. The Afrikaaners knew that capitalism was a grave threat to their racial separation scheme, so they waged war against it.*
Finally, Mr. Hayes is to be applauded for identifying the Declaration of Independence as America's most essential foundational document, preceding the Constitution itself in importance - another point that is rarely heard in political discussion, but which is essential. Where the Constitution provides the proper structure and restrictions on government, the Declaration of Independence identifies the nature of man and the fact that rights inhere in the individual, and only in the individual. The word "Independence" in the document's title refers not only to the Colonists' demand for independence from Great Britain, but to the individual's moral independence from any group, no matter how powerful.
(A great book on the subject is "South Africa's War Against Capitalism" by economist Walter E. Williams. There's an instructive review of the book here: http://rickreviewsbooks.blogspot.com/2010/01/south-africas-war-against-capitalism.html )