LogFAQs > #976804631

SayHeyyShohei posted...

Color blindness ignores the fact that society is not equal when it comes to race and until it does we literally cannot be color blind without other races falling short and being marginalized.

That's not really true though. If people are being treated unfairly due to their race, and you rollout policies that ensure people are treated fairly regardless of race, then if those policies are successful, people would be treated equally.

It's something like this: There's 8 very wealthy affluent white people, 2 struggling poor white people, there's 8 struggling poor black people, and 2 very wealthy affluent black people.

A color blind policy will help the 10 struggling poor people, and a race based one will help the 10 black people. Is the race based one really helping address inequality?

Furthermore if the policy was one that was only going to help 2 people, odds are it would help the 2 affluent black people and not any of the 8 ones actually struggling. Whereas a color-blind class based solution (like Coleman advocates for) would help 2 of the struggling people, likely both black.

Does it really make you feel good to think of Asian students having to hide their asianness on college application essays and being discriminated against based on their race? Or well off institutions claiming they are addressing racism when they just chase a quota rather than send resources to places where people are struggling? IMO these aren't solutions, it's virtue signaling that defines and divides people based on race. It ignores people's humanity and personal experience, and sees them first through the lens of race. And to me that seems like a really really dumb way to try to move past racism.

One thing I really dislike about non-colorblind solutions is that they are so shallow, and can often be this super reductive, and indeed a kinda racist "race-essentialism" view of people.

Who has more in common? 2 people of different races both living in the same neighborhood, going to the same school, in the same group of friends, both in deep poverty, both nearby crime, both without a father in their life? Or each one of those people with a rich wealthy privileged counterpart half way across the country of the same race?

I think anybody with any intellectual integrity knows the answer to that question. And I'm sorry, but it's just silly to act like the opposite is true. You simply don't address racism by enshrining racial discrimination as the solution.

A black person isn't at a disadvantage because they are black, blackness (or any skin color) is not a flaw or detriment. The problem is the legacy of unfair treatment of people based on their race, and any ongoing unfair treatment.

The unfair treatment of a person, not the race of the person, is the problem needing addressing. And so any policy in which addressing that unfair treatment is the core focus is going to be more effective.

Because seriously? What's the goal? Let's cut the bullshit. Is the goal a kinda schadenfreude antagonisms of people (rich and poor) around racial lines because we are angry about the legacy of racism? Or is the goal to effectively address and solve the existing unfairnesses for those struggling? Because like I said, the unfairness is the problem, and so it needs to be the focus of the solution of anybody who is looking to actually solve the problem.

If I'm honest, I feel like a lot of people who advocated for corrective racial discrimination to address the issues of unfair treatment do so not because they think it will be most effective, but because they know it's the solution most likely to piss off some people they want to piss off. They call it color-blind policies "gateways to white supremacy" not because it makes any intellectual sense, but because republicans are more open to color-blind solutions than race-based ones, and they liking calling everything republicans touch "gateways to white supremacy". They'd probably call pickup trucks "gateways to white supremacy" if a bunch of republicans talked about how much they liked them.

And for many of these people, they'd cut off their own nose to spite a republican. And yes, they'd sacrifice the well being of people of color they purport to be advocating for if it meant they got to upset their "enemies".

I think the truth is: anybody with common sense and the slightest bit of intellectual honesty can see that to address unfairness based on race, you need to address unfairness not race. They can see that if everybody is being treated fairly, regardless of race, racism is being solved, and thus they can see that solutions that do this (color-blind solutions) are the best solutions.

But when they see the 2 options put in front of them:

1. Help the disadvantaged people by focusing on unfairness.
2. Help a little bit of the disadvantaged people. Harm some of the disadvantaged people. But also piss off republicans.

They empathically choose option 2. I honestly think that's what's happening for a lot of people. I suspect some people in this topic, if they honestly asked themselves which one they would choose, they would realize it is option 2.

A color-blind policy working as intended ensures nobody is treated unfairly based on race, a race based attempts to treat people unfairly based on race but in a opposite corrective direction, and ultimately almost always neglects the actual struggling people of a race in favor of tokenizing the already privileged based on race. IMO if you truly care about the problem of racism, that is the problem of people being treated based on race, your goal obviously needs to be about addressing unfairness.