Government action is not the whole answer to the present crisis, but it is an important partial answer. Morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin.

King argues for a pragmatic, two-track approach to racial justice. He rejects the idea that law can directly transform hearts (“morals cannot be legislated”), yet insists that law can shape the public sphere by restraining discriminatory conduct (“behavior can be regulated”). The example of employment discrimination clarifies the distinction: the state cannot compel genuine interracial goodwill, but it can prohibit exclusion based on skin color and thereby open access to jobs, wages, and dignity. Implicitly, King treats civil-rights legislation as necessary but not sufficient—an essential “partial answer” that creates fair conditions in which deeper moral and cultural change can take root.