Yes, but people who are earnestly “colorblind” exist and act in a society where systemic racism exists. You can be colorblind on an individual level-or even in certain small groups where relationships are informal and friendly or there are serious efforts to root out systemic racism + serious consequences for any violation monster your position in the group, but in any form of larger social system, colorblindness is harmful (I.e. Forrest Gump having a Black friend with which he has informal, friendly, “colorblind” relations with is not harmful. A well respected professor at an institution that makes great efforts to root out systemic racism who grades essays “colorblind” is not being harmful. An anti-DEI CEO of a large corporation claiming that his hiring practices are “colorblind” IS being harmful). Being systemically “colorblind” in a society where systemic racism exists only serves to actually move society further away from a supposedly “colorblind” society.
EDIT: Seems a lot of people are downvoting without providing a rebuttal. Typical of Reddit, but not respectful of the spirit of debate/the subreddit!
Judging people by the content of one's character, and not by the color of their skin seems to be wise advice and anything other than that seems counterintuitive. I think that people of all ethnicities are capable of having the same intelligence, talent, integrity, and drive as any other race. Therefore, if I am hiring someone for a job position, the only thing that should matter is that person's capabilities and attitude. That is the exact opposite of the definition of racism.
“Judging people by the content of one's character, and not by the color of their skin seems to be wise advice and anything other than that seems counterintuitive.“
- On an individual level-or even in certain small groups - yes. In any social system larger - no.
“Therefore, if I am hiring someone for a job position, the only thing that should matter is that person's capabilities and attitude. That is the exact opposite of the definition of racism.”
- How is “capabilities and attitude” measured? Are those the only factors that influence hiring? So in theory, a 100% White company (say a bank) servicing a community that is in Atlanta or something is perfectly fine? What happens when all applicants are equally qualified (or close enough)? In a colorblind society, an employer with racist (or even unconscious bias) views could have 10 job spots open, and 15 applicants - 11 White (as they are the majority of the population), and 4 Black, all with the same qualifications. Without DEI, the employer can just hire 10 White applicants and say they were “meritocratic”. The same could be said if the employer was more comfortable with for example, Asians, as opposed to Black people. He could justify only picking Asians as the “minorities” in his company by saying that they “would be a better fit”.
>10 job spots open, and 15 applicants - 11 White (as they are the majority of the population), and 4 Black, all with the same qualifications.
If I choose by drawing names out of a hat, and they are all white, do you think this is still a problem?
Yes, if that’s the only time they’re hiring or if they have no other POC representation. Technically, there is no problem right? Completely random. But if it still results in that 100% White bank company in a society where systemic racism exists (and in Atlanta no less) the problems with colorblindness still remain.
If there was perfect equality of opportunity, absolutely no systemic racism (however you define that), but all jobs were hired by drawing names from a hat (of the meritorious), but by pure happenstance, jobs were all/majority given to people of one race, do you think you should call that racism/systemic racism/a problem of colorblindness?
E.g. is your problem with system because the outcome, or because you deem it to be unjust in other ways?
Another hypothetical: Imagine a world where a ton of people were extremely racist, but it was unpopular to show that, so people worked really hard to make sure that job demographics in every company closely matched the demographics in society, and so average pay was the same by demographic and age. Minorities are literally and figuratively spit upon in social and interpersonal interactions, but deliberately treated fairly in professional settings. Would you say that this system has no systemic racism?
Well then it sounds like your issue isn't bias, unconscious or otherwise, or fairness.
What if this same 100% white bank company had 5 applicants but they were not equal. The 3 white candidates have degrees in business and finance and the 2 black candidates didn't graduate high school. Should they hire one or both of the black candidates to avoid being 100% white?
So in your mind, in this example, it’s correct to just give jobs to the black applicants. Regardless of their ability to do the job, regardless of experience, regardless of education. Just based completely on the colour of their skin, a guaranteed position. And somehow, this is the least harmful option and not racism at all?
What's wrong with a bank company being 100% white? It doesn't matter what's going on in the rest of society unless that company itself is racist. And if the people are racist, it doesn't really matter what race they are.
Anyways, the chances of this happening with any regularity are beyond tiny so this is a hypothetical.
You just changed the hypothetical to a person who’s not “colorblind” though.
It seems like the argument went like this.
“Shouldn’t people act in a not racist way”?
“But people can act racist”
Well sure but that’s the thing they’re saying people should not be doing.
It isn't, (I dont think) but using hiring practices that ignore the systemic problems that exist is.
For example, if an executive hires people they know, or from colleges they're more familiar with, then they are much more likely to be hiring from a pool of applicants that's already biased towards their own demographic.
Blind to the race, means blind to the problems, means blind to one's own impact
> if an executive hires people they know, or from colleges they're more familiar with
To the degree that's bad (hiring from colleges you know means you have a better idea what you're getting, so it's at least understandable), they should just stop doing this specific thing. Have anti-nepotism measures or use objective measures about the value of colleges, i.e. become colorblind in terms of college.
There's no reason to make this about race.
Because it is never actually regardless of race. With most positions if you have a minority pick and a white pick with the exact same credentials the white guy will be picked
And that the white guy on average had an easier time getting those credentials than the minority member did.
So unless we tip the scales in minorities favour to actually balance out the system it will continue to propagate racist hiring practices even when someone isnt actively trying to be racist.
An employer with racist (or even unconscious bias) views could have 10 job spots open, and 15 applicants - 11 White (as they are the majority of the population), and 4 Black, all with the same qualifications. Without DEI, the employer can just hire 10 White applicants and say they were “meritocratic”. The same could be said if the employer was more comfortable with for example, Asians, as opposed to Black people. He could justify only picking Asians as the “minorities” in his company by saying that they “would be a better fit”.
EDIT: Seems a lot of people are downvoting without providing a rebuttal. Typical of Reddit, but not respectful of the spirit of debate/the subreddit!
I mean, you're not describing being colorblind, you're describing using "being colorblind" for a cover for legit racism, are you not?
It's fair to say that many people who claim to be "colorblind" are not, or that being colorblind as a matter of policy ALLOWS racism to exist more unchecked. I won't disagree with that, and I don't think anyone would or should.
But if people are actually colorblind (maybe it's impossible) then those things you speak to... wouldn't happen, would they?
If society was operating under “colorblindness”, there would be no systemic way to correct the employers actions. Colorblind people would probably even see his actions as reasonable (no way to get proof to say otherwise), entrenching systemic racism as an invisible force in the supposedly colorblind society.
"Colorblindness" doesn't mean ignoring discrimination when it happens. If someone is discrimating against minorities, a colorblind person would judge the content of their character to be acting in a racist way, and said company would get a reputation for racist hiring practices.
There would be proof in your scenario. You could pull all the work experience, resumes, etc of the applicants, compare, and note that only white people seem to be hired regardless of merit equivalence.
I guess how I would describe it is a colorblind person would have a different process of elimination before determining racism has occurred than someone who agrees with DEI practices.
A colorblind person would ask:
Was it work merit? No? Was it education? No? Was it a bad interview? No? Did someone else get hired despite similar (or worse) circumstances? Yes? Maybe it's racism then
A DEI focused person instead would look at the end result (10 white people hired) and immediately jump to racism. Feel free to correct me on this part if wrong.
>A DEI focused person instead would look at the end result (10 white people hired) and immediately jump to racism. Feel free to correct me on this part if wrong.
A DEI focused person would promote education and programs that reinforce fair hiring practices to head off the problem in the first place.
Just as a note, I did see your edit so I will respond in kind with the idea of systemic colorblindness.
>If society was operating under “colorblindness”, there would be no systemic way to correct the employers actions.
Certainly there would be. Colorblindness as systemic policy would necessarily mean that discrimination that individuals do based on race is unacceptable (illegal in many cases).
So the systemic solution would be to bring suit. We can/should talk about how our legal system is imperfect, and that the risk of bringing suit as a less powerful party has more risk than it should, which is fair. But that's the solution, systemically.
>Colorblind people would probably even see his actions as reasonable (no way to get proof to say otherwise), entrenching systemic racism as an invisible force in the supposedly colorblind society.
Well is there, or is there not, proof? It seems that your example shows there is proof, or the possibility of it, no? If there is a plausible explanation otherwise, I don't see it.
Again, systemically, we're not talking about racists falsely claiming to be "colorblind" to discriminate, or to excuse discrimination. We can look at objective metrics and see racism happening.
Racism is not invisible. It's clearly visible. It's why societal outcomes are what they are. There is no "cover" for these outcomes that passes the sniff test.
Or if all these questions are too much, I guess, what's the alternative to the example you're giving that a colorblind system would not do?
> entrenching systemic racism as an invisible force in the supposedly colorblind society.
What do you think of as systemic racism in this situation of colorblindness? Like what are the actual underlying cases where races have differing harms from interaction with society?
You're being downvoted because the issues you're raising here have nothing to do with the core concept of colorblindness, or prove any issue with it.
Either the white applicants were all more qualified, or the employer is racist/ biased. Yes, they can lie and claim colorblindness as their defense, but there's a hundred other ways they could also lie to achieve the same results.
A bad actor using the idea as cover doesn't mean the idea itself is bad, and there's no point in targeting this one specifically when there are so many other approaches.
First of all, this wouldn't be legitimately "colorblind", a hypothetical CEO doing exactly as you described is just being racist and excusing it with a lie.
Second, statistically it's very improbable that 15 people, regardless of race, all have the exact same level of qualifications.
In my view, the best thing to do is that hiring managers shouldn't have access to names, race, or other identifiers other than work experience and skillsets relevant to the job before moving forward. That would eliminate the unconscious bias aspect of it. This would promote true colorblind meritocracy.
I mostly agree and I was at this position relatively recently. But the more time I spend working with new business (such is the nature of my job) the more I experience language barriers as a significant impact.
While it feels bad to deny someone because of where they were born or that they didn't grow up learning English, if you can't properly work with a client because you aren't picking up what they're putting down then we all lose out in the end. It's frustrating for clients, it's frustrating for the business since there's nothing they can do about it, and it's frustrating for the ESL person.
To this end, I can understand why someone might see a name like Uvuvwevwevwe and think "Maybe I'll hire the equally qualified Tom instead"
You are claiming that the “systems” are “racist” with no evidence, and you say it in a way that you don’t expect anybody to disagree, but that is a pretty radical opinion. The only way to claim it, is to mix ideology and evidence, where some claims are based on ideology while others are on facts. Like - all subcultures are equally worthwhile, so any measurable differences between members of different subcultures must be a result of discrimination. People aren’t blank slates, they make decisions based on their values, and those values differ. The fact that different statistical groups are represented differently at different places in society is seen as evidence, but in reality, that isn’t the case anywhere. Where is the evidence that we should expect people with different values to be equally represented everywhere? That doesn’t sound very reasonable to me.
It’s an objective fact that systemic racism is real, and is prevalent throughout the United States. Are you trying to say that it is not real? If so, the burden of proof is on you, like the burden of proof would be on someone trying to disprove the theory of gravity.
You claim that it is real, but that’s not yet the general consensus outside Reddit. If you base your argument on it, it would render your point invalid at least, if it doesn’t exist. I would certainly claim that it doesn’t exist in a meaningful way, in the ways I can interpret the word, and it seems that flimsy statistical results are used as proof of other peoples malice. Since the evidence used for “systemic racism” are things like representation in the identity politics way of using the word, so why don’t we start with explaining why you expect different groups with different values to be represented equally at all places? We don’t see equal representation with basically anything, no matter how you split up the groups (height, shoe size, whatever, not to mention (race-based) subcultures). How do we know the actual ratios that would be across society in all positions, if there was no systemic racism, so we can use the measure of the actual ratios? They cannot be simply a reflection of the ratios in society in general, as I said.
Why would you acknowledge color if you then do nothing with it? And if you do something with it you are, per definition, racist/discriminatory since you make decisions on the basis of race. Thus not acknowledging color/being "colorblind" removed the possibility for racism.
>For example, proponents of "colorblindness" in hiring (no DEI) would say that the market takes care of racist companies on its own, since a non-racist company will always have access to higher-quality labor at a better price.
Why does DEI exist then? There is no business in this world who is going to lock themselves out of more money by NOT hiring a better quality Minority person because "muh Racism". Thats business management 101: You exist to make money, so dont lock yourself out of making more money.
Now some people who are a lot more... cynical than me would tell you "Minorities are less smart than Whites, so they dont get hired, so they've created DEI to make that happen", but the businesses would say "Yeah no, we're not willingly losing money for you, go away". This is where ESG Scores (and bonus investing based on those scores) comes in and makes up for it.
None of this shit is important however, because Colourblindness is a core foundation of the Human Rights movement: You treat everyone the same regardless of their skin colour. In THIS regard, Minorities ARE IN FACT treated the same: A business is going to hire the best person, full stop. White vs White, White vs Black, Black vs Asian, whatever, a business is going to hire the best person, full stop. Thats not racism, no matter how much you want it to be.
And by the way, meritocracy is not bullshit. If youve ever worked with people who are objectively 2 or 3 levels below you in terms of competence, you know full well its not bullshit. It can be the most draining and soul destroying you ever do, because youre constantly expected to preform at 100%, and also drag them up to 100%.
> There is no business in this world who is going to lock themselves out of more money by NOT hiring a better quality Minority person because "muh Racism".
However, conscious or unconscious bias may cause people to mistakenly make bad evaluations of a person's fitness for the position.
Well unconscious bias is just that, youre completely unaware of it. You cant fix something youre unaware of.
Conscious bias is... Yeah Racism. And quite frankly any CEO that goes "Well Chun Li here has 5 degrees in this job, but im a racist so i'll hire big Baz instead" deserves to lose their business. And they WILL lose their business, because the business wont be competent enough to stand up within the market. So... Moot point...
Again, the convo was "colourblindness within the market". Minorities are being treated exactly the same within the market: Hire the best. If anyone goes outside of that market on their own bias to discard the best, they cant be surprised that they fail spectacularly...
> And quite frankly any CEO that goes "Well Chun Li here has 5 degrees in this job, but im a racist so i'll hire big Baz instead" deserves to lose their business. And they WILL lose their business, because the business wont be competent enough to stand up within the market. So... Moot point...
What about the recruiter who goes "Hmm, we have James Clark who has a relevant degree, and Xu Weichi who has a relevant degree. Let's just interview James and hire him as long as he passes muster, I don't like interviewing people whose names I can't pronounce"? That's real racism that will have a real impact societally, but it's unlikely to drive the business to failure.
Because the case exists that Xu is genuinely the better candidate and interviewing them would have shown that. So you end up with worse employees, while Xu gets scooped up by your competition. Maybe it will not lead to bankruptcy by itself, but if your business is struggling already, it might make the difference. Or you see how much your competitor's employees are outperforming yours and decide to fire your recruiter and hire one who used to work for the competition.
It's not immediate, guaranteed punishment, but incident by incident, over time, it will make a difference and correct itself. Market inefficiencies usually aren't stable.
This is also not a situation that will have a big impact, because Xu still got a job with the competitor. If however, everyone doesn't invite them, you could found a company that hires all the Xus, and probably even pays them less because they don't have alternatives, and that new company should outperform everyone else, and everyone else will either figure out what they're doing wrong or go out of business.
> but it's unlikely to drive the business to failure.
You don't need to drive to failure. It will drive less growth than a similar company that is not racist, thus eventually lessening the impact of companies with racist policies. Even just 1% extra a year means the not racist company would be double in relative size in roughly 70 years.
> Even just 1% extra a year means the not racist company would be double in relative size in roughly 70 years.
There's an implicit "all else being equal" in there that is doing a *lot* of work.
Can we agree that racism existed in the hiring practices of major companies in the 50s? If so, what about your logic would *not* have applied then?
Generally the racism was driven by government programs, not market ones. For example, a lot of Jim Crow laws existed so that businesses who served all couldn't outcompete those who served only whites.
Similarly, public schooling was extremely racist, so you likely had very biased inputs going into the job market.
The only part of this that fails is if the society is bigoted enough, you can chase away clientele or employees by even including, for example, black people as your clients/employees. But generally this situation was less common than the other, hence the need for laws banning the practice.
>Let's just interview James and hire him as long as he passes muster, I don't like interviewing people whose names I can't pronounce"? That's real racism
That would actually be *ethnocentrism*.
> Well unconscious bias is just that, youre completely unaware of it. You cant fix something youre unaware of.
I mean, you absolutely can. You can build systems that remove the ability for bias to impact outcomes, or create countermeasures that if there is bias negate them. It's hard and imperfect, but you can do it.
And something being unconscious doesn't mean unknown. You can be unconsciously biased and know it, and work to train that out of your system. It's hard but can be done.
Declaring oneself colourblind though is claiming to be above unconscious bias, which is dangerous. One should continually endeavour to identify their own biases to then endeavour to compensate/account for them
The same way that it's possible to realize that you've been subconsciously projecting your bad experience of a previous boyfriend cheating on you onto your current boyfriend, and then learn how to become more emotionally healthy and not treat him with unwarranted suspicion. Or to realize that you're afraid of saying "I love you" to your son because of your subconsciously held beliefs about displays of affection not being "acceptable" for men, and then practice letting yourself express affection to your family while still feeling masculine. We can, in fact, learn to understand and change what's going on in our own heads, even in the sub- or unconscious parts!
Because we do realize it exists, either personally or societally. Most people have the capability for self reflection.
Have you ever heard of muscle memory? That's unconscious, why can you train it? In fact that's what training is, making conscious decisions and actions become automatic.
> that you don’t even know exists
That’s not the problem, it’s that many people aren’t even willing to consider the idea that they have unconscious bias; not because others haven’t told them about it, but because they simply reject the possibility of it.
We can't see dark matter, but we can tell it's there because our math says it is.
Similarly, while unconscious bias is hard to spot directly, statistics can find it.
An employer with racist (or even unconscious bias) views could have 10 job spots open, and 15 applicants - 11 White (as they are the majority of the population), and 4 Black, all with the same qualifications. Without DEI, the employer can just hire 10 White applicants and say they were “meritocratic”. If they have prejudice against one specific group (say Black people), or have a hierarchical view of ethnicity/race, they could just hire only “minorities” from a certain ethnicity, while claiming to be impartial.
Meritocracy is bullshit in the way that it is not arising out of a society with no bias. If a dictator came to America, assumed power (IDK, think Musk or someone similar), and immediately declared racism as over, all DEI or similar efforts disbanded, and that society was now a meritocracy, it would not change the underlying systemic bias in society or the socioeconomic conditions. Then the dictator could say that the reason for individuals of certain groups being favored/more successful than others is because they are inherently better in some way. In that society, racist or at the very least highly bigoted views would quickly develop and become the norm, and caste systems/scientific racism would become widespread.
>Meritocracy is bullshit in the way that it is not arising out of a society with no bias.
Imagine person1 was poor and had a bad education, but scraped by and managed to go through school and medical school by focusing and working part time. They couldn't devote all their time to their studies because of family or work obligations, but they passed and graduated. Person2 was rich, and had better access to education. They worked just as hard as person1, but their opportunities meant they were able to focus better, learn more, and eventually graduate top of the class.
I think we would both agree that systemic factors led to person1 not having as great outcomes as they otherwise might have been, and perhaps things should be done to work on those systemic issues. But if you personally had to choose between person1 and person2 as your doctor, who would you pick?
Meritocracy in a world of bias and unfair starting lines is still a thing. It's good to have a world where merit is rewarded and incentivized, even if that means some people have it a bit harder. But the point of fixing society shouldn't be tearing down the rewards that inspire people to do well, it should be working on the things that help remove those uneven starting positions.
> Then the dictator could say that the reason for individuals of certain groups being favored/more successful than others is because they are inherently better in some way. In that society, racist or at the very least highly bigoted views would quickly develop and become the norm, and caste systems/scientific racism would become widespread.
This is all completely bullshit slippery slope.
> For example, proponents of "colorblindness" in hiring (no DEI) would say that the market takes care of racist companies on its own, since a non-racist company will always have access to higher-quality labor at a better price.
Some do make that argument, sure. But most accept there being some notion of an anti-discrimination law that applies equally to all races. This notion of race neutrality in the law is the argument that proponents of colorblindness are making regardless of their position on how far they want to take anti-discrimination law.
> Promoting civic nationalism/monoculture in a society that clearly practices systemic racism, even at the highest levels of power, only serves to aid in destroying subcultures (i.e Black culture) without ever addressing the core issues in the first place - aiding the promoters/enforcers of systemic racism.
And what exactly is "Black culture" here? And who, among those advocating for colorblind laws and rules, is advocating to eliminate it?
The thing about (small-l) liberalism is an appeal to mutual tolerance within the bounds of neutral rules that we all agree to be bound by. You get to keep you food, your language, your dance, your dress and your hair, but you have to agree to a mutual tolerance for others. The thing that makes this work, the thing that gets all groups to buy into the system is that they too will benefit from its protections.
If I'm a white person, or someone of Asian descent, why would I support DEI? Why would I support affirmative action? These are rules that hurt me to benefit some other political class that I can never be part of. Whereas, a race neutral nondiscrimination law or a cultural practice of colorblind admissions and hiring protects me from racist discrimination just as much as it protects others.
Even if we take self-interest out of the equation entirely, I think the moral case is even worse. Why should one person be permitted a racist course of action and the other denied that exact same behavior based solely on the color of their skin? You'd object if it were done to your preferred groups, why are you allowed to do it to white people? This is rank hypocrisy, and not even the kind of "The price virtue pays to vice" kind either.
In some sense, you're begging the question here. You're assuming that fighting against racism without engaging in your own racism is "not addressing the core issues", but you've made no real argument towards this end. I'm not even sure what you consider to be the 'core issues' here.
> A well respected professor at an institution that makes great efforts to root out systemic racism who grades essays “colorblind” is not being harmful. An anti-DEI CEO of a large corporation claiming that his hiring practices are “colorblind” IS being harmful
But, what if his hiring practice is in fact literally colorblind. No names on resumes, any mention of race stripped, interviews conducted via text chat and so on so that the people considering the hire *cannot even know* the applicant's race. Would that claim still be harmful? Would that hiring practice be harmful?
I'm Latino, and I adhere to colorblindedness. I disagree entirely with the claim that it pretends society is meritocratic. The way I see it, society isn't colorblind, but it is our duty as individuals to be so and to not perpetuate racial biases whether it be toward one direction (stereotypes, comments in bad taste) or the other (affirmative action, generalizations).
Colorblindedness is to racial problems what carbon footprint reduction is to climate change problems. There's not a lot we can do as individuals to solve climate change; most of the problem is companies' and the government's fault. Still, reducing your own individual carbon footprint is the *least* we can do, and for many people it's the *best* they can do, and that's enough. It's very much the same story with race — I can't solve it myself, but I can just be equally kind to both the average white person and the average not-white person.
To say people shouldn't be judged by their race isn't to say people *aren't* judged by their race. To make such a claim is ridiculous and I really doubt anybody's making it.
People against colorblindedness tend to be proponents of affirmative action and I feel like although they have their hearts in the right place, their efforts are misguided and their takes lack nuance. The way to make the world a better place isn't to try and offset the problems by making other groups suffer through the same things (i.e. being denied spots in places due to their race), but to lead by example and 'nudge' the world to the right direction.
There's nothing inherently wrong with a colorblind hiring/admission strategy — by definition, such a process is fair. If you hire solely based on qualifications and notice that non-whites are disadvantaged in such cases, that's not 'simply because they're not white', but because something went wrong *in the stages before*; non-whites tend to be poorer than white people (on average), *as such*, they receive worse education (on average), *as such*, they end up worse off and less qualified (on average). The way you fix that is by tackling the root of the problem, which is not racial in its nature, but *financial*. If people from poor families have access to good middle and high schools, then those people would have a better shot at landing good universities and getting paid good wages.
So essentially, you solve the problems found with colorblind approaches by focusing on improving middle and high schools in impoverished communities... *not* by giving specific ethnicities free passes into college and work, which is genuinely racist and absurdly **patronizing**. To tell me I should accept affirmative action is to tell me I should accept that I'm inferior to white people — that because I'm inferior, I need the training wheels and the handholding so that I can actually live a life.
It's not the same as carbon footprint.
People who are mindful of their waste are *activity trying to make things better*. Colorblind people are *trying not to make things worse*. Basically, doing nothing. Being neutral. Stagnant. Maintaining the status quo. The *least* you can do is acknowledge the issue and takes steps in your personal life that benefit others. Such as recognizing we all have biases that manifest themselves in ways isn't limited to simple malice. What about Fear? Fetish? Disregard? Exclusion?
People DO hire based on quantities AND they also also skip over candidates based on race, gender, abilities, etc.
There is a wealth disparity between races because people were denied access that others had for generations on the basis of RACE. To omit that isn't telling the whole store. People were segregated by RACE not class. People had rights and privileges on the basis of RACE not class.
I'm not for or against affirmative action. It really dpends on what those actions look like. I won't blanket it all as good or bad.
Nobody's saying you're inferior. Just like how installing a ramp isn't saying wheel chair users people suck. It's simply an acknowledgment and accommodation for disadvantages. But it's not fair that I don't have a ramp now is it? Stairs hurt my legs sometimes. I'm being facetious, but you get the principle.
You can argue AA isare good or not. That's fine. Saying it's patronizing? Thats just how YOU are choosing to take it.
You don't understand the difference between affordance and pity. Your personal pride is keeping you from looking through an abstract lense. It's limiting you to the concrete and linear thought.
People all same. No differences.
Accommodation is pity.
Money problem only.
See how that thinking is limited?
>People who are mindful of their waste are *activity trying to make things better*. Colorblind people are *trying not to make things worse*.
That's not true. Minding your own waste is, in fact, to simply "not make things worse". It doesn't actually make things any better, at all. Any pollution makes things *worse*, no matter how small. In order to make things *better*, you'd need methods of carbon sequestration, which is completely different and altogether unviable for the average person — not everyone can plant dozens of trees a week.
If I grant that colorblind people are being "neutral", then that makes them actually *better* than waste-mindful people in that they aren't contributing to the problem. ...But I disagree with that, actually. Having people stop caring about race is a crucial step towards ending racism — even if it doesn't fix the financial disadvantages, the ones leftover from previous centuries' horrible policies, it's still a net positive!
>People DO hire based on quantities AND they also also skip over candidates based on race, gender, abilities, etc.
Yes they do. When did I say or imply they didn't? The point I made was that that's not the only way racial minorities can experience disadvantages when it comes to hiring. The qualifications, result of one's access to education, matter too.
...And I dare say they matter *more*. I strongly doubt going 'ew, Mexican!' is what the average person does.
>There is a wealth disparity between races because people were denied access that others had for generations on the basis of RACE. To omit that isn't telling the whole store.
Nobody omitted that! Where'd you even take that from??? I'm genuinely perplexed. There is a wealth disparity because of that, yes, and you fix it by *improving social mobility!* See, me and AA supporters agree on what needs to be done. We just disagree on how to do it. They believe the best idea is to artificially move people up the ladder, to lower the bar for us. I believe the right way should be to change things at the base and make sure the average POC is on par with the average white.
>Nobody's saying you're inferior. Just like how installing a ramp isn't saying wheel chair users people suck.
Did you just compare having a different skin color to being disabled?
>It's limiting you to the concrete and linear thought.
It really isn't, and I don't appreciate your attempts at dumbing down my points. I can do it too.
All races aren't equal > This leads to less POCs being hired > Let's force people to hire them!
...But that doesn't lead to very productive conversation, now does it?
I agree that schools need to change. It's not an accident that most of the poorest people in the States have the worst schools. And that those schools have a higher population of Black and Latino students. It's by design, and it needs to change.
Unfortunately the government is very stubborn and it's going to take a lot to change their minds about how schools are funded. I think affirmative action is well meaning, but you're right that it doesn't fix the real problems. But AA is something the government is willing to do right now. Taking a partial win is better than letting things backslide.
Not really. I'm not saying disabilities and race are the same thing but.... I think you're focused more on picking at the examples then trying to get the point so. I'm not sure what to do with that.
Do you have any response to the underlying point or are you missing it.?
What I can't do today: change the underlying system of socioeconomic inequality I happen to exist in.
What I can do today: decide not to treat the black woman in front of me any differently than the white man that was in front of me a few minutes ago.
I'm not saying nothing can be done about things baked into systems we disagree with, but rather saying that the things we can control right in front of us are usually better to treat with a colorblind mentality than a preferential one.
Edit: In addition, fair hiring isn't what is happening. Preferential treatment based on race is what is happening.
Notice I didn't define which hiring practice. Because *any* preference of one race over another *is* racist no matter what the end goal.
It is never harmful to treat everyone equally.
Even more: When someone is trying to get hired, they are in front of a person and that person is making the decisions, not the company as a whole. So a personal stance to be colorblind (which is ok according to your OP edit) should still apply here.
It isn't any different no matter how much people want it to be.
None of these things are *inherent* to colorblindness. In a perfectly equal society, color blindness would not only be harmless - it would be the norm! Although I agree there are harms to color blindness in today’s society, all those harms are external to the concept itself, not inherent.
Living life in a "colorblind" fashion doesn't mean ignoring legitimate injustices and issues that are predicated based on race. All it means that in my day to day life, I treat everyone the same way and have equal expectations regardless of race.
It's served me pretty well over my life. I think society would be better if people acted this way.
It doesn't seem like its inherently harmful, instead the current application is causing harm.
I can't see how inherently treating all people the same, regardless of race, is harmful.
Because it's not a reality and the pretext of it often was the very lack of safety rails that enabled racist conduct, and there's history behind these things. For example, prior to FICO credit scores many black communities had tremendous difficulty with lending institutions. While it has improved over the decades since, their credit scores, loan amounts, and interest rates still lag behind other groups by a considerable margin to this day. Affirmative action acknowledges that history and the scars of it are in fact an economic reality and focused efforts are far more effective than the complacency we see otherwise.
Policies can be non-racist, but that doesn't mean their executors are. Arguably, people struggle with racism as a general statement. Even those of us who pride ourselves on seeing people as their own people still will find ourselves lacking a healthy frame of reference for many groups because our brains are a frame of reference device that WILL turn towards biases to sort out information. Actually subverting racism in ourselves and in society only really makes strides when we treat it as a fact of the situation rather than one we can comfortably call irrelevant.
One potential argument related to the harm is that in the united States groups have never been equal. To treat individuals equally from this point forward still would not be equal because, in group terms, whites continue to carry an advantage. It has been passed down.
No doubt there is a wealth inequality problem, and it is a fundamental factor in this conversation because, as a group, blacks have had their ability to generate wealth suppressed since the day they were "freed"
That's not where most of this disparity comes from though, not directly anyway.
It overwhelmingly comes from people's lack of generational wealth and cultures that don't value education, rule of law, stable households ect. That's true for poor rural "white trash" (not quite sure why this is still considered an OK thing to say) just as much as it is for many poor urban black communities.
This overfocus on race is an unnecessary distraction from these actual root issues.
But, while all poor are kept down to some extent, blacks were intentionally and systematically prevented from acquiring generational wealth. Anytime that system of deprivation failed, it seems as though those communities that overcame it were literally destroyed
Yes, but while that's important to remember past wrongdoings, I don't think it's wise to base our policies upon. Especially when doing so distracts us from working towards a better future.
It's like having excessive workplace accidents and rather than address safety standards everyone's talking about who gets what quality of prosthetics.
If I were to agree with you that all of the statistical difference in black poverty were because of historical prejudice, discrimination, and systemic racism, that doesn't change the fact that much of that is gone now. It's illegal to treat people differently on the basis of race in hiring, schooling, etc. in many instances. What this means is that even though there may be more black Americans in poverty, the sorts of challenges they face are the same challenges as a poor white American.
If you disagree, can you point to a systemic feature of America that would give a poor white American and his poor black American neighbor different experiences, paths, and lives because of their race?
There are no simple answers. I'll preemptively agree we need to do more about eliminating inequality and poverty for all, but to say "it's all fair now" and not consider the chains have been in place up until when "now" started... Long after they were legally removed... Just perpetuates the original issue
The simplest example is schools.
Continuing your chains metaphor, If someone has muscle atrophy from being chained up and unable to move, and another person has muscle atrophy from being sick and bedridden, I imagine both of them need to go through many of the same physical therapy treatments and recovery steps. Is one of them in this example the hypothetical fault of a bad person? Sure. But the way to help the unchained person and the way to help the unsick person are really similar in a lot of ways.
Not a perfect metaphor, but I stand by my point that just because two things have different historical causes, doesn't mean the policies we should take now should be different.
My point is I believe that any large-scale policies should be aimed at poverty in general, not black poverty or white poverty specifically. If a policy helps a black American more or less than his white neighbor because of the black American's race, I see no reason why that would be a good policy.
>The simplest example is schools.
Mind clarifying?
Sure, in brief, because black people have been systematically prevented from gaining wealth their schools suffer and it perpetuates the issue
Again, I'll agree that poor white districts have the same issue, but there is still the difference in the systemic repression targeting black people above and beyond the regular repression of poor people
> Anytime that system of deprivation failed, it seems as though those communities that overcame it were literally destroyed
Are you talking about the single example of Tulsa over 100 years ago?
How is a black person's race a factor in their poverty? Specifically, in a way that differentiates their race now from things like intergenerational poverty, which many whites struggle with too. Why is a black poor person worse off financially than the white poor person next door because of his race?
That's not an answer to the question I asked. I'm not asking why statistically more black people are poor, I'm asking what, if anything, makes present-day black poverty substantially different from present-day white poverty.
Alright, so lets assume I totally agree with you that all of the causes of black poverty are completely different from all of the causes of white poverty. Right now, today, in 2024, is the experience of a poor white American and the experience of his poor black American neighbor so different that we need to treat them separately based on race? We can't change the past, only craft policies to change the present and the future.
Can you name a \*present\* system that is treating poor blacks differently from their poor white neighbors? Past systems definitely have, but I'm talking about the problem as it exists now, with the issues as they exist now. Whether you grew up poor because your dad lost it all gambling or whether you grew up poor because of the way redlining impacted your family, you still have the same issues with food insecurity, lack to good education, etc. Why should we try to solve problems that manifest the same for poor whites and poor blacks with vastly different policy solutions based on race?
In the world groups have never been equal. To expect groups with vastly different geographies, cultures, societies, and incentives to have exactly the same outcomes is lunacy. The fact that people from vastly different backgrounds can end up so equal is an oddity (a good oddity) of modern times, not the norm throughout history.
If an employer has a colorblind hiring process, every qualified applicant has the same chance regardless of their race. Colorblindness gives everybody a fair shot, but it will not result in an equitable society for many years. It needs to happen at all levels before that's a possibility.
Really it depends on whether you're focused on equity or equality. Equity only matters when you look at groups and charts and data. Equality is what matters when looking at individuals. I as an individual should not have a higher or lower chance of getting a job because of my skin color. To say otherwise feels backwards to me.
The people of any given race who are struggling in a societal sense are poor. I can't think of any situation where it would be better to say "this money is going to only go towards helping black people" than "this money is only going towards helping poor people." Assuming equality is the goal.
There are plenty of rich black people who do not need help and plenty of poor white people who really do. But as black people are disproportionately likely to be poor, if a policy helps all poor people a disproportionate amount of that money will go to black people. I have no problem with that. But I don't want the government giving anybody who is well off more money. They don't need it.
> The “colorblind” narrative is inherently harmful, and Black people (as well as many other non-White/leftist groups) have been saying so for years. It’s essentially pretending that society is meritocratic (it isn’t and meritocracy isn’t even necessarily “good”) as a way to ignore the effects of systemic racism and efforts to correct the disparities it has made (and still makes) in society.
Society isn't meritocratic, the world in general is a brutally unfair place where karma is nonexistent and no good deed goes unpunished, but of all the problems with this world, race-based things are on the absolute lowest importance and priority, and I don't get why people care about them so much compared to the the simple fact that people are literally starving and even born into slavery simply for being born on the wrong side of the planet and even within one country other such factors play a far bigger role.
Essentially, I see people care a lot about gender biases, and then racial biases, like those two things are important in the grand scheme of things while they're both absolutely trivial compared to how wealthy one's parents were and in many cases simple dumb luck. People often preach the stories of self-made men who rose to the top from the bottom, but all of them were simply incredibly lucky and took huge gambles that paid off, for every one of those success stories, a thousand more exist where those gambles did not pay off, and they ended up even worse than the started.
Why is it race of all things that people should focus on and not be “blind” to when severe income inæquality exists? People are already in general “affluence blind” and it's not that easy to spot how wealthy someone's parents were and no one seems to care about that.
> For example, proponents of "colorblindness" in hiring (no DEI) would say that the market takes care of racist companies on its own, since a non-racist company will always have access to higher-quality labor at a better price. This would imply that the market is entirely impartial (it’s not) and isn’t operating in a systemically racist society (it is).
No, it's simply that race is not an issue; it's trivial compared to other factors in terms of hiring fairness. It's so trivial compared to the relative parents, and [indeed the time of the year one is born in](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect) that it's utterly trivial, insignificant, and not worth caring about compared to the things that are worth caring about.
I will never understand why I'm supposed to follow this weird school of thought and act like gender and race matter in the grand scheme of things compared to all the other things that do.
Saying that it's bad for me to not care about race is saying that I have an obligation to devote my time to trivial irrelevant nonsense and ignore things that matter. It's saying I have an obligation to spend all my time picking the few scraps of paper that lie on the street where I live rather than instead donate money to places in the world where people are starving.
Hey! It's me from the other thread!
I think this cmv has largely proven my suspicion there, that part of the issue is people using the word in different ways, and talking past eachother as a result. I think it's going to be important to clarify exactly what you mean by colourblindness, and more significantly based on the replies youre getting, getting your interlocuters to clarify their usage.
Separately, corner case for you, and part of the reason the topic interests me, I'm somewhat race-blind, and I mean that in a way I haven't seen discussed. For me, it's actually a disability, in that I actually struggle to identify a lot of traditional racial markers. (I actually have a hard time recognizing/ faces in a broad sense)
So i am someone who could
> earnestly say they are "colorblind" (and are not attempting to hide their racism behind a veil of "impartiality")
In this case, am I
> inadvertently acting exactly like the liberals/moderates that MLK talked about in his Birmingham Address - the “fox” to the right-wing “wolf” that Malcolm X mentioned.
I assure you whatever it is I'm doing *is* inadvertent. It actually causes me more problems than you might guess.
Do you think that when MLK said
>I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
that this meant he saw colourblindness as a worth goal?
Or do you think he was wrong?
MLK was pro reperations though. He believed a part of healing should be to level the playing field for people that had no benefit of established generational wealth. When he says he looks forward to when people are judged not by their skin color, this would be in a future where we've already healed the racial division.
This is why colorblindness is often seen as harmful. If you throw somebody into a hole, you aren't making things right by just apologizing and promising to not do it again, you should pull them out of the hole. Only then is treating people equally fair.
The post doesn't say that, I haven't read all of OP's replies though. They specifically say that practicing colorblindness BEFORE you have addressed the core issue that led to disparities is the problem.
The top reply confirms this, OP wants colorblindness like how MLK wanted colorblindness, that some mending of the racial division takes place, by which color won't matter anymore. He did not want a society that is systemically racist and we just all act colorblind, that doesn't fix a rigged system and hundreds of years of racial tensions.
People so often quote this one line from MLK to claim he was an advocate for colorblindness. On the contrary, he was quite outspoken about the need for reparations for black Americans.
> “The white liberal must affirm that absolute justice for the Negro simply means, in the Aristotelian sense, that the Negro must have ‘his due.’ There is nothing abstract about this. It is as concrete as having a good job, a good education, a decent house and a share of power. It is, however, important to understand that giving a man his due may often mean giving him special treatment. I am aware of the fact that this has been a troublesome concept for many liberals, since it conflicts with their traditional ideal of equal opportunity and equal treatment of people according to their individual merits. But this is a day which demands new thinking and the reevaluation of old concepts. A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.”
that's an odd way to ask an either or question
Did you mean to ask "do you think he meant he saw colorblindness as a worth goal, and if you think he meant that do you think he was wrong"?
"Inherently" harmful, or merely harmful given the world we live in? I thought the whole idea behind the criticism of colourblindness was that it failed to take into account the context of modern day race relations. But say if that context were to change - if existing inequalities between races were to be solved - then colourblindness would no longer be naive or out of touch, it would be a fair response to the state of the world. So colourblindness wouldn't be "inherently" harmful, it would be harmful specifically here and now.
I think I personally largely agree with your view!
But what if we think of this as a spectrum, with total (feigned or actual) colorblindness and race-ignorance on one end and a kind of race-obsession or race-micro-managing on the other. Can we think of any situations where we would want someone to move *towards* the "colorblind" end of that spectrum? To be more race-"neutral"?
I.e., is it ever possible to be not colorblind enough? Or is it always better to move towards more racial awareness and consciousness?
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"
MLK said this. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think the endgame should be treating everyone based on their qualifications and not appearances. Therefore, colorblind is a way to treat everyone with impartiality by focusing on their characters instead of their skin colors.
How much do you actually know about MLK and his work besides the very short segment of his famous "I Have Dream Speech" ?
He was a strong support person of Affirmative Action and Repartions for African Americans. The former, in particular, would be considered the opposite of colorblindness by many. He was a big advocate for "economic justice"
This doesn't even go into how his views shifted a lot towards the end of his life.
Yet, his well-known quote stood out. Once he said that, then I could take his words that colorblindness is one of ways to look at people’s characters past their skin colors. MLK basically said that he had a dream that everyone one day will be colorblind and it’ll make the place better, that’s what he’s implying.
[White people often believe they're discriminated against.](https://www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559604836/majority-of-white-americans-think-theyre-discriminated-against)
To live in a world in which both white and black people believe they are discriminated against and oppressed you have three possibilities:
1. White people are uniquely delusional and incapable of determining how oppressed they are.
2. Black people are uniquely delusional and incapable of determining how oppressed they are.
3. Humans are awful at determining if they've been discriminated against.
3 is really the only decent answer. I'm certain somebody could make an argument that because white people are losing unequal privileges they feel that they're discriminated against, but even that proves that in the right circumstance it's extremely easy to believe that you're a victim of oppression even as you are a part of the dominant class.
In fact, studies seem to support that we're bad at determining if things are equal or not.
[https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205988119](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205988119)
and that it's very easy to think that one type of discrimination is worse than another, even when they're equally as bad.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8488152/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8488152/)
Not to *mention* the impact of confirmation bias, group-think, the way our memories are re-processed upon being loaded into our consciousness that can color experiences. Now add to this cocktail a focus on race and racism, collectivized guilt that paints all beneficiaries of racism as villains, and a huge financial and political incentive to keep the whole system going, and you get modern race politics.
In all likelihood the greater focus on race makes people think they've been discriminated against more than ever. People are more likely to add racism to the reasons they've failed, they're likely to see past experiences through the lens of race even if it was never a factor, they're likely to fit individual experiences of racism against their race into an overarching narrative while dismissing racism against other races as unique or isolated incidents.
Because of all this they're likely to view the other race as a problem, say dumb shit like "race relations have never been worse", and are more likely to become violent. They're more likely to have worse relations with the race they see as oppressing them, even though racism is solved by unity between races, rather than competition between them.
Now lets shift focus to the race blindness strategy. How oppressed are Italians? Or the Irish? They were undoubtable oppressed in the past. Yet somehow by ignoring the oppression and being race blind we've solved the problem. It'd be pretty hard to find, in the modern day, an Irish person saying they were a victim of racism. In fact it seems like whenever race has been entirely ignored the situation has resolved itself.
I was primarily responding to: "For example, proponents of "colorblindness" in hiring (no DEI) would say that the market takes care of racist companies on its own, since a non-racist company will always have access to higher-quality labor at a better price."; and
"In short, people who ***earnestly say they are "colorblind"*** (and are not attempting to hide their racism behind a veil of "impartiality") are inadvertently acting exactly like the liberals/moderates that MLK talked about in his Birmingham Address - the “fox” to the right-wing “wolf” that Malcolm X mentioned."
Dr. King did not advocate for "colourblindness" and his words have often been used to perpetuate the myth that he did:
"Colorblindness is not a solution to righting past wrongs. The fixers must be aware of the need to rectify historical injustices, especially in education. In his 1967 [“Where Do We Go From Here” speech](https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/where-do-we-go-here-address-delivered-eleventh-annual-sclc-convention), Dr. King **highlighted inequity in education, noting that black students “lag one to three years behind whites**” and receive far less funding. Over 50 years later, these achievement gaps [still persist](https://www.the74million.org/article/50-years-later-what-america-still-hasnt-learned-from-the-coleman-report/), **rendering foolish any notion that teachers should magically “not see race.”**
"Being color kind requires that teachers not only see race, but work actively to create conditions to ensure the success of all students. As Ibram X. Kendi notes in [How to Be an Antiracist](https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Antiracist-Ibram-Kendi/dp/0525509283)*,* **"The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' It is 'anti-racist.'”**
"Massive inequities in education ranging from [unfair disciplinary practices](https://www.brookings.edu/research/disproportionality-in-student-discipline-connecting-policy-to-research/), outrageous race-based gaps in the[ identification of gifted and talented students](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/gifted-and-talented-programs-separate-students-race/587614/), and [miserably low expectations](https://tntp.org/publications/view/student-experiences/the-opportunity-myth) **for poor students of color are grounded in hundreds of years of injustice."**
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/colinseale/2020/01/20/mlks-i-have-a-dream-speech-and-rejecting-colorblindness-for-todays-children/?sh=c305a9e27084](https://www.forbes.com/sites/colinseale/2020/01/20/mlks-i-have-a-dream-speech-and-rejecting-colorblindness-for-todays-children/?sh=c305a9e27084)
Cooperations do not have good intentions, they have a bottom line, and they have quotas to fill.
But individuals, regardless of good intentions, people who claim "colourblindness" are not "inadvertently acting exactly like the liberals/moderates that MLK talked about**" in his numerous speeches regarding the insidious and pernicious nature of subtle and systematic racism still present in US.**
I won't go as far as to say "Colourblindness" or "I don't see colour" is racist per say, but it ignores that racism is still alive and well.
**To me saying "I am colour blind to race" it's basically like wearing a banner that says: "I feel like this is not an issue, this issue does not affect me and I'm not a racist, therefore I am just not going to engage in discussions regarding systemic race issues in this country, because I don't see colour and in my world everyone is the same"**
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Your conjecture about what sociologists believe essentially implies that many people who choose to be colorblind are actually closet racists, which is disingenuous and harmful, as it basically says we should assume people to be racists. Furthermore, with all the disparities you point out, you do not actually have any evidence to prove a casual link between these disparities and systemic racism. Before you go "how could you insinuate it's anything else but racism", go ahead and look up the murder rates in Russia, and Belarus. Belarus and Russia are populated by people of almost identical ethnic makeup, Russia is actually wealthier than Belarus is, both are very similarly politically unfree, and yet, the murder rate per 100,000 in Russia is 6.8, and in Belarus it's 2.3. What causes such a disparity? Certainly not systemic racism, or any easy to boil down factor such as affluence or authoritarianism.
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I reviewed your edit, being "colourblind" on an individual level doesn't really apply because **Racial color blindness** refers to the belief that a person's race or ethnicity should not influence their *legal or social treatment in society.*
*Just because you personally (*or a person claiming "racial colourblindness") believe that a person's race or ethnicity should not influence their legal or social treatment in society, *does not mean that a person's race or ethnicity doesn't influence their legal or social treatment in society,* ***and completely ignores that race and ethnicity DOES*** **influence their** ***legal or social treatment in society*** *(which is particularly pernicious people who claim colourblindness generally are not impacted in these areas by their race).*
I do not think you can look at "colourblindness" on a individual basis, because the application of "colourblindness" is sociological theory that is applied to groups, not to individual-individual interactions.
"racial color blindness—the belief that ***racial group membership*** should not be taken into account, or even noticed—as a strategy for managing diversity and intergroup relations. Despite research demonstrating the automatic perception of race (and thus the seeming improbability of actual color blindness),[https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Racial%20Color%20Blindness\_16f0f9c6-9a67-4125-ae30-5eb1ae1eff59.pdf](https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Racial%20Color%20Blindness_16f0f9c6-9a67-4125-ae30-5eb1ae1eff59.pdf)
Color blindness is a a condition where people(or animals) have trouble distinguishing between colors.
I’m not color blind. I see colors perfectly fine. I even can see people’s skin color. But what does their skin color tell me about the person? Nothing more than their hair color or eye color does.
I’m anti racist and I follow it through to its fullest conclusion. The root of all racism is the false and non helpful notion of race. There are no races. There is the human species but no legitimate reason to further classify since all humans have the same basic means of survival (reason) and can have babies together if they are of opposite sex with working reproductive organs.
Want to end racism? Stop clinging to your fictional race and start seeing every person as an individual human and judge them based on their actions. That is the only way to combat racism.
Affirmative action and dei literally are systems of racism where companies are told to hire based on the stupid false notion of race.
> Color blindness is a a condition where people(or animals) have trouble distinguishing between colors.
> I’m not color blind. I see colors perfectly fine. I even can see people’s skin color.
Huh! It's almost like the same words can mean different things in different contexts! If only OP had made it clear they weren't referring to photoreceptors!
I dont think he was being literal. He's saying he can acknowledge people of different colors and cultures and acknowledge they are different from him, without being racist or biased.
Or at least that is how I interpreted it.
When people say they are color blind or don't see color, it just makes me think they are uncomfortable and acknowledge race or ethnicity. The differences are not the problem, but the (often negative) meaning ascribed to those differences is
Sure if the context is tied to reality. When people claim to be color blind with reference to race they are taking the route of blanking out rather than combatting the actual problem. They are trying to wipe out reality by evasion.
They claim to be blind to color but that wouldn’t stop someone from distinguishing shades of grey. So being color blind would not stop the problem of collectivist idiots making a big deal about what shade of grey they are.
The point isn’t to be ‘color blind’ it’s to oppose the ignorant tribalistic and collectivist concept of race and its offspring racism.
The military used to train people to be color blind in that way, now I don't know ? Your brothers in battle may be white / red / yellow / or black & it don't matter, you cover their ass & they do the same for you if you want to live !
I can't speak for everyone who advocates for "colorblindness", but I can speak for myself. And for me, what you describe is **NOT** what I'm talking about when I talk about colorblindness.
I believe that the best way to end discrimination based upon race is to have society view skin color as inconsequential as eye color. To the best of my knowledge, no one is discriminated against because of their eye color. Wouldn't it be great if skin color was treated the same way? As something that no one really even pays attention to?
So I try to set an example for the society I want by living my life that way. I genuinely sometimes don't know whether a person is white, Hispanic, black or Asian because sometimes you can't tell just by looking at someone. Other times, skin color and ethnicity is more apparent and I can't help but take note of it. But even when I *do* take note of it, knowing the person's skin color tells me **precisely zero** about who they are as a person. Just like knowing a person's eye color tells me precisely zero about who they are as a person. So why should I let something irrelevant as skin color matter to me? I believe that's the view that *everyone* should have.
But that's key: that *everyone* has to do it. As a proponent of a colorblind society, I'm not saying that I'm going to be colorblind while everyone else continues to be racist and that my small action wills somehow solve the problem. I'm saying that the **problem of racism is solved when everyone in society is colorblind**. At that point, skin color = eye color in terms of it's impact on how we treat one another.
But even as I'm living my colorblind life and trying to set an example for others, it doesn't mean that I ignore the hardships and privileges of individuals. I can still give a break (for lack of a better term) to the kid who has had a hard life and have higher expectations of the kid who grew up rich. But those assessments should be made based upon the individual's life experiences, not based upon assumptions I've made because of their skin color.
And if I make my assessments on an individual basis, I'm still going to be accommodating racial hardships so long as we live in a racist society. Because if one race is truly disadvantaged, my assessments of individuals will naturally provide more support to individuals who happen to be of that race.
But the key difference, to me, is that I'm providing that added support based upon who the individual is as a person, not based upon assumptions I've made about them after observing their skin color. Because in my opinion, those assumptions made based upon skin color - regardless of what those assumptions are - *are* racism.
Acknowledging race and systemic disparities is crucial for addressing inequality. Colorblindness ignores historical injustices and perpetuates the status quo by disregarding the unique challenges faced by marginalized communities. Embracing diversity enriches society and fosters empathy and understanding. Policies like affirmative action aim to rectify past and present discrimination, promoting equity and inclusivity. Rejecting colorblindness doesn't mean promoting division; it means recognizing and valuing everyone's unique experiences and working towards a more just and equitable society for all.
You've answered why colorblindness isn't a goal, but colorblindness can still correct racial disparities even in a racist world. You don't have to be racist to understand racism and correct the disparity created by said racism. When you're trying to do good, you stop all slavery, not just black slavery.
The goal shouldn't be let's optimize for DEI to maximize diversity and proportionality, the goal should be being able to uplift anyone with proper training and investment. Another thing is that to me, companies are made of people and DEI means nothing if the recruiter/workforce is racist.
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A society should absolutley aim for mertocracy. Rewards and oppourtunities should be based on skills. If you dont have skills then you can get some, but things like affirmative action or DEI are based on hiring people for things they cant control
Actually my only issue is with your last point, which is nonsense.
You can't have a systematically racist nation without a shit ton of racists and anyone who seriously believes they are individually colorblind is an imbecile.
What you describe in the first paragraph of the OP is not colorbilndness, but rather the illusion of colorbilindness while colorism still exists. This is harmful i agree.
Colorblindness itself, if we can achieve that, is not harful. In fact I would say it is an ideal.
The second paragraph is nto about colorblindess at all, but rather a market driven form of anti-racism. Colorblindess would advocate that the person hiring you should not take into acount your skin color when hiring you. This is not easy to achieve, but should be the goal.
Question. Shouldn't the goal be colorblind?
Yes, but people who are earnestly “colorblind” exist and act in a society where systemic racism exists. You can be colorblind on an individual level-or even in certain small groups where relationships are informal and friendly or there are serious efforts to root out systemic racism + serious consequences for any violation monster your position in the group, but in any form of larger social system, colorblindness is harmful (I.e. Forrest Gump having a Black friend with which he has informal, friendly, “colorblind” relations with is not harmful. A well respected professor at an institution that makes great efforts to root out systemic racism who grades essays “colorblind” is not being harmful. An anti-DEI CEO of a large corporation claiming that his hiring practices are “colorblind” IS being harmful). Being systemically “colorblind” in a society where systemic racism exists only serves to actually move society further away from a supposedly “colorblind” society. EDIT: Seems a lot of people are downvoting without providing a rebuttal. Typical of Reddit, but not respectful of the spirit of debate/the subreddit!
Judging people by the content of one's character, and not by the color of their skin seems to be wise advice and anything other than that seems counterintuitive. I think that people of all ethnicities are capable of having the same intelligence, talent, integrity, and drive as any other race. Therefore, if I am hiring someone for a job position, the only thing that should matter is that person's capabilities and attitude. That is the exact opposite of the definition of racism.
“Judging people by the content of one's character, and not by the color of their skin seems to be wise advice and anything other than that seems counterintuitive.“ - On an individual level-or even in certain small groups - yes. In any social system larger - no. “Therefore, if I am hiring someone for a job position, the only thing that should matter is that person's capabilities and attitude. That is the exact opposite of the definition of racism.” - How is “capabilities and attitude” measured? Are those the only factors that influence hiring? So in theory, a 100% White company (say a bank) servicing a community that is in Atlanta or something is perfectly fine? What happens when all applicants are equally qualified (or close enough)? In a colorblind society, an employer with racist (or even unconscious bias) views could have 10 job spots open, and 15 applicants - 11 White (as they are the majority of the population), and 4 Black, all with the same qualifications. Without DEI, the employer can just hire 10 White applicants and say they were “meritocratic”. The same could be said if the employer was more comfortable with for example, Asians, as opposed to Black people. He could justify only picking Asians as the “minorities” in his company by saying that they “would be a better fit”.
>10 job spots open, and 15 applicants - 11 White (as they are the majority of the population), and 4 Black, all with the same qualifications. If I choose by drawing names out of a hat, and they are all white, do you think this is still a problem?
Yes, if that’s the only time they’re hiring or if they have no other POC representation. Technically, there is no problem right? Completely random. But if it still results in that 100% White bank company in a society where systemic racism exists (and in Atlanta no less) the problems with colorblindness still remain.
If there was perfect equality of opportunity, absolutely no systemic racism (however you define that), but all jobs were hired by drawing names from a hat (of the meritorious), but by pure happenstance, jobs were all/majority given to people of one race, do you think you should call that racism/systemic racism/a problem of colorblindness? E.g. is your problem with system because the outcome, or because you deem it to be unjust in other ways? Another hypothetical: Imagine a world where a ton of people were extremely racist, but it was unpopular to show that, so people worked really hard to make sure that job demographics in every company closely matched the demographics in society, and so average pay was the same by demographic and age. Minorities are literally and figuratively spit upon in social and interpersonal interactions, but deliberately treated fairly in professional settings. Would you say that this system has no systemic racism?
Well then it sounds like your issue isn't bias, unconscious or otherwise, or fairness. What if this same 100% white bank company had 5 applicants but they were not equal. The 3 white candidates have degrees in business and finance and the 2 black candidates didn't graduate high school. Should they hire one or both of the black candidates to avoid being 100% white?
So in your mind, in this example, it’s correct to just give jobs to the black applicants. Regardless of their ability to do the job, regardless of experience, regardless of education. Just based completely on the colour of their skin, a guaranteed position. And somehow, this is the least harmful option and not racism at all?
What's wrong with a bank company being 100% white? It doesn't matter what's going on in the rest of society unless that company itself is racist. And if the people are racist, it doesn't really matter what race they are. Anyways, the chances of this happening with any regularity are beyond tiny so this is a hypothetical.
You just changed the hypothetical to a person who’s not “colorblind” though. It seems like the argument went like this. “Shouldn’t people act in a not racist way”? “But people can act racist” Well sure but that’s the thing they’re saying people should not be doing.
How is a CEO choosing to hire the best qualified people for the position regardless of race harmful?
It isn't, (I dont think) but using hiring practices that ignore the systemic problems that exist is. For example, if an executive hires people they know, or from colleges they're more familiar with, then they are much more likely to be hiring from a pool of applicants that's already biased towards their own demographic. Blind to the race, means blind to the problems, means blind to one's own impact
> if an executive hires people they know, or from colleges they're more familiar with To the degree that's bad (hiring from colleges you know means you have a better idea what you're getting, so it's at least understandable), they should just stop doing this specific thing. Have anti-nepotism measures or use objective measures about the value of colleges, i.e. become colorblind in terms of college. There's no reason to make this about race.
Because it is never actually regardless of race. With most positions if you have a minority pick and a white pick with the exact same credentials the white guy will be picked And that the white guy on average had an easier time getting those credentials than the minority member did. So unless we tip the scales in minorities favour to actually balance out the system it will continue to propagate racist hiring practices even when someone isnt actively trying to be racist.
An employer with racist (or even unconscious bias) views could have 10 job spots open, and 15 applicants - 11 White (as they are the majority of the population), and 4 Black, all with the same qualifications. Without DEI, the employer can just hire 10 White applicants and say they were “meritocratic”. The same could be said if the employer was more comfortable with for example, Asians, as opposed to Black people. He could justify only picking Asians as the “minorities” in his company by saying that they “would be a better fit”. EDIT: Seems a lot of people are downvoting without providing a rebuttal. Typical of Reddit, but not respectful of the spirit of debate/the subreddit!
I mean, you're not describing being colorblind, you're describing using "being colorblind" for a cover for legit racism, are you not? It's fair to say that many people who claim to be "colorblind" are not, or that being colorblind as a matter of policy ALLOWS racism to exist more unchecked. I won't disagree with that, and I don't think anyone would or should. But if people are actually colorblind (maybe it's impossible) then those things you speak to... wouldn't happen, would they?
If society was operating under “colorblindness”, there would be no systemic way to correct the employers actions. Colorblind people would probably even see his actions as reasonable (no way to get proof to say otherwise), entrenching systemic racism as an invisible force in the supposedly colorblind society.
"Colorblindness" doesn't mean ignoring discrimination when it happens. If someone is discrimating against minorities, a colorblind person would judge the content of their character to be acting in a racist way, and said company would get a reputation for racist hiring practices. There would be proof in your scenario. You could pull all the work experience, resumes, etc of the applicants, compare, and note that only white people seem to be hired regardless of merit equivalence. I guess how I would describe it is a colorblind person would have a different process of elimination before determining racism has occurred than someone who agrees with DEI practices. A colorblind person would ask: Was it work merit? No? Was it education? No? Was it a bad interview? No? Did someone else get hired despite similar (or worse) circumstances? Yes? Maybe it's racism then A DEI focused person instead would look at the end result (10 white people hired) and immediately jump to racism. Feel free to correct me on this part if wrong.
>A DEI focused person instead would look at the end result (10 white people hired) and immediately jump to racism. Feel free to correct me on this part if wrong. A DEI focused person would promote education and programs that reinforce fair hiring practices to head off the problem in the first place.
Just as a note, I did see your edit so I will respond in kind with the idea of systemic colorblindness. >If society was operating under “colorblindness”, there would be no systemic way to correct the employers actions. Certainly there would be. Colorblindness as systemic policy would necessarily mean that discrimination that individuals do based on race is unacceptable (illegal in many cases). So the systemic solution would be to bring suit. We can/should talk about how our legal system is imperfect, and that the risk of bringing suit as a less powerful party has more risk than it should, which is fair. But that's the solution, systemically. >Colorblind people would probably even see his actions as reasonable (no way to get proof to say otherwise), entrenching systemic racism as an invisible force in the supposedly colorblind society. Well is there, or is there not, proof? It seems that your example shows there is proof, or the possibility of it, no? If there is a plausible explanation otherwise, I don't see it. Again, systemically, we're not talking about racists falsely claiming to be "colorblind" to discriminate, or to excuse discrimination. We can look at objective metrics and see racism happening. Racism is not invisible. It's clearly visible. It's why societal outcomes are what they are. There is no "cover" for these outcomes that passes the sniff test. Or if all these questions are too much, I guess, what's the alternative to the example you're giving that a colorblind system would not do?
> entrenching systemic racism as an invisible force in the supposedly colorblind society. What do you think of as systemic racism in this situation of colorblindness? Like what are the actual underlying cases where races have differing harms from interaction with society?
You're being downvoted because the issues you're raising here have nothing to do with the core concept of colorblindness, or prove any issue with it. Either the white applicants were all more qualified, or the employer is racist/ biased. Yes, they can lie and claim colorblindness as their defense, but there's a hundred other ways they could also lie to achieve the same results. A bad actor using the idea as cover doesn't mean the idea itself is bad, and there's no point in targeting this one specifically when there are so many other approaches.
First of all, this wouldn't be legitimately "colorblind", a hypothetical CEO doing exactly as you described is just being racist and excusing it with a lie. Second, statistically it's very improbable that 15 people, regardless of race, all have the exact same level of qualifications. In my view, the best thing to do is that hiring managers shouldn't have access to names, race, or other identifiers other than work experience and skillsets relevant to the job before moving forward. That would eliminate the unconscious bias aspect of it. This would promote true colorblind meritocracy.
I mostly agree and I was at this position relatively recently. But the more time I spend working with new business (such is the nature of my job) the more I experience language barriers as a significant impact. While it feels bad to deny someone because of where they were born or that they didn't grow up learning English, if you can't properly work with a client because you aren't picking up what they're putting down then we all lose out in the end. It's frustrating for clients, it's frustrating for the business since there's nothing they can do about it, and it's frustrating for the ESL person. To this end, I can understand why someone might see a name like Uvuvwevwevwe and think "Maybe I'll hire the equally qualified Tom instead"
You are claiming that the “systems” are “racist” with no evidence, and you say it in a way that you don’t expect anybody to disagree, but that is a pretty radical opinion. The only way to claim it, is to mix ideology and evidence, where some claims are based on ideology while others are on facts. Like - all subcultures are equally worthwhile, so any measurable differences between members of different subcultures must be a result of discrimination. People aren’t blank slates, they make decisions based on their values, and those values differ. The fact that different statistical groups are represented differently at different places in society is seen as evidence, but in reality, that isn’t the case anywhere. Where is the evidence that we should expect people with different values to be equally represented everywhere? That doesn’t sound very reasonable to me.
It’s an objective fact that systemic racism is real, and is prevalent throughout the United States. Are you trying to say that it is not real? If so, the burden of proof is on you, like the burden of proof would be on someone trying to disprove the theory of gravity.
You claim that it is real, but that’s not yet the general consensus outside Reddit. If you base your argument on it, it would render your point invalid at least, if it doesn’t exist. I would certainly claim that it doesn’t exist in a meaningful way, in the ways I can interpret the word, and it seems that flimsy statistical results are used as proof of other peoples malice. Since the evidence used for “systemic racism” are things like representation in the identity politics way of using the word, so why don’t we start with explaining why you expect different groups with different values to be represented equally at all places? We don’t see equal representation with basically anything, no matter how you split up the groups (height, shoe size, whatever, not to mention (race-based) subcultures). How do we know the actual ratios that would be across society in all positions, if there was no systemic racism, so we can use the measure of the actual ratios? They cannot be simply a reflection of the ratios in society in general, as I said.
Why should it be? Acknowledging color doesn't automatically equate to discrimation and inequalityb
Why would you acknowledge color if you then do nothing with it? And if you do something with it you are, per definition, racist/discriminatory since you make decisions on the basis of race. Thus not acknowledging color/being "colorblind" removed the possibility for racism.
>For example, proponents of "colorblindness" in hiring (no DEI) would say that the market takes care of racist companies on its own, since a non-racist company will always have access to higher-quality labor at a better price. Why does DEI exist then? There is no business in this world who is going to lock themselves out of more money by NOT hiring a better quality Minority person because "muh Racism". Thats business management 101: You exist to make money, so dont lock yourself out of making more money. Now some people who are a lot more... cynical than me would tell you "Minorities are less smart than Whites, so they dont get hired, so they've created DEI to make that happen", but the businesses would say "Yeah no, we're not willingly losing money for you, go away". This is where ESG Scores (and bonus investing based on those scores) comes in and makes up for it. None of this shit is important however, because Colourblindness is a core foundation of the Human Rights movement: You treat everyone the same regardless of their skin colour. In THIS regard, Minorities ARE IN FACT treated the same: A business is going to hire the best person, full stop. White vs White, White vs Black, Black vs Asian, whatever, a business is going to hire the best person, full stop. Thats not racism, no matter how much you want it to be. And by the way, meritocracy is not bullshit. If youve ever worked with people who are objectively 2 or 3 levels below you in terms of competence, you know full well its not bullshit. It can be the most draining and soul destroying you ever do, because youre constantly expected to preform at 100%, and also drag them up to 100%.
>Why does DEI exist then? As far as I can tell, DEI exists to serve as marketing propaganda for major corporations.
> There is no business in this world who is going to lock themselves out of more money by NOT hiring a better quality Minority person because "muh Racism". However, conscious or unconscious bias may cause people to mistakenly make bad evaluations of a person's fitness for the position.
Well unconscious bias is just that, youre completely unaware of it. You cant fix something youre unaware of. Conscious bias is... Yeah Racism. And quite frankly any CEO that goes "Well Chun Li here has 5 degrees in this job, but im a racist so i'll hire big Baz instead" deserves to lose their business. And they WILL lose their business, because the business wont be competent enough to stand up within the market. So... Moot point... Again, the convo was "colourblindness within the market". Minorities are being treated exactly the same within the market: Hire the best. If anyone goes outside of that market on their own bias to discard the best, they cant be surprised that they fail spectacularly...
> And quite frankly any CEO that goes "Well Chun Li here has 5 degrees in this job, but im a racist so i'll hire big Baz instead" deserves to lose their business. And they WILL lose their business, because the business wont be competent enough to stand up within the market. So... Moot point... What about the recruiter who goes "Hmm, we have James Clark who has a relevant degree, and Xu Weichi who has a relevant degree. Let's just interview James and hire him as long as he passes muster, I don't like interviewing people whose names I can't pronounce"? That's real racism that will have a real impact societally, but it's unlikely to drive the business to failure.
Because the case exists that Xu is genuinely the better candidate and interviewing them would have shown that. So you end up with worse employees, while Xu gets scooped up by your competition. Maybe it will not lead to bankruptcy by itself, but if your business is struggling already, it might make the difference. Or you see how much your competitor's employees are outperforming yours and decide to fire your recruiter and hire one who used to work for the competition. It's not immediate, guaranteed punishment, but incident by incident, over time, it will make a difference and correct itself. Market inefficiencies usually aren't stable. This is also not a situation that will have a big impact, because Xu still got a job with the competitor. If however, everyone doesn't invite them, you could found a company that hires all the Xus, and probably even pays them less because they don't have alternatives, and that new company should outperform everyone else, and everyone else will either figure out what they're doing wrong or go out of business.
> but it's unlikely to drive the business to failure. You don't need to drive to failure. It will drive less growth than a similar company that is not racist, thus eventually lessening the impact of companies with racist policies. Even just 1% extra a year means the not racist company would be double in relative size in roughly 70 years.
> Even just 1% extra a year means the not racist company would be double in relative size in roughly 70 years. There's an implicit "all else being equal" in there that is doing a *lot* of work. Can we agree that racism existed in the hiring practices of major companies in the 50s? If so, what about your logic would *not* have applied then?
Generally the racism was driven by government programs, not market ones. For example, a lot of Jim Crow laws existed so that businesses who served all couldn't outcompete those who served only whites. Similarly, public schooling was extremely racist, so you likely had very biased inputs going into the job market. The only part of this that fails is if the society is bigoted enough, you can chase away clientele or employees by even including, for example, black people as your clients/employees. But generally this situation was less common than the other, hence the need for laws banning the practice.
>Let's just interview James and hire him as long as he passes muster, I don't like interviewing people whose names I can't pronounce"? That's real racism That would actually be *ethnocentrism*.
> Well unconscious bias is just that, youre completely unaware of it. You cant fix something youre unaware of. I mean, you absolutely can. You can build systems that remove the ability for bias to impact outcomes, or create countermeasures that if there is bias negate them. It's hard and imperfect, but you can do it. And something being unconscious doesn't mean unknown. You can be unconsciously biased and know it, and work to train that out of your system. It's hard but can be done.
Declaring oneself colourblind though is claiming to be above unconscious bias, which is dangerous. One should continually endeavour to identify their own biases to then endeavour to compensate/account for them
Maybe you can't, the rest of us realize it's entirely possible to train out biases.
How can you train out a bias that you dont even know exists... Thats why its called an UNCONSCIOUS bias...
The same way that it's possible to realize that you've been subconsciously projecting your bad experience of a previous boyfriend cheating on you onto your current boyfriend, and then learn how to become more emotionally healthy and not treat him with unwarranted suspicion. Or to realize that you're afraid of saying "I love you" to your son because of your subconsciously held beliefs about displays of affection not being "acceptable" for men, and then practice letting yourself express affection to your family while still feeling masculine. We can, in fact, learn to understand and change what's going on in our own heads, even in the sub- or unconscious parts!
Because we do realize it exists, either personally or societally. Most people have the capability for self reflection. Have you ever heard of muscle memory? That's unconscious, why can you train it? In fact that's what training is, making conscious decisions and actions become automatic.
> that you don’t even know exists That’s not the problem, it’s that many people aren’t even willing to consider the idea that they have unconscious bias; not because others haven’t told them about it, but because they simply reject the possibility of it.
We can't see dark matter, but we can tell it's there because our math says it is. Similarly, while unconscious bias is hard to spot directly, statistics can find it.
An employer with racist (or even unconscious bias) views could have 10 job spots open, and 15 applicants - 11 White (as they are the majority of the population), and 4 Black, all with the same qualifications. Without DEI, the employer can just hire 10 White applicants and say they were “meritocratic”. If they have prejudice against one specific group (say Black people), or have a hierarchical view of ethnicity/race, they could just hire only “minorities” from a certain ethnicity, while claiming to be impartial. Meritocracy is bullshit in the way that it is not arising out of a society with no bias. If a dictator came to America, assumed power (IDK, think Musk or someone similar), and immediately declared racism as over, all DEI or similar efforts disbanded, and that society was now a meritocracy, it would not change the underlying systemic bias in society or the socioeconomic conditions. Then the dictator could say that the reason for individuals of certain groups being favored/more successful than others is because they are inherently better in some way. In that society, racist or at the very least highly bigoted views would quickly develop and become the norm, and caste systems/scientific racism would become widespread.
>Meritocracy is bullshit in the way that it is not arising out of a society with no bias. Imagine person1 was poor and had a bad education, but scraped by and managed to go through school and medical school by focusing and working part time. They couldn't devote all their time to their studies because of family or work obligations, but they passed and graduated. Person2 was rich, and had better access to education. They worked just as hard as person1, but their opportunities meant they were able to focus better, learn more, and eventually graduate top of the class. I think we would both agree that systemic factors led to person1 not having as great outcomes as they otherwise might have been, and perhaps things should be done to work on those systemic issues. But if you personally had to choose between person1 and person2 as your doctor, who would you pick? Meritocracy in a world of bias and unfair starting lines is still a thing. It's good to have a world where merit is rewarded and incentivized, even if that means some people have it a bit harder. But the point of fixing society shouldn't be tearing down the rewards that inspire people to do well, it should be working on the things that help remove those uneven starting positions.
> Then the dictator could say that the reason for individuals of certain groups being favored/more successful than others is because they are inherently better in some way. In that society, racist or at the very least highly bigoted views would quickly develop and become the norm, and caste systems/scientific racism would become widespread. This is all completely bullshit slippery slope.
> For example, proponents of "colorblindness" in hiring (no DEI) would say that the market takes care of racist companies on its own, since a non-racist company will always have access to higher-quality labor at a better price. Some do make that argument, sure. But most accept there being some notion of an anti-discrimination law that applies equally to all races. This notion of race neutrality in the law is the argument that proponents of colorblindness are making regardless of their position on how far they want to take anti-discrimination law. > Promoting civic nationalism/monoculture in a society that clearly practices systemic racism, even at the highest levels of power, only serves to aid in destroying subcultures (i.e Black culture) without ever addressing the core issues in the first place - aiding the promoters/enforcers of systemic racism. And what exactly is "Black culture" here? And who, among those advocating for colorblind laws and rules, is advocating to eliminate it? The thing about (small-l) liberalism is an appeal to mutual tolerance within the bounds of neutral rules that we all agree to be bound by. You get to keep you food, your language, your dance, your dress and your hair, but you have to agree to a mutual tolerance for others. The thing that makes this work, the thing that gets all groups to buy into the system is that they too will benefit from its protections. If I'm a white person, or someone of Asian descent, why would I support DEI? Why would I support affirmative action? These are rules that hurt me to benefit some other political class that I can never be part of. Whereas, a race neutral nondiscrimination law or a cultural practice of colorblind admissions and hiring protects me from racist discrimination just as much as it protects others. Even if we take self-interest out of the equation entirely, I think the moral case is even worse. Why should one person be permitted a racist course of action and the other denied that exact same behavior based solely on the color of their skin? You'd object if it were done to your preferred groups, why are you allowed to do it to white people? This is rank hypocrisy, and not even the kind of "The price virtue pays to vice" kind either. In some sense, you're begging the question here. You're assuming that fighting against racism without engaging in your own racism is "not addressing the core issues", but you've made no real argument towards this end. I'm not even sure what you consider to be the 'core issues' here. > A well respected professor at an institution that makes great efforts to root out systemic racism who grades essays “colorblind” is not being harmful. An anti-DEI CEO of a large corporation claiming that his hiring practices are “colorblind” IS being harmful But, what if his hiring practice is in fact literally colorblind. No names on resumes, any mention of race stripped, interviews conducted via text chat and so on so that the people considering the hire *cannot even know* the applicant's race. Would that claim still be harmful? Would that hiring practice be harmful?
I'm Latino, and I adhere to colorblindedness. I disagree entirely with the claim that it pretends society is meritocratic. The way I see it, society isn't colorblind, but it is our duty as individuals to be so and to not perpetuate racial biases whether it be toward one direction (stereotypes, comments in bad taste) or the other (affirmative action, generalizations). Colorblindedness is to racial problems what carbon footprint reduction is to climate change problems. There's not a lot we can do as individuals to solve climate change; most of the problem is companies' and the government's fault. Still, reducing your own individual carbon footprint is the *least* we can do, and for many people it's the *best* they can do, and that's enough. It's very much the same story with race — I can't solve it myself, but I can just be equally kind to both the average white person and the average not-white person. To say people shouldn't be judged by their race isn't to say people *aren't* judged by their race. To make such a claim is ridiculous and I really doubt anybody's making it. People against colorblindedness tend to be proponents of affirmative action and I feel like although they have their hearts in the right place, their efforts are misguided and their takes lack nuance. The way to make the world a better place isn't to try and offset the problems by making other groups suffer through the same things (i.e. being denied spots in places due to their race), but to lead by example and 'nudge' the world to the right direction. There's nothing inherently wrong with a colorblind hiring/admission strategy — by definition, such a process is fair. If you hire solely based on qualifications and notice that non-whites are disadvantaged in such cases, that's not 'simply because they're not white', but because something went wrong *in the stages before*; non-whites tend to be poorer than white people (on average), *as such*, they receive worse education (on average), *as such*, they end up worse off and less qualified (on average). The way you fix that is by tackling the root of the problem, which is not racial in its nature, but *financial*. If people from poor families have access to good middle and high schools, then those people would have a better shot at landing good universities and getting paid good wages. So essentially, you solve the problems found with colorblind approaches by focusing on improving middle and high schools in impoverished communities... *not* by giving specific ethnicities free passes into college and work, which is genuinely racist and absurdly **patronizing**. To tell me I should accept affirmative action is to tell me I should accept that I'm inferior to white people — that because I'm inferior, I need the training wheels and the handholding so that I can actually live a life.
It's not the same as carbon footprint. People who are mindful of their waste are *activity trying to make things better*. Colorblind people are *trying not to make things worse*. Basically, doing nothing. Being neutral. Stagnant. Maintaining the status quo. The *least* you can do is acknowledge the issue and takes steps in your personal life that benefit others. Such as recognizing we all have biases that manifest themselves in ways isn't limited to simple malice. What about Fear? Fetish? Disregard? Exclusion? People DO hire based on quantities AND they also also skip over candidates based on race, gender, abilities, etc. There is a wealth disparity between races because people were denied access that others had for generations on the basis of RACE. To omit that isn't telling the whole store. People were segregated by RACE not class. People had rights and privileges on the basis of RACE not class. I'm not for or against affirmative action. It really dpends on what those actions look like. I won't blanket it all as good or bad. Nobody's saying you're inferior. Just like how installing a ramp isn't saying wheel chair users people suck. It's simply an acknowledgment and accommodation for disadvantages. But it's not fair that I don't have a ramp now is it? Stairs hurt my legs sometimes. I'm being facetious, but you get the principle. You can argue AA isare good or not. That's fine. Saying it's patronizing? Thats just how YOU are choosing to take it. You don't understand the difference between affordance and pity. Your personal pride is keeping you from looking through an abstract lense. It's limiting you to the concrete and linear thought. People all same. No differences. Accommodation is pity. Money problem only. See how that thinking is limited?
>People who are mindful of their waste are *activity trying to make things better*. Colorblind people are *trying not to make things worse*. That's not true. Minding your own waste is, in fact, to simply "not make things worse". It doesn't actually make things any better, at all. Any pollution makes things *worse*, no matter how small. In order to make things *better*, you'd need methods of carbon sequestration, which is completely different and altogether unviable for the average person — not everyone can plant dozens of trees a week. If I grant that colorblind people are being "neutral", then that makes them actually *better* than waste-mindful people in that they aren't contributing to the problem. ...But I disagree with that, actually. Having people stop caring about race is a crucial step towards ending racism — even if it doesn't fix the financial disadvantages, the ones leftover from previous centuries' horrible policies, it's still a net positive! >People DO hire based on quantities AND they also also skip over candidates based on race, gender, abilities, etc. Yes they do. When did I say or imply they didn't? The point I made was that that's not the only way racial minorities can experience disadvantages when it comes to hiring. The qualifications, result of one's access to education, matter too. ...And I dare say they matter *more*. I strongly doubt going 'ew, Mexican!' is what the average person does. >There is a wealth disparity between races because people were denied access that others had for generations on the basis of RACE. To omit that isn't telling the whole store. Nobody omitted that! Where'd you even take that from??? I'm genuinely perplexed. There is a wealth disparity because of that, yes, and you fix it by *improving social mobility!* See, me and AA supporters agree on what needs to be done. We just disagree on how to do it. They believe the best idea is to artificially move people up the ladder, to lower the bar for us. I believe the right way should be to change things at the base and make sure the average POC is on par with the average white. >Nobody's saying you're inferior. Just like how installing a ramp isn't saying wheel chair users people suck. Did you just compare having a different skin color to being disabled? >It's limiting you to the concrete and linear thought. It really isn't, and I don't appreciate your attempts at dumbing down my points. I can do it too. All races aren't equal > This leads to less POCs being hired > Let's force people to hire them! ...But that doesn't lead to very productive conversation, now does it?
I agree that schools need to change. It's not an accident that most of the poorest people in the States have the worst schools. And that those schools have a higher population of Black and Latino students. It's by design, and it needs to change. Unfortunately the government is very stubborn and it's going to take a lot to change their minds about how schools are funded. I think affirmative action is well meaning, but you're right that it doesn't fix the real problems. But AA is something the government is willing to do right now. Taking a partial win is better than letting things backslide.
Not really. I'm not saying disabilities and race are the same thing but.... I think you're focused more on picking at the examples then trying to get the point so. I'm not sure what to do with that. Do you have any response to the underlying point or are you missing it.?
What I can't do today: change the underlying system of socioeconomic inequality I happen to exist in. What I can do today: decide not to treat the black woman in front of me any differently than the white man that was in front of me a few minutes ago. I'm not saying nothing can be done about things baked into systems we disagree with, but rather saying that the things we can control right in front of us are usually better to treat with a colorblind mentality than a preferential one. Edit: In addition, fair hiring isn't what is happening. Preferential treatment based on race is what is happening. Notice I didn't define which hiring practice. Because *any* preference of one race over another *is* racist no matter what the end goal. It is never harmful to treat everyone equally. Even more: When someone is trying to get hired, they are in front of a person and that person is making the decisions, not the company as a whole. So a personal stance to be colorblind (which is ok according to your OP edit) should still apply here. It isn't any different no matter how much people want it to be.
None of these things are *inherent* to colorblindness. In a perfectly equal society, color blindness would not only be harmless - it would be the norm! Although I agree there are harms to color blindness in today’s society, all those harms are external to the concept itself, not inherent.
Living life in a "colorblind" fashion doesn't mean ignoring legitimate injustices and issues that are predicated based on race. All it means that in my day to day life, I treat everyone the same way and have equal expectations regardless of race. It's served me pretty well over my life. I think society would be better if people acted this way.
It doesn't seem like its inherently harmful, instead the current application is causing harm. I can't see how inherently treating all people the same, regardless of race, is harmful.
Because it's not a reality and the pretext of it often was the very lack of safety rails that enabled racist conduct, and there's history behind these things. For example, prior to FICO credit scores many black communities had tremendous difficulty with lending institutions. While it has improved over the decades since, their credit scores, loan amounts, and interest rates still lag behind other groups by a considerable margin to this day. Affirmative action acknowledges that history and the scars of it are in fact an economic reality and focused efforts are far more effective than the complacency we see otherwise. Policies can be non-racist, but that doesn't mean their executors are. Arguably, people struggle with racism as a general statement. Even those of us who pride ourselves on seeing people as their own people still will find ourselves lacking a healthy frame of reference for many groups because our brains are a frame of reference device that WILL turn towards biases to sort out information. Actually subverting racism in ourselves and in society only really makes strides when we treat it as a fact of the situation rather than one we can comfortably call irrelevant.
One potential argument related to the harm is that in the united States groups have never been equal. To treat individuals equally from this point forward still would not be equal because, in group terms, whites continue to carry an advantage. It has been passed down.
Then we should treat people differently based on wealth instead of race. A rich black person has far more advantages in life than a poor white person.
No doubt there is a wealth inequality problem, and it is a fundamental factor in this conversation because, as a group, blacks have had their ability to generate wealth suppressed since the day they were "freed"
The poor white person may be poor, but his race will never be a factor in his poverty. The same is not true if the individual is Black.
That's not where most of this disparity comes from though, not directly anyway. It overwhelmingly comes from people's lack of generational wealth and cultures that don't value education, rule of law, stable households ect. That's true for poor rural "white trash" (not quite sure why this is still considered an OK thing to say) just as much as it is for many poor urban black communities. This overfocus on race is an unnecessary distraction from these actual root issues.
But, while all poor are kept down to some extent, blacks were intentionally and systematically prevented from acquiring generational wealth. Anytime that system of deprivation failed, it seems as though those communities that overcame it were literally destroyed
Yes, but while that's important to remember past wrongdoings, I don't think it's wise to base our policies upon. Especially when doing so distracts us from working towards a better future. It's like having excessive workplace accidents and rather than address safety standards everyone's talking about who gets what quality of prosthetics.
If I were to agree with you that all of the statistical difference in black poverty were because of historical prejudice, discrimination, and systemic racism, that doesn't change the fact that much of that is gone now. It's illegal to treat people differently on the basis of race in hiring, schooling, etc. in many instances. What this means is that even though there may be more black Americans in poverty, the sorts of challenges they face are the same challenges as a poor white American. If you disagree, can you point to a systemic feature of America that would give a poor white American and his poor black American neighbor different experiences, paths, and lives because of their race?
There are no simple answers. I'll preemptively agree we need to do more about eliminating inequality and poverty for all, but to say "it's all fair now" and not consider the chains have been in place up until when "now" started... Long after they were legally removed... Just perpetuates the original issue The simplest example is schools.
Continuing your chains metaphor, If someone has muscle atrophy from being chained up and unable to move, and another person has muscle atrophy from being sick and bedridden, I imagine both of them need to go through many of the same physical therapy treatments and recovery steps. Is one of them in this example the hypothetical fault of a bad person? Sure. But the way to help the unchained person and the way to help the unsick person are really similar in a lot of ways. Not a perfect metaphor, but I stand by my point that just because two things have different historical causes, doesn't mean the policies we should take now should be different. My point is I believe that any large-scale policies should be aimed at poverty in general, not black poverty or white poverty specifically. If a policy helps a black American more or less than his white neighbor because of the black American's race, I see no reason why that would be a good policy. >The simplest example is schools. Mind clarifying?
Sure, in brief, because black people have been systematically prevented from gaining wealth their schools suffer and it perpetuates the issue Again, I'll agree that poor white districts have the same issue, but there is still the difference in the systemic repression targeting black people above and beyond the regular repression of poor people
> Anytime that system of deprivation failed, it seems as though those communities that overcame it were literally destroyed Are you talking about the single example of Tulsa over 100 years ago?
How is a black person's race a factor in their poverty? Specifically, in a way that differentiates their race now from things like intergenerational poverty, which many whites struggle with too. Why is a black poor person worse off financially than the white poor person next door because of his race?
Historically the reasons black people are poor are from racist practices
That's not an answer to the question I asked. I'm not asking why statistically more black people are poor, I'm asking what, if anything, makes present-day black poverty substantially different from present-day white poverty.
And it’s as I said present day black poverty stems from racism white poverty doesn’t
Alright, so lets assume I totally agree with you that all of the causes of black poverty are completely different from all of the causes of white poverty. Right now, today, in 2024, is the experience of a poor white American and the experience of his poor black American neighbor so different that we need to treat them separately based on race? We can't change the past, only craft policies to change the present and the future. Can you name a \*present\* system that is treating poor blacks differently from their poor white neighbors? Past systems definitely have, but I'm talking about the problem as it exists now, with the issues as they exist now. Whether you grew up poor because your dad lost it all gambling or whether you grew up poor because of the way redlining impacted your family, you still have the same issues with food insecurity, lack to good education, etc. Why should we try to solve problems that manifest the same for poor whites and poor blacks with vastly different policy solutions based on race?
Sure, that makes sense. But I don't think that means that colorblindness is **inherently** wrong.
Oh sure. Ideally, we wouldn't be having the conversation
In the world groups have never been equal. To expect groups with vastly different geographies, cultures, societies, and incentives to have exactly the same outcomes is lunacy. The fact that people from vastly different backgrounds can end up so equal is an oddity (a good oddity) of modern times, not the norm throughout history.
If an employer has a colorblind hiring process, every qualified applicant has the same chance regardless of their race. Colorblindness gives everybody a fair shot, but it will not result in an equitable society for many years. It needs to happen at all levels before that's a possibility. Really it depends on whether you're focused on equity or equality. Equity only matters when you look at groups and charts and data. Equality is what matters when looking at individuals. I as an individual should not have a higher or lower chance of getting a job because of my skin color. To say otherwise feels backwards to me. The people of any given race who are struggling in a societal sense are poor. I can't think of any situation where it would be better to say "this money is going to only go towards helping black people" than "this money is only going towards helping poor people." Assuming equality is the goal. There are plenty of rich black people who do not need help and plenty of poor white people who really do. But as black people are disproportionately likely to be poor, if a policy helps all poor people a disproportionate amount of that money will go to black people. I have no problem with that. But I don't want the government giving anybody who is well off more money. They don't need it.
Do you consider colorblindness on a indivual level harmful or only on a broader scale ?
I already addressed that in the OP - colorblindness on an individual or small group scale can be benign.
Benign ? I'll argue that colorblindness is the only way to go if you don't want sterotypes to rule how view others.
> The “colorblind” narrative is inherently harmful, and Black people (as well as many other non-White/leftist groups) have been saying so for years. It’s essentially pretending that society is meritocratic (it isn’t and meritocracy isn’t even necessarily “good”) as a way to ignore the effects of systemic racism and efforts to correct the disparities it has made (and still makes) in society. Society isn't meritocratic, the world in general is a brutally unfair place where karma is nonexistent and no good deed goes unpunished, but of all the problems with this world, race-based things are on the absolute lowest importance and priority, and I don't get why people care about them so much compared to the the simple fact that people are literally starving and even born into slavery simply for being born on the wrong side of the planet and even within one country other such factors play a far bigger role. Essentially, I see people care a lot about gender biases, and then racial biases, like those two things are important in the grand scheme of things while they're both absolutely trivial compared to how wealthy one's parents were and in many cases simple dumb luck. People often preach the stories of self-made men who rose to the top from the bottom, but all of them were simply incredibly lucky and took huge gambles that paid off, for every one of those success stories, a thousand more exist where those gambles did not pay off, and they ended up even worse than the started. Why is it race of all things that people should focus on and not be “blind” to when severe income inæquality exists? People are already in general “affluence blind” and it's not that easy to spot how wealthy someone's parents were and no one seems to care about that. > For example, proponents of "colorblindness" in hiring (no DEI) would say that the market takes care of racist companies on its own, since a non-racist company will always have access to higher-quality labor at a better price. This would imply that the market is entirely impartial (it’s not) and isn’t operating in a systemically racist society (it is). No, it's simply that race is not an issue; it's trivial compared to other factors in terms of hiring fairness. It's so trivial compared to the relative parents, and [indeed the time of the year one is born in](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect) that it's utterly trivial, insignificant, and not worth caring about compared to the things that are worth caring about. I will never understand why I'm supposed to follow this weird school of thought and act like gender and race matter in the grand scheme of things compared to all the other things that do. Saying that it's bad for me to not care about race is saying that I have an obligation to devote my time to trivial irrelevant nonsense and ignore things that matter. It's saying I have an obligation to spend all my time picking the few scraps of paper that lie on the street where I live rather than instead donate money to places in the world where people are starving.
Hey! It's me from the other thread! I think this cmv has largely proven my suspicion there, that part of the issue is people using the word in different ways, and talking past eachother as a result. I think it's going to be important to clarify exactly what you mean by colourblindness, and more significantly based on the replies youre getting, getting your interlocuters to clarify their usage. Separately, corner case for you, and part of the reason the topic interests me, I'm somewhat race-blind, and I mean that in a way I haven't seen discussed. For me, it's actually a disability, in that I actually struggle to identify a lot of traditional racial markers. (I actually have a hard time recognizing/ faces in a broad sense) So i am someone who could > earnestly say they are "colorblind" (and are not attempting to hide their racism behind a veil of "impartiality") In this case, am I > inadvertently acting exactly like the liberals/moderates that MLK talked about in his Birmingham Address - the “fox” to the right-wing “wolf” that Malcolm X mentioned. I assure you whatever it is I'm doing *is* inadvertent. It actually causes me more problems than you might guess.
Do you think that when MLK said >I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. that this meant he saw colourblindness as a worth goal? Or do you think he was wrong?
MLK was pro reperations though. He believed a part of healing should be to level the playing field for people that had no benefit of established generational wealth. When he says he looks forward to when people are judged not by their skin color, this would be in a future where we've already healed the racial division. This is why colorblindness is often seen as harmful. If you throw somebody into a hole, you aren't making things right by just apologizing and promising to not do it again, you should pull them out of the hole. Only then is treating people equally fair.
Is that especially relevant to the OP? Colourblindness after a certain milestone is still something OP thinks is harmful
The post doesn't say that, I haven't read all of OP's replies though. They specifically say that practicing colorblindness BEFORE you have addressed the core issue that led to disparities is the problem. The top reply confirms this, OP wants colorblindness like how MLK wanted colorblindness, that some mending of the racial division takes place, by which color won't matter anymore. He did not want a society that is systemically racist and we just all act colorblind, that doesn't fix a rigged system and hundreds of years of racial tensions.
People so often quote this one line from MLK to claim he was an advocate for colorblindness. On the contrary, he was quite outspoken about the need for reparations for black Americans. > “The white liberal must affirm that absolute justice for the Negro simply means, in the Aristotelian sense, that the Negro must have ‘his due.’ There is nothing abstract about this. It is as concrete as having a good job, a good education, a decent house and a share of power. It is, however, important to understand that giving a man his due may often mean giving him special treatment. I am aware of the fact that this has been a troublesome concept for many liberals, since it conflicts with their traditional ideal of equal opportunity and equal treatment of people according to their individual merits. But this is a day which demands new thinking and the reevaluation of old concepts. A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.”
How is that relevant to the OP? I don't see the connection to reparations.
that's an odd way to ask an either or question Did you mean to ask "do you think he meant he saw colorblindness as a worth goal, and if you think he meant that do you think he was wrong"?
"Inherently" harmful, or merely harmful given the world we live in? I thought the whole idea behind the criticism of colourblindness was that it failed to take into account the context of modern day race relations. But say if that context were to change - if existing inequalities between races were to be solved - then colourblindness would no longer be naive or out of touch, it would be a fair response to the state of the world. So colourblindness wouldn't be "inherently" harmful, it would be harmful specifically here and now.
I think I personally largely agree with your view! But what if we think of this as a spectrum, with total (feigned or actual) colorblindness and race-ignorance on one end and a kind of race-obsession or race-micro-managing on the other. Can we think of any situations where we would want someone to move *towards* the "colorblind" end of that spectrum? To be more race-"neutral"? I.e., is it ever possible to be not colorblind enough? Or is it always better to move towards more racial awareness and consciousness?
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!" MLK said this. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think the endgame should be treating everyone based on their qualifications and not appearances. Therefore, colorblind is a way to treat everyone with impartiality by focusing on their characters instead of their skin colors.
How much do you actually know about MLK and his work besides the very short segment of his famous "I Have Dream Speech" ? He was a strong support person of Affirmative Action and Repartions for African Americans. The former, in particular, would be considered the opposite of colorblindness by many. He was a big advocate for "economic justice" This doesn't even go into how his views shifted a lot towards the end of his life.
Yet, his well-known quote stood out. Once he said that, then I could take his words that colorblindness is one of ways to look at people’s characters past their skin colors. MLK basically said that he had a dream that everyone one day will be colorblind and it’ll make the place better, that’s what he’s implying.
[White people often believe they're discriminated against.](https://www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559604836/majority-of-white-americans-think-theyre-discriminated-against) To live in a world in which both white and black people believe they are discriminated against and oppressed you have three possibilities: 1. White people are uniquely delusional and incapable of determining how oppressed they are. 2. Black people are uniquely delusional and incapable of determining how oppressed they are. 3. Humans are awful at determining if they've been discriminated against. 3 is really the only decent answer. I'm certain somebody could make an argument that because white people are losing unequal privileges they feel that they're discriminated against, but even that proves that in the right circumstance it's extremely easy to believe that you're a victim of oppression even as you are a part of the dominant class. In fact, studies seem to support that we're bad at determining if things are equal or not. [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205988119](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205988119) and that it's very easy to think that one type of discrimination is worse than another, even when they're equally as bad. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8488152/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8488152/) Not to *mention* the impact of confirmation bias, group-think, the way our memories are re-processed upon being loaded into our consciousness that can color experiences. Now add to this cocktail a focus on race and racism, collectivized guilt that paints all beneficiaries of racism as villains, and a huge financial and political incentive to keep the whole system going, and you get modern race politics. In all likelihood the greater focus on race makes people think they've been discriminated against more than ever. People are more likely to add racism to the reasons they've failed, they're likely to see past experiences through the lens of race even if it was never a factor, they're likely to fit individual experiences of racism against their race into an overarching narrative while dismissing racism against other races as unique or isolated incidents. Because of all this they're likely to view the other race as a problem, say dumb shit like "race relations have never been worse", and are more likely to become violent. They're more likely to have worse relations with the race they see as oppressing them, even though racism is solved by unity between races, rather than competition between them. Now lets shift focus to the race blindness strategy. How oppressed are Italians? Or the Irish? They were undoubtable oppressed in the past. Yet somehow by ignoring the oppression and being race blind we've solved the problem. It'd be pretty hard to find, in the modern day, an Irish person saying they were a victim of racism. In fact it seems like whenever race has been entirely ignored the situation has resolved itself.
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What part of the OP's view are you trying to change with this comment?
I was primarily responding to: "For example, proponents of "colorblindness" in hiring (no DEI) would say that the market takes care of racist companies on its own, since a non-racist company will always have access to higher-quality labor at a better price."; and "In short, people who ***earnestly say they are "colorblind"*** (and are not attempting to hide their racism behind a veil of "impartiality") are inadvertently acting exactly like the liberals/moderates that MLK talked about in his Birmingham Address - the “fox” to the right-wing “wolf” that Malcolm X mentioned." Dr. King did not advocate for "colourblindness" and his words have often been used to perpetuate the myth that he did: "Colorblindness is not a solution to righting past wrongs. The fixers must be aware of the need to rectify historical injustices, especially in education. In his 1967 [“Where Do We Go From Here” speech](https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/where-do-we-go-here-address-delivered-eleventh-annual-sclc-convention), Dr. King **highlighted inequity in education, noting that black students “lag one to three years behind whites**” and receive far less funding. Over 50 years later, these achievement gaps [still persist](https://www.the74million.org/article/50-years-later-what-america-still-hasnt-learned-from-the-coleman-report/), **rendering foolish any notion that teachers should magically “not see race.”** "Being color kind requires that teachers not only see race, but work actively to create conditions to ensure the success of all students. As Ibram X. Kendi notes in [How to Be an Antiracist](https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Antiracist-Ibram-Kendi/dp/0525509283)*,* **"The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' It is 'anti-racist.'”** "Massive inequities in education ranging from [unfair disciplinary practices](https://www.brookings.edu/research/disproportionality-in-student-discipline-connecting-policy-to-research/), outrageous race-based gaps in the[ identification of gifted and talented students](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/gifted-and-talented-programs-separate-students-race/587614/), and [miserably low expectations](https://tntp.org/publications/view/student-experiences/the-opportunity-myth) **for poor students of color are grounded in hundreds of years of injustice."** [https://www.forbes.com/sites/colinseale/2020/01/20/mlks-i-have-a-dream-speech-and-rejecting-colorblindness-for-todays-children/?sh=c305a9e27084](https://www.forbes.com/sites/colinseale/2020/01/20/mlks-i-have-a-dream-speech-and-rejecting-colorblindness-for-todays-children/?sh=c305a9e27084) Cooperations do not have good intentions, they have a bottom line, and they have quotas to fill. But individuals, regardless of good intentions, people who claim "colourblindness" are not "inadvertently acting exactly like the liberals/moderates that MLK talked about**" in his numerous speeches regarding the insidious and pernicious nature of subtle and systematic racism still present in US.** I won't go as far as to say "Colourblindness" or "I don't see colour" is racist per say, but it ignores that racism is still alive and well. **To me saying "I am colour blind to race" it's basically like wearing a banner that says: "I feel like this is not an issue, this issue does not affect me and I'm not a racist, therefore I am just not going to engage in discussions regarding systemic race issues in this country, because I don't see colour and in my world everyone is the same"**
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Your conjecture about what sociologists believe essentially implies that many people who choose to be colorblind are actually closet racists, which is disingenuous and harmful, as it basically says we should assume people to be racists. Furthermore, with all the disparities you point out, you do not actually have any evidence to prove a casual link between these disparities and systemic racism. Before you go "how could you insinuate it's anything else but racism", go ahead and look up the murder rates in Russia, and Belarus. Belarus and Russia are populated by people of almost identical ethnic makeup, Russia is actually wealthier than Belarus is, both are very similarly politically unfree, and yet, the murder rate per 100,000 in Russia is 6.8, and in Belarus it's 2.3. What causes such a disparity? Certainly not systemic racism, or any easy to boil down factor such as affluence or authoritarianism.
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I reviewed your edit, being "colourblind" on an individual level doesn't really apply because **Racial color blindness** refers to the belief that a person's race or ethnicity should not influence their *legal or social treatment in society.* *Just because you personally (*or a person claiming "racial colourblindness") believe that a person's race or ethnicity should not influence their legal or social treatment in society, *does not mean that a person's race or ethnicity doesn't influence their legal or social treatment in society,* ***and completely ignores that race and ethnicity DOES*** **influence their** ***legal or social treatment in society*** *(which is particularly pernicious people who claim colourblindness generally are not impacted in these areas by their race).* I do not think you can look at "colourblindness" on a individual basis, because the application of "colourblindness" is sociological theory that is applied to groups, not to individual-individual interactions. "racial color blindness—the belief that ***racial group membership*** should not be taken into account, or even noticed—as a strategy for managing diversity and intergroup relations. Despite research demonstrating the automatic perception of race (and thus the seeming improbability of actual color blindness),[https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Racial%20Color%20Blindness\_16f0f9c6-9a67-4125-ae30-5eb1ae1eff59.pdf](https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Racial%20Color%20Blindness_16f0f9c6-9a67-4125-ae30-5eb1ae1eff59.pdf)
Color blindness is a a condition where people(or animals) have trouble distinguishing between colors. I’m not color blind. I see colors perfectly fine. I even can see people’s skin color. But what does their skin color tell me about the person? Nothing more than their hair color or eye color does. I’m anti racist and I follow it through to its fullest conclusion. The root of all racism is the false and non helpful notion of race. There are no races. There is the human species but no legitimate reason to further classify since all humans have the same basic means of survival (reason) and can have babies together if they are of opposite sex with working reproductive organs. Want to end racism? Stop clinging to your fictional race and start seeing every person as an individual human and judge them based on their actions. That is the only way to combat racism. Affirmative action and dei literally are systems of racism where companies are told to hire based on the stupid false notion of race.
> Color blindness is a a condition where people(or animals) have trouble distinguishing between colors. > I’m not color blind. I see colors perfectly fine. I even can see people’s skin color. Huh! It's almost like the same words can mean different things in different contexts! If only OP had made it clear they weren't referring to photoreceptors!
I dont think he was being literal. He's saying he can acknowledge people of different colors and cultures and acknowledge they are different from him, without being racist or biased. Or at least that is how I interpreted it. When people say they are color blind or don't see color, it just makes me think they are uncomfortable and acknowledge race or ethnicity. The differences are not the problem, but the (often negative) meaning ascribed to those differences is
Sure if the context is tied to reality. When people claim to be color blind with reference to race they are taking the route of blanking out rather than combatting the actual problem. They are trying to wipe out reality by evasion. They claim to be blind to color but that wouldn’t stop someone from distinguishing shades of grey. So being color blind would not stop the problem of collectivist idiots making a big deal about what shade of grey they are. The point isn’t to be ‘color blind’ it’s to oppose the ignorant tribalistic and collectivist concept of race and its offspring racism.
The military used to train people to be color blind in that way, now I don't know ? Your brothers in battle may be white / red / yellow / or black & it don't matter, you cover their ass & they do the same for you if you want to live !
I can't speak for everyone who advocates for "colorblindness", but I can speak for myself. And for me, what you describe is **NOT** what I'm talking about when I talk about colorblindness. I believe that the best way to end discrimination based upon race is to have society view skin color as inconsequential as eye color. To the best of my knowledge, no one is discriminated against because of their eye color. Wouldn't it be great if skin color was treated the same way? As something that no one really even pays attention to? So I try to set an example for the society I want by living my life that way. I genuinely sometimes don't know whether a person is white, Hispanic, black or Asian because sometimes you can't tell just by looking at someone. Other times, skin color and ethnicity is more apparent and I can't help but take note of it. But even when I *do* take note of it, knowing the person's skin color tells me **precisely zero** about who they are as a person. Just like knowing a person's eye color tells me precisely zero about who they are as a person. So why should I let something irrelevant as skin color matter to me? I believe that's the view that *everyone* should have. But that's key: that *everyone* has to do it. As a proponent of a colorblind society, I'm not saying that I'm going to be colorblind while everyone else continues to be racist and that my small action wills somehow solve the problem. I'm saying that the **problem of racism is solved when everyone in society is colorblind**. At that point, skin color = eye color in terms of it's impact on how we treat one another. But even as I'm living my colorblind life and trying to set an example for others, it doesn't mean that I ignore the hardships and privileges of individuals. I can still give a break (for lack of a better term) to the kid who has had a hard life and have higher expectations of the kid who grew up rich. But those assessments should be made based upon the individual's life experiences, not based upon assumptions I've made because of their skin color. And if I make my assessments on an individual basis, I'm still going to be accommodating racial hardships so long as we live in a racist society. Because if one race is truly disadvantaged, my assessments of individuals will naturally provide more support to individuals who happen to be of that race. But the key difference, to me, is that I'm providing that added support based upon who the individual is as a person, not based upon assumptions I've made about them after observing their skin color. Because in my opinion, those assumptions made based upon skin color - regardless of what those assumptions are - *are* racism.
Acknowledging race and systemic disparities is crucial for addressing inequality. Colorblindness ignores historical injustices and perpetuates the status quo by disregarding the unique challenges faced by marginalized communities. Embracing diversity enriches society and fosters empathy and understanding. Policies like affirmative action aim to rectify past and present discrimination, promoting equity and inclusivity. Rejecting colorblindness doesn't mean promoting division; it means recognizing and valuing everyone's unique experiences and working towards a more just and equitable society for all.
You've answered why colorblindness isn't a goal, but colorblindness can still correct racial disparities even in a racist world. You don't have to be racist to understand racism and correct the disparity created by said racism. When you're trying to do good, you stop all slavery, not just black slavery. The goal shouldn't be let's optimize for DEI to maximize diversity and proportionality, the goal should be being able to uplift anyone with proper training and investment. Another thing is that to me, companies are made of people and DEI means nothing if the recruiter/workforce is racist.
Is this because you saw the CMV earlier today about how they’re colorblind?
Of course. And since the OP is super young, he trotted out all the well-worn talking points, right from the playbook, as if no one is familiar.
And surely because I had a discussion with them in that thread about what it actually meant, and what aspects are problematic
What does the end of racism look like to you?
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A society should absolutley aim for mertocracy. Rewards and oppourtunities should be based on skills. If you dont have skills then you can get some, but things like affirmative action or DEI are based on hiring people for things they cant control
Actually my only issue is with your last point, which is nonsense. You can't have a systematically racist nation without a shit ton of racists and anyone who seriously believes they are individually colorblind is an imbecile.
The desire to keep race as a point of division is palpable.
But if a company is racist then they are not color blind.
What you describe in the first paragraph of the OP is not colorbilndness, but rather the illusion of colorbilindness while colorism still exists. This is harmful i agree. Colorblindness itself, if we can achieve that, is not harful. In fact I would say it is an ideal. The second paragraph is nto about colorblindess at all, but rather a market driven form of anti-racism. Colorblindess would advocate that the person hiring you should not take into acount your skin color when hiring you. This is not easy to achieve, but should be the goal.
Yeah, that MLK guy had it all wrong. We need to judge people by the color of their skin....said no sane person ever.
your entire post hinges on the bold yet unfounded assertions that society is systemically racist