Color Blindness makes welcome comeback
Bad forces had demagogued a once-noble effort. Now it is coming back
With more than five decades of living under my belt, it has been instructive watching social mores change right before my eyes. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes not.
Instilled in me from the get-go was the foundational notion that all people are seen as equal in the eyes of their Creator. And if our society was going to reflect this view, we needed guardrails that worked off of the same basic assumption. Slavery, Jim Crow and a thousand other things are evidence that when you see someone else as anything less than fully-human, you can justify almost anything. That's why it is essential that we never deny the full measure of humanity to anyone. Ever.
An essential trait of this view is the concept of being "color blind." This is not literal. Of course you see clues about someone's racial background on first sight. Even that can be tricky at times, but I think you know what I mean. No, the concept of color-blindness is the process by which we endeavor to make sure that race is not a factor in how we regard someone. Ideally, someone's race should tell you as much about their character as does their shoe size.
And just so we are clear about this, a too-literal reading of color-blindness would also be bad. Refusing to see race’s obvious role in things like prison sentences and the like is a fool’s errand. That’s why when I tell people my goal is to be “color-blind,” I am quick to point out that this is not a literal thing. The goal is NOT to “not see color.” The goal is to make sure it does not play a central role in how I regard a person.
Growing up, color-blindness was the goal among good people. It was widely seen as the best way to move beyond segregated societies that existed in the very recent past. Indeed there really could be no other way to successfully tackle the problem. So long as one considered race, there existed the chance that race could influence thinking and interactions.
Around my college years I began to see color-blindness take its first hits. In some debate circles in college was spawned the notion that color-blindness was not the best goal. Very quickly the debate turned to see color-blindness as a bad thing. Since then, many have relegated it to the realm of "overt racism."
Why? Well, a lot of reasons. The biggest being that unscrupulous people began to realize that you could gain a lot of literal and metaphorical currency by seizing upon the identity of "victim." And you cannot claim victimhood from a racial angle if everyone is out there being color blind. No one listens to Jim Cantore when its sunny and mild. There must be a storm for him to be heeded and compensated.
Indeed, these bad actors have made a lot of headway in not only removing color blindness from the list of aspirational goals, but also to regarding it as something to be avoided and demonized.
In recent weeks, a sharp young fella named Coleman Hughes has made a splash with his book, "The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America." The publishers note give a very good summation:
Through careful argument, Hughes dismantles harmful beliefs about race, proving that reverse racism will not atone for past wrongs and showing why race-based policies will lead only to the illusion of racial equity. By fixating on race, we lose sight of what it really means to be anti-racist. A racially just, colorblind society is possible. Hughes gives us the intellectual tools to make it happen.
Hughes appeared on The View this week. And as expected, his views on the best way to regard race in our society went over like a loud fart in Sunday School. A colorblind society is the LAST thing you want if you have found purpose (and compensation) in the notion that race be placed at the forefront of all discussions.
The reliably-execrable Sunny Hostin said the concept of color-blindness has been “co-opted” by conservatives. She even went so far as to call the soft-spoken and well-respected Hughes a “charlatan.”
For such people as these, color-blindness is blasphemy. If you train your brain to see race as the main factor in everything, well then, race quickly becomes the main factor in everything. And anyone who sees differently is treated as a heretic.
That the person disagreeing with you is African-American makes it even MORE blasphemous. The mere existence of black conservatives is an affront to modern progressives. Black conservatives are walking, talking, living breathing refutations of the modern progressive’s entire philosophical foundation. They make a liberal’s personal ethos evaporate into nothingness, invalidating all that they hold dear. It exposes the moral rot of liberal beliefs.
I support colorblind equality. I believe the government (and everyone else, for that matter) should treat all people equally as individuals, not subordinate them to racial categories and judge them collectively on the basis of ancestry or some other immutable characteristic. And it is good to see that this notion, which I deem as absolutely critical for a truly free society, is being defended by honorable people against the slings and arrows of neo-racists.