President's Advisory Board on Race Relations Will Encourage Racism in America
September 18, 1998
"By advocating affirmative action as a cure for racism, President Clinton's advisory board on race relations will generate racism in America," according to the Marina del Rey-based Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), founded in 1985 to promote the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
"Affirmative action is a racist policy, claiming a person's value and identity derive from race, and not from one's individual choices and actions," says ARI Chairman of the Board Peter Schwartz. He writes in his essay "Multicultural Nihilism," which is included in the forthcoming Return of the Primitive (Penguin/Meridian), that racism is the "false belief that an individual's character is determined by his racial lineage." According to Schwartz, "Individualism, which regards every man as an independent, sovereign being possessing the inalienable right to his own life, is the cure for racism" in contrast to racially-based social and employment programs, which perpetuate racism.
"Individualism, not affirmative action, represents the American ideal," adds Michael S. Berliner, executive director of ARI. "The right to achieve in spite of one's ancestry is the reason that individuals came to our country. Affirmative action is a racial caste system which makes individual achievement irrelevant."
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