If Uncle Sam has been dividing us up by race for decades now, why should we surprised that the reality TV show Survivor is doing the same thing? And could there be a double standard -- that is, it’s good when the government apportions by race, but bad when the private sector does so?

Reality TV, like all popular culture, reflects the larger society. So, if we want a color-blind society, the government should stop being so litigiously color-conscious.

Once upon a time, the goal was to climb out of the muck of racial hatred, to a new and higher place, where old hostilities would be put aside. The Declaration of Independence, asserting that "all men are created equal," left out blacks and women, but it was a good beginning toward a great new idea: equality of opportunity.

Two centuries later, in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. declared his hope that people will be judged not "by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Such a goal is inspiring in and of itself, and yet it’s also good practical politics, in keeping with the "melting pot" ideal of American political theorists. After all, the only way a multiethnic society can survive is if all ethnicities agree on a few common things, most obviously law and language. Yes, keep your favorite foods and old-country holidays, and perhaps your sense of ethnic uniqueness or even superiority -- but, if you want to live with other kinds of people, keep such thoughts mostly to yourself. In any case, any such ethnic divisiveness must never be written into law.

But, as we all know, that’s exactly what happened: The state mandated ethnicity into statute. The "content of their character" model didn’t last even through the 1960s. The lawyered-up left hijacked King’s idea of voluntarily helping African-Americans get a boost on the ladder of success, turning such boosting into a matter of regulation and litigation. So a system of racial quotas, mostly for big companies and big bureaucracies, was established.

The problem is that most people don’t want to believe that the American melting pot has become an ethnic spoils system, in which groups carve up the pie on the basis of skin color -- character content having nothing to do with it. So the quotacrats and their activist allies use code words, such as "diversity" and "multiculturalism," to hide what they are really doing: racial balkanization.

But now Survivor has blown the quotacrats’ cover. The news that the latest installment of the long-running series, debuting Sept. 14, will feature contestants divided into four ethnic teams -- whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, each competing to win the prize -- is devastating to the quiet quota regime. Why? Because it shows, on national TV, what’s been going on offscreen, in the real world, for decades.

The Houston Chronicle was right in editorializing that the forthcoming show had "tunneled under the gutter standards of the genre." And Gannett columnist Dewayne Wickham was right, too, in his opinion piece headlined, "New ‘Survivor’ TV show stages race war as good entertainment."

But government officials have protested -- protesting, ironically, what they themselves do. A press release from the New York City Council said that members of the council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus held a press conference denouncing the segregated Survivor. But we must ask: If politicians naturally organize themselves in racial terms -- as demonstrated in this caucus-heavy press release -- why shouldn’t entertainers?

Yes, by all means, let’s denounce the new Survivor as antithetical to our basic American principles. But, if we do that, we have to denounce what the government has been doing, too. And we have to repeal all those pro-quota rules and red tape.

If that happens, this whole sorry episode will have made a great contribution, reminding us of our forgotten ideal of true content-of-our-character equality. That was a good idea in 1963, and it’s a good idea today.