Years ago, before the pandemic, I had the “opportunity” to sit through a presentation rooted in the so-called “anti-racism” of Drs. Kendi and DiAngelo before their names had become well known. This presentation by a former colleague, Andrew Croom,1 included an online push-poll. I say “push-poll” because the wording of the questions read more like an attempt to advocate a position than to measure the viewpoints of the attendees. One of the questions involved racial colorblindness; that is, the political view that people should be judged based on their actions and character and not on the color of their skin. Mr. Croom, as far as I can tell, is a true believer in the woke/DEI ideology that holds said colorblindness to be racist. Mr. Croom’s push poll question about colorblindness was formulated in this vein.
As I was thinking about the question, it occurred to me that the way the push-poll question was phrased ignored a crucial distinction. On the one hand, we do not live in a society that is actually colorblind. Racism (the real kind, not the DEI/wokie version) continues to be a problem in our society.2 The situation has improved over the decades, but racism persists.3 The problem then with colorblind policies and laws is that they are incapable of addressing race-based problem because they do not take race into account. If they did take race into account, they would not be colorblind policies. Therefore, colorblind policies only work in a colorblind society. It’s like the old chestnut about the law forbidding both kings and paupers from sleeping under bridges. Sure the law is formally neutral, but having nowhere to sleep except under the bridge is not really a problem for those kings. Such a law ignores that the problem is one of paupers having a place to sleep despite its facial neutrality. The same goes for colorblind laws in a society with racism.
On the other hand, there is also colorblindness as aspiration. That is, holding up a colorblind society as the ideal to be sought if not achieved. After all, if we see racism as evil (and rightly so) then we must have an idea of what a society should look like where racism is not an issue. Consider the matter thus. We are at point A, a society with racism. We do not wish to remain at point A, because racism is evil. This means we want to travel to another place. But before we can make the journey, we have to know where we are going to. That is, before we plan our journey from point A to point B, we have to know where point B is. I submit that a colorblind society is the point B to which we want to travel (and we’ll get to why shortly).
An important corollary point is that you cannot have colorblind laws and policies in a society that is not itself colorblind for the reasons mentioned above. Doing so would be like mandating that everyone exchange their internal combustion cars with electric cars before installing sufficient infrastructure, including charging stations and repair shops, to support an all electric car society. Law and policies must reflect where we are as a society even while reflecting where we want to go.
Thus, I expressed my dissatisfaction with the push-poll question because it failed to recognize the distinction between colorblindness in actual policy and law versus colorblindness as an aspiration. As you may have already surmised, Mr. Croom and many people in the audience did not like this distinction. I do not know if Mr. Croom did not understand the distinction or acted in bad faith in refusing to address it; you would have to ask him.
Regardless the distinction between colorblindness as a societal aspiration and colorblind policy proscriptions in the present state of society is an important one. Because although the DEI/wokie true believers usually take the position that colorblindness is racism full stop, this leaves an important question hanging. We all agree that (actual) racism is evil, so what kind of a society do we actually want to build?
Colorblindness as Aspiration
We are all familiar with the political ideal of colorblindness. In short it is the idea that the color of your skin should have no bearing on how you are treated, this includes by other people and by institutions. As stated by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., he dreamed of a day when his children would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. I would rephrase this into judging people by their actions and the content of their character, but you get the point.
Colorblindness as aspiration can be expressed in many ways. Too often it is expressed as a basis for meritocracy. That is, that people with the greatest ability (some combination of talent, study, and training) should rise to the top. While we eye meritocracy with some suspicion today, keep in mind it originally came about as a response to position being inherited. Certainly letting people rise or fall based on their ability makes more sense than leaving everyone in place based on the accident of their birth. In practice though, we find the concept of merit is highly subjective. Nonetheless, there is a lot of sense in allowing people to rise and fall based on ability so let’s not discount it, let’s just not make it an absolute.
The more important aspect of colorblindness as aspiration to my mind is that it values individuals over groups. As I noted in a previous essay, the defining characteristic of individualism is that individuals have inherent value whereas groups only have value insofar as they benefit individuals involved. Colorblindness as aspiration follows directly from individualism. That is, an given individual is to be understood and judged based on their actions and character. Judging someone by the color of their skin requires disregarding their actions and character and simply assuming that they will act in accordance with whatever stereotypes you hold concerning people with that skin color, i.e. racial stereotypes.
This is based on the realization that skin color tells us little if anything about a given individual.
What the DEI/wokie crowd want you to forget is that colorblindness as aspiration benefits the racial groups that are disfavored and disempowered in society. To be blunt, colorblindness as aspiration tells you that you cannot assume that the applicant for your position cannot do the job just because they are Black - you actual have to examine their qualifications and past actions in making that determination. You also have a duty to hire the Black applicant if they are sufficiently qualified. To be blunt again, the white applicant in the contemporary US does not face the negation of their achievements and qualifications based on the color of their skin. In short, colorblindness as aspiration demands fairness to the individual.
This is not to say that DEI/wokies are completely wide of the mark. The fact is that we do not live in a colorblind society. People do judge you based off the color of your skin. Employers still skip over Black people for jobs on account of their skin color without regard to their qualifications. Asian and Hispanic people are treated differently based on racial stereotypes. But what this argues against is acting as though we live in a colorblind society when we do not in fact live in a colorblind society. It tells us nothing about whether we should aspire to a colorblind society.
The Alternatives to Colorblindness as Aspiration
But lets take the wokies at their word for a minute and assume that they really do reject colorblindness as aspiration. What are the alternatives?
The one that comes to mind first is some sort of ethno-nationalism; the sort of society where we actively celebrate our own racial heritage. Of course, white supremacy (the actual kind, not the DEI version) is a prime example of an ethno-nationalist philosophy, and so the wokies may want to think twice about heading in that direction. Then again, wokies are good with segregation. Their version of segregation is good, they claim, because their version of segregation benefits people of color. Just like Florida governor Ron DeSantis argued that slavery benefited Black people in some ways. Who knew wokies were on the same page as Gov. DeSantis?
Herein lies the problem. Colorblindness as aspiration follows from the tenets of liberal individualism (see here for the full discussion of what this means). In short, if we place primary value on individuals then groups only have value insofar as they serve the individuals who compose them. If we are to judge individuals by their acts and character, the fundamental core of classical liberalism, then we see the evil in judging people by their ethnicity or race. Racial discrimination is inherently wrong in this line of thought because it erases the individual in favor of the ethnic or racial group. Thus it is wrong to engage in racial discrimination. So far so good.
But if wokies are rejecting colorblindness as aspiration, then what is their basis for objecting to racism?
I suspect what is happening with the wokie crowd, is that underlying all of their thinking is an unspoken acceptance of colorblindness as aspiration. That is, their attachment to so-called “antiracism” (well-intentioned even if in error) derives from colorblindness as aspiration. Our wokie friends correctly see that our ideals, in this case colorblindness as aspiration, do not reflect the actual world in which we live. From this critique, they proceed to overshoot the problem. Our wokie friends have decided that classical liberalism, from which colorblindness as aspiration follows, is not the basis for empowering individuals, but is rather a nefarious plot to protect the interests of those in power. (That this hypothesis is completely unfalsifiable is a feature not a bug.) Thus colorblindness is bad as policy. But our wokie friends are attempting to support themselves on the foundations of classical liberalism while rejecting the principles of classical liberalism, rendering their whole project incoherent. They are rejecting colorblindness in whole because they are, even though they can’t admit it to themselves or others, operating from a belief in colorblindness as aspiration.
In short, they have no alternative. Instead they cling to the very philosophy they purport to reject. When you or I make them face this incoherence by pointing out the distinction between colorblindness as policy versus colorblindness as aspiration, our wokie friends suffer cognitive dissonance. Thus they refuse to recognize, much less account for, the distinction. Rather, they shut down and try to shout you down by calling the very distinction racist.
That is my operating hypothesis.
The Limits of Critical Theory
So what is going on with the DEI/wokie crowd? I suspect the following. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For the DEI/wokie crowd, the hammer is critical theory, particularly critical race theory. But critical race theory, like all tools, has limitations.
Critical theory is good at one thing: showing where something goes wrong. That something could be an ideology, a policy, or a law. Critical theory shows how something goes wrong by demonstrating the mismatch between the stated goal of the thing and its effects. Colorblind laws and policies are directly on point here.
Colorblindness as aspiration holds that the color of one’s skin should not effect the judgment of others. A student of critical theory can show us how a facially neutral policy despite being colorblind can still maintain racial oppression. The reason is obvious - colorblind laws only work in colorblind societies, and we do not live in a colorblind society even though we aspire to one. Yay critical theory!
But, you don’t use a hammer to sink a screw if you know what you are doing; you select a differnt tool designed to do that job. This is where our wokie friends err. As powerful as critical theory can be in showing where extant things go wrong, it is not a tool that you can use to create something new. It is a destructive tool only. Sometimes you need a destructive tool; you need to clear away things that are broken or no longer work. But you also need tools you can use to create new things.
It’s all well and good to show how current policy, law, or even ideology is producing the opposite of what you want, like entrenching racial disparity when the goal was to eliminate it. But once you have dismantled (to use a favorite wokie word) the offending thing, you will need to build something new to accomplish your goal.
Which brings us back to wokies’ hatred of classical liberalism. They ostensibly want to dismantle classical liberalism, but they are hopelessly mired in classical liberalism. There are two causes. The first, I suspect, is that their moral vision is rooted in classical liberalism, and their critique of the failings of classical liberalism are rooted in the ideals of classical liberalism. That is, they want to have their classical liberalism and dismatle it too. Second, critical theory can only destroy and not create. Since critical theory is the only tool they are willing to use, the wokies cannot create a new philosophical home outside of classical liberalism. Thus they profess to hate classical liberalism but cannot even begin to conceive of a new philosophical foundation.
The scary thing is, should our wokie friends ever pick up a new tool and create a new vision beyond classical liberalism, their new ideological home may look a lot like Gov. DeSantis’s utopia. If the woke succeed in escaping classical liberalism, they may that they have lost the classical liberal objections to racism and yet not have a new basis for objecting to racial disparities. But then again, if you really want to leave classical liberalism behind, you actually have to leave it behind. That means losing the good and the bad. Question it, and you question everything that derives from it - including the notion that racial disparities are negative. This is not as distant a possibility as you might first think. After all, wokie hero Dr. Kendi in his book How to Be Antiracist states that the remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. It’s just one more step to dispensing with the “remedy” part and saying discrimination is A-OK with them.
Just call it an “affinity group.”
If Mr. Croom wishes to reply to this essay, he is free to do so in the comments section.
I will take this as a given for the purposes of this essay because arguing the point with supporting evidence is an essay on its own, and one I am not interested in writing at the moment (or ever if I am being honest). Nor am I interested in arguing the semantics of the word ‘racism’ at the moment (but may do so in the near future).
Consider that segregation used to be written into law and public lynchings of Black people (often with the police in attendance and standing by if not participating) happened regularly. The present day is a vast improvement.