Colorblindness sounds like a simple solution to a complex problem. As Chief Justice John Roberts once put it, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” As a legal matter, maybe that’s the right way to go. But the social fact of race is too tenacious, too deeply embedded in our nation’s history, thought, and feeling to dismiss with the bang of a gavel. In this clip from our most recent conversation, John and I consider the ways that opposing sides of the colorblindness debate often talk past each other.
Well said John W…it is frustrating for all of us…The Constitution is colorblind…that is our foundation….live it….because the society isn’t internalizing the realities of color blindness then they can come back when they decide to cooperate…right? If we walk in the framework of color blindness …it must start there…..Though society may not be behaving as one ought doesn’t mean that the reality of color blindness is not the truth we hold to be self evident…so we tell folks get with it…and if they don’t …the law finds that behavior unacceptable…right?….Just like the rules in your own home…you have standards….society and our civil world must have standards…and society must adhere or change….which means go to your corner until your ready to do the right thing … Are you going to change the rules in your home to accommodate bad behavior . Of course not, we don’t change the standard we insist on the change of the individual or the behavior is not acceptable….Now that doesn’t mean we don’t make provisions to give folks a leg up …but they need to want a leg up or they become a drag on the system….There are lots of things we all don’t want to do…let’s just get ourselves oriented toward the truth and if you want help with that we would be happy to help…One person at a time….and be available with that help….why because colorbindnes is just that blind…..If it’s a case of coveting what another has ….name that as a fatal flaw…I want what they have …to which we say …then work for it….Now we are not talking about the authentically indigent, one with no resources, we are talking about those who simply are about wreaking havoc….whiners…I’d like to whine all day sometimes…ugh what an awful existence…That doesn’t mean we don’t empathize but that’s different than indulging bad behavior….civil society is just that ..its civil or we are in trouble…period.
For me as a Jew (a liberal Jew who's a loyal Democratic voter), I find this discussion/debate fascinating as it arises for me in a different context.
It's an analogous synergy I feel with both of you as a strong defender of the First Amendment. Defending the First Amendment, however, means defending the right of people to say anti-Semitic things that are incredibly offensive, offensive, and ignorant. Especially in the aftermath of the horrendous October 7 attacks in Israel.
But I'm not yielding. That can make fellow Jews rather angry. It's an attitude can be met with accusations of anti-Semitism, denial of anti-Semitism, denials of discrimination against and atrocities committed against Jews (past and present), obliviousness to the real world threats, and minimizing the suffering of others who have been attacked. To me, that's fallacious reasoning. And frankly, I think it's far more dangerous to Jews to support the weakening of the First Amendment than any of the stupid chants at college campuses. But while I'm offended by this stuff, I'm not giving up my rights as an American simply because people say things that I don't like and don't agree with.
So, I relate to the nuanced position where you're both coming from in this discussion. And as always, I appreciate hearing these views and this discussion.
The entire notion of "systemic racism" is bogus. Racial discrimination has been explicitly made illegal since at least the 1960s. "Systemic racism" is illegal. But old-fashioned "I don't like them black people" racism is still in place to one extent or the other in various parts of the country. Why? Because a not insignificant number of people in the country are ASSHOLES! It's as simple as that. The "systemic racism" people are trying to make being an asshole illegal. But being an asshole is not something that responds to laws. Being an asshole is something that used to be addressed in churches and homes. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" used to be taught in churches and even in some schools. But as we now know, according to the "systemic racism" crowd, religion is actually a white supremacist creation that furthers systemic racism! So, good job, lefties, you've killed organized religion. But laws don't address problems with people's souls. But of course, politics are the new religion. The solution? Forget about trying to make being an asshole illegal or addressable by the force of government. You've won. Systemic racism is illegal. You're in the greatest country in the world. Go forth. Get educated, get a good job, raise kids, make money. It's all there for the taking. Ignore the assholes because sure as heck no one else is going to get rid of them. Rant over.
A bang of the gavel would be a good start to ending the DEI industry by declaring it unconstitutional, which it quite obviously is. But the SCOTUS can be confused about anything that's obvious. It currently purports to to be uncertain whether Trump might be able to claim immunity from crimes committed against the Constitution on national television. Compared to that, anything else is negligible.
It may, indeed, send a chill up Glenn's spine when he hears White people saying 'Grow Up / Get Past It' (which, of course, is gross over-simplification)....but the fact that such a perspective is voiced by someone with White rather than Black skin should be...must be, in fact...entirely irrelevant. If it's good advice; it's good advice (regardless of its over-simplification ), doesn't matter who says it.
Unfortunately, we still believe it does matter (as in, well...Glenn can say that because he's Black and he has the 'bona-fides' that allows him to speak Truth to Blackness). But Truth is Truth, and color blindness would tell us the demographics of the Truth-Teller should be meaningless. (Does it send a chill up our spine when Glenn or John make a cogent observation about Whites or Asians or or or? Should we limit our insight only to those people who look like us?)
In the end, this whole question is simple. It is, and always has been, morally wrong to discriminate on the basis of color. To make a racially-biased choice is racist. It doesn't matter if you believe the choice is made for so-called good reasons...it's still a racist, hateful, and morally wrong act.
How do we fix it? We stop making immoral choices. The End does not and cannot justify the Means. Two Wrongs do not and cannot make a Right. So-- to deliberately design a program, make a decision, take some action which is --BY INTENT -- racially discriminatory is and always will be, completely morally unacceptable.
Color Blindness must be the moral foundation upon which we all stand.
That does not in any way at all require us to dismiss Color/Race/Ethnicity/Sex/Whatever it is we wish to measure as a legitimate and worthwhile measure. Nor does it require us to dismiss racial history or racial culture. But what then do we do with those measures in a color blind world?
Glenn draws a distinction between 'taking the color box off the form' and 'shaping programs & policies while being mindful of the likely racial consequences'. He calls the first color blindness and the second, color indifference and condemns (or at least questions) color indifference, saying, “We need to pay attention to the racial dimensions of a social malady’. But he fails to follow the logical consequences of that condemnation....or what it means when we say ‘pay attention’.
If we take, as a for instance, the fact that only about 3% of all cardiac surgeons are Black (because, indeed, we should be aware of such things) and we ask, ‘What to do?’... it should lead to an investigation of the process which produces cardiac surgeons. If we then determine that the process which produces world-class cardiac surgeons is itself without bias (that the filters and hurdles are all color blind), we return to the ‘What to do’ question.
One option, of course, is to do nothing. To simply accept that, at this point in time, 3% of the surgeons are Black the same way we accept the fact that Iowans, let's say, are equally under-represented. That's not a bad option, actually, once we're assured that the process itself is unbiased.
Another option is to begin to design a program to increase the amount of Blacks & Iowans. BUT if we limit the program to only Blacks and Iowans than we’re discriminating against all other colors and all other states. And that discrimination is morally wrong.
In the end, we arrive where we began. If color discrimination is morally wrong then it’s wrong. And if, through our condemnation of color indifference, we are led back to color discrimination, then that too is wrong. This leaves us with the only morally acceptable option: if we seek to lift people up, then we must be willing to lift anyone up. It doesn’t matter how they look, how tall they are, how big they are, what size their shoes, what size their nose, or the shape of their sexual appetites. If we want to boost someone, then we must boost anyone...and if by so doing our ‘representation’ numbers remain demographically unbalanced, so be it.
Still, we did the right thing.
And if I’m Black...or an Iowan...and I want to become a cardiac surgeon, then I know that I’ll have to clear the exact same hurdles that every cardiac surgeon clears.
More importantly, if I’m a Patient...then I’m equally absolutely certain that when a cardiac surgical team arrives to fix my heart, that every single member of that team (White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Man, Woman, or Iowan) is equally qualified AND highly qualified because no special accommodations were made to ‘fix’ a demographic imbalance.
Charles Murray discusses this at length in a recent interview with John Stossel.
We absolutely SHOULD try to let Blacks reach high and intellectually-dependent positions in society just as we make certain once-inaccessible careers available to WOMEN.
However, we will never achieve some numeric “equity” by ignoring that human beings ARE different from one another. That shows up in population studies of large groups, but everyone likes to turn a blind eye to Black athletes or Asian students denied access to schools as a result of being TOO qualified to handle the work.
This is a problem that the upper class has created, and it measures ALL human beings on a scale based on the upper class looking in the mirror and feeling this will absolve them for their sins. Their unearned place. To achieve this strict parity skews what we value and further devalues everything else.
It is the insidious reflection that allows us to trash White working class men without any remorse. This will destroy the only society that had a chance at getting this right.
And, if we really cared, we would look on all human beings as created in God’s image, rather than thru the lens of Darwin and sheepishly trying to cover up what that wrought!
With the wide variety of immigrants that the US has received over the past few decades, the dividing line of skin color has been fuzzed. South Indian and Mid-Eastern immigrants are frequently darker than many of the African Americans. And some of the recent African immigrants make most of the African Americans look more caucasian by comparison. I am familiar with inappropriate discrimination in industry, but it has typically been on grounds of national / subnational grounds - teams becoming composed of the same nationality immigrants as the team leader, or teams composed of graduates of the same university as the team leader. Industry has work to do here, but I certainly am not familiar with systematic racism at anywhere like the same level in the industries that I am familiar with.
The clock is ticking in no small part because of immigrants who do not share at all in the very powerful "white guilt" which is the defining sensibility of affluent white culture and the one to which obeisance id due. Not "white rage".
Immigrants don't give a darn about it, unless they see it as stepping stone for power.
The problem is this: the vast majority of black Americans would do better with equal justice under law, which they've never enjoyed. However, the 'leaders' of the 'community' are the heirs of DuBois talented tenth and Lenin's proletariate vanguard, and can maintain their superior place only by continuing the discriminatory apparatus of 'affirmative action'. So they cling to their unearned privilege, with increasing desparation.
"All lives matter". Do you remember the hissy fit that progressives had, because of that statement?
Glenn and John perpetuate the myth that the only racism that exists, the only racism that matters, is white racism against blacks. To cherry-pick which racism will be discussed is RACIST.
We know that there is blatant racism against Asians, in the name of DEI. There is also blatant discrimination against white men. Many can quote the statistics of 'discrimination' by businesses owned by white men. OK, what about the discrimination by black owners against white men? OF women owned businesses against men? As far as I know, those statistics have never been determined. Why not?
The democratic party is, was, and apparently always will be the party of institutional racism.
Well said John W…it is frustrating for all of us…The Constitution is colorblind…that is our foundation….live it….because the society isn’t internalizing the realities of color blindness then they can come back when they decide to cooperate…right? If we walk in the framework of color blindness …it must start there…..Though society may not be behaving as one ought doesn’t mean that the reality of color blindness is not the truth we hold to be self evident…so we tell folks get with it…and if they don’t …the law finds that behavior unacceptable…right?….Just like the rules in your own home…you have standards….society and our civil world must have standards…and society must adhere or change….which means go to your corner until your ready to do the right thing … Are you going to change the rules in your home to accommodate bad behavior . Of course not, we don’t change the standard we insist on the change of the individual or the behavior is not acceptable….Now that doesn’t mean we don’t make provisions to give folks a leg up …but they need to want a leg up or they become a drag on the system….There are lots of things we all don’t want to do…let’s just get ourselves oriented toward the truth and if you want help with that we would be happy to help…One person at a time….and be available with that help….why because colorbindnes is just that blind…..If it’s a case of coveting what another has ….name that as a fatal flaw…I want what they have …to which we say …then work for it….Now we are not talking about the authentically indigent, one with no resources, we are talking about those who simply are about wreaking havoc….whiners…I’d like to whine all day sometimes…ugh what an awful existence…That doesn’t mean we don’t empathize but that’s different than indulging bad behavior….civil society is just that ..its civil or we are in trouble…period.
For me as a Jew (a liberal Jew who's a loyal Democratic voter), I find this discussion/debate fascinating as it arises for me in a different context.
It's an analogous synergy I feel with both of you as a strong defender of the First Amendment. Defending the First Amendment, however, means defending the right of people to say anti-Semitic things that are incredibly offensive, offensive, and ignorant. Especially in the aftermath of the horrendous October 7 attacks in Israel.
But I'm not yielding. That can make fellow Jews rather angry. It's an attitude can be met with accusations of anti-Semitism, denial of anti-Semitism, denials of discrimination against and atrocities committed against Jews (past and present), obliviousness to the real world threats, and minimizing the suffering of others who have been attacked. To me, that's fallacious reasoning. And frankly, I think it's far more dangerous to Jews to support the weakening of the First Amendment than any of the stupid chants at college campuses. But while I'm offended by this stuff, I'm not giving up my rights as an American simply because people say things that I don't like and don't agree with.
So, I relate to the nuanced position where you're both coming from in this discussion. And as always, I appreciate hearing these views and this discussion.
The entire notion of "systemic racism" is bogus. Racial discrimination has been explicitly made illegal since at least the 1960s. "Systemic racism" is illegal. But old-fashioned "I don't like them black people" racism is still in place to one extent or the other in various parts of the country. Why? Because a not insignificant number of people in the country are ASSHOLES! It's as simple as that. The "systemic racism" people are trying to make being an asshole illegal. But being an asshole is not something that responds to laws. Being an asshole is something that used to be addressed in churches and homes. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" used to be taught in churches and even in some schools. But as we now know, according to the "systemic racism" crowd, religion is actually a white supremacist creation that furthers systemic racism! So, good job, lefties, you've killed organized religion. But laws don't address problems with people's souls. But of course, politics are the new religion. The solution? Forget about trying to make being an asshole illegal or addressable by the force of government. You've won. Systemic racism is illegal. You're in the greatest country in the world. Go forth. Get educated, get a good job, raise kids, make money. It's all there for the taking. Ignore the assholes because sure as heck no one else is going to get rid of them. Rant over.
A bang of the gavel would be a good start to ending the DEI industry by declaring it unconstitutional, which it quite obviously is. But the SCOTUS can be confused about anything that's obvious. It currently purports to to be uncertain whether Trump might be able to claim immunity from crimes committed against the Constitution on national television. Compared to that, anything else is negligible.
It may, indeed, send a chill up Glenn's spine when he hears White people saying 'Grow Up / Get Past It' (which, of course, is gross over-simplification)....but the fact that such a perspective is voiced by someone with White rather than Black skin should be...must be, in fact...entirely irrelevant. If it's good advice; it's good advice (regardless of its over-simplification ), doesn't matter who says it.
Unfortunately, we still believe it does matter (as in, well...Glenn can say that because he's Black and he has the 'bona-fides' that allows him to speak Truth to Blackness). But Truth is Truth, and color blindness would tell us the demographics of the Truth-Teller should be meaningless. (Does it send a chill up our spine when Glenn or John make a cogent observation about Whites or Asians or or or? Should we limit our insight only to those people who look like us?)
In the end, this whole question is simple. It is, and always has been, morally wrong to discriminate on the basis of color. To make a racially-biased choice is racist. It doesn't matter if you believe the choice is made for so-called good reasons...it's still a racist, hateful, and morally wrong act.
How do we fix it? We stop making immoral choices. The End does not and cannot justify the Means. Two Wrongs do not and cannot make a Right. So-- to deliberately design a program, make a decision, take some action which is --BY INTENT -- racially discriminatory is and always will be, completely morally unacceptable.
Color Blindness must be the moral foundation upon which we all stand.
That does not in any way at all require us to dismiss Color/Race/Ethnicity/Sex/Whatever it is we wish to measure as a legitimate and worthwhile measure. Nor does it require us to dismiss racial history or racial culture. But what then do we do with those measures in a color blind world?
Glenn draws a distinction between 'taking the color box off the form' and 'shaping programs & policies while being mindful of the likely racial consequences'. He calls the first color blindness and the second, color indifference and condemns (or at least questions) color indifference, saying, “We need to pay attention to the racial dimensions of a social malady’. But he fails to follow the logical consequences of that condemnation....or what it means when we say ‘pay attention’.
If we take, as a for instance, the fact that only about 3% of all cardiac surgeons are Black (because, indeed, we should be aware of such things) and we ask, ‘What to do?’... it should lead to an investigation of the process which produces cardiac surgeons. If we then determine that the process which produces world-class cardiac surgeons is itself without bias (that the filters and hurdles are all color blind), we return to the ‘What to do’ question.
One option, of course, is to do nothing. To simply accept that, at this point in time, 3% of the surgeons are Black the same way we accept the fact that Iowans, let's say, are equally under-represented. That's not a bad option, actually, once we're assured that the process itself is unbiased.
Another option is to begin to design a program to increase the amount of Blacks & Iowans. BUT if we limit the program to only Blacks and Iowans than we’re discriminating against all other colors and all other states. And that discrimination is morally wrong.
In the end, we arrive where we began. If color discrimination is morally wrong then it’s wrong. And if, through our condemnation of color indifference, we are led back to color discrimination, then that too is wrong. This leaves us with the only morally acceptable option: if we seek to lift people up, then we must be willing to lift anyone up. It doesn’t matter how they look, how tall they are, how big they are, what size their shoes, what size their nose, or the shape of their sexual appetites. If we want to boost someone, then we must boost anyone...and if by so doing our ‘representation’ numbers remain demographically unbalanced, so be it.
Still, we did the right thing.
And if I’m Black...or an Iowan...and I want to become a cardiac surgeon, then I know that I’ll have to clear the exact same hurdles that every cardiac surgeon clears.
More importantly, if I’m a Patient...then I’m equally absolutely certain that when a cardiac surgical team arrives to fix my heart, that every single member of that team (White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Man, Woman, or Iowan) is equally qualified AND highly qualified because no special accommodations were made to ‘fix’ a demographic imbalance.
Charles Murray discusses this at length in a recent interview with John Stossel.
We absolutely SHOULD try to let Blacks reach high and intellectually-dependent positions in society just as we make certain once-inaccessible careers available to WOMEN.
However, we will never achieve some numeric “equity” by ignoring that human beings ARE different from one another. That shows up in population studies of large groups, but everyone likes to turn a blind eye to Black athletes or Asian students denied access to schools as a result of being TOO qualified to handle the work.
This is a problem that the upper class has created, and it measures ALL human beings on a scale based on the upper class looking in the mirror and feeling this will absolve them for their sins. Their unearned place. To achieve this strict parity skews what we value and further devalues everything else.
It is the insidious reflection that allows us to trash White working class men without any remorse. This will destroy the only society that had a chance at getting this right.
And, if we really cared, we would look on all human beings as created in God’s image, rather than thru the lens of Darwin and sheepishly trying to cover up what that wrought!
With the wide variety of immigrants that the US has received over the past few decades, the dividing line of skin color has been fuzzed. South Indian and Mid-Eastern immigrants are frequently darker than many of the African Americans. And some of the recent African immigrants make most of the African Americans look more caucasian by comparison. I am familiar with inappropriate discrimination in industry, but it has typically been on grounds of national / subnational grounds - teams becoming composed of the same nationality immigrants as the team leader, or teams composed of graduates of the same university as the team leader. Industry has work to do here, but I certainly am not familiar with systematic racism at anywhere like the same level in the industries that I am familiar with.
The clock is ticking in no small part because of immigrants who do not share at all in the very powerful "white guilt" which is the defining sensibility of affluent white culture and the one to which obeisance id due. Not "white rage".
Immigrants don't give a darn about it, unless they see it as stepping stone for power.
There is a lot more money to be had following the DEI route than the color blind route.
The problem is this: the vast majority of black Americans would do better with equal justice under law, which they've never enjoyed. However, the 'leaders' of the 'community' are the heirs of DuBois talented tenth and Lenin's proletariate vanguard, and can maintain their superior place only by continuing the discriminatory apparatus of 'affirmative action'. So they cling to their unearned privilege, with increasing desparation.
I'm looking at you, Kamala Harris!
Redemption and reconciliation?
Or retaliation and retribution?
"All lives matter". Do you remember the hissy fit that progressives had, because of that statement?
Glenn and John perpetuate the myth that the only racism that exists, the only racism that matters, is white racism against blacks. To cherry-pick which racism will be discussed is RACIST.
We know that there is blatant racism against Asians, in the name of DEI. There is also blatant discrimination against white men. Many can quote the statistics of 'discrimination' by businesses owned by white men. OK, what about the discrimination by black owners against white men? OF women owned businesses against men? As far as I know, those statistics have never been determined. Why not?
The democratic party is, was, and apparently always will be the party of institutional racism.