Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer with the Ontario (Calif.) Daily Bulletin has a very good column supporting official colorblindness. As the manager of a blog for his paper on immigration issues, he is especially concerned with the divisiveness of racial and ethnic preferences.
Immigration has made the United States a multi-ethnic society where the old black-white race paradigm doesn’t apply. These days, if you’re going to help a racial community, whether through affirmative action or block grants or diversity initiatives, you’ve got to figure out how much you want to help blacks relative to Asians relative to Latinos, and even then you’ve got Arabs, Persians and Native Americans feeling left out.
Identity politics and the welfare state pit these groups against one another, ensuring that their interests really are opposed. As long as public funds are finite, one group’s gain is another group’s loss, one group’s success another’s failure.
Is there a better recipe for racial animus and conflict? These policies change the way people see their world. Already race is a factor some rally around. Insofar as the government treats race as a significant factor, it exacerbates humanity’s racist tendencies, and ensures racial divisions will never fade.
Indeed.
Insofar as the government treats race as a significant factor, it exacerbates humanity’s racist tendencies, and ensures racial divisions will never fade. Gee, could one suppose that’s the purpose, at least for some folks?