Standing Up to the Racial Racket

The latest documentary by noted filmmaker Ken Burns, on WWII, came out tonight. In an article on the film, I saw this tidbit:

As Burns was finishing the elaborate sound-effects mixing on "The War," Latino groups began a campaign criticizing the movie, saying the stories of Latino World War II veterans were being ignored.

This is not a big surprise. The modern racial movement ("Latino" technically isn't a race, but I feel comfortable lumping their advocacy groups in with similar ones for other minorities) loves quotas. We have to have women, minorities, and minority women on the Supreme Court and in the President's cabinet, or they're not legitimate. Skin color trumps all else. It seems to be exactly the opposite of what Martin Luther King, Jr. would have wanted. You know, "content of their character" and all that. Never mind that Burns documentary was focused on four specific US cities, and no Latinos came forward in these cities.

Ken Burns' response to his critics was great:

If you were painting a still life and you leave out an orange," he said, "does the orange lobby then lobby to have Cézanne put back, in addition to the banana and the apple and the pear, the oranges?

Of course, "Burns did go back and add supplemental stories of Latino and American Indian veterans, which appear at the end of some episodes." So he capitulated a little bit. But most people would have given in completely, so I commend him.