One thing that stands in your commentary about color blindness and the Million Man March is that you don’t have the votes. The thousands of men who attended the Million Man March were peaceful, they still were not respected. There is no guarantee that being colorblind will change anything. The caste system will still survive. The female entrepreneurs who received grants from the Fearless Fund likely disagree with your willingness to force your standard on them.
Coleman Hughes argues that Martin Luther Jr.was colorblind, he was not. Hughes points us to “Why We Can’t Wait” as proof. When we go to King’s book, we find the following:
No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of the labor of one human being by another. This law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law.
And
Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner. Several years ago, Prime Minister Nehru was telling me how his nation is handling the difficult problem of the untouchables, a problem not unrelated to the American Negro dilemma.… The Indian government spends millions of rupees annually developing housing and job opportunities in villages heavily inhabited by untouchables. Moreover, the prime minister said, if two applicants compete for entrance into a college or university, one of the applicants being an untouchable and the other of high caste, the school is required to accept the untouchable. Professor Lawrence Reddick, who was with me during the interview, asked: “But isn’t that discrimination?” “Well, it may be,” the prime minister answered. “But this is our way of atoning for the centuries of injustices we have inflicted upon these people.”
Forgive me for not remembering all the details of our conversations.
#1, when did I ever suggest that I wanted to "force" my vision of colorblindness on anybody? Answer: Never.
#2, if you recall our discussion many months ago, I applauded Fearless Fund for taking control and making the market work for them. I was critical of their adversaries, not them; and unequivocally so.
#3, yes, the thousands of men who attended the Million Man March were indeed peaceful, as I emphasized in my original post. What do you mean they were not respected? Some folks respected them, some didn't; some will never respect them. So what?
Nobody is respected by "everybody".
#4, I favor reparations for living victims of Jim Crow. (So does Coleman Hughes, by the way.) I have stated this multiple times in this forum and elsewhere. And guess what? I don't have the votes for that either. But I think it is the right thing to do.
A lot of things seem (and sometimes are) unattainable in this lifetime. But that doesn't mean we discard the goal or the effort.
"There is no guarantee that being colorblind will change anything"
I don't know what your point was here. There's no guarantee the Buffalo Bills will find nirvana if they win a Super Bowl.
What does a guarantee have to do with this? Since when did guarantees begin dictating where humanity goes next?
It's okay for a person--or an organization, or a society--to have goals that are unachievable in this lifetime. Ever heard of abolition? Gay marriage? The dismantling of Jim Crow?
It *does* violate colorblindness. And gender blindness as well. That doesn't bother me.
If you read my words, you would know that I am hardly cult-like about this stuff, especially in the short run.
Quoting myself: "Colorblindness is an ideal; something to aspire to. It does not mean that a person is too stupid to realize we live in a world that doesn't see it that way."
Quoting myself again: "The bottom line for me: When race is relevant, we should talk about it. When it's not, we shouldn't."
Quoting myself again: "When the natural hair movement took root among African-American women, I was quite pleased, simply because something had to counter the perpetual disgusting message to Black females and other darker-skinned females throughout the globe.
It was not an issue we could address by not talking about race. I would have to be a fool to think otherwise, and I am anything but that."
Quoting myself yet again (from my Substack Notes about the lawsuit against Fearless Fund): "It is too easy to say, 'We stand against racial discrimination!' Real life is a bit more complicated."
"In the case of Fearless, it didn't matter; it’s about their solution: 'Let's do our own thing. If others wish to join us, we will welcome them with open arms.' Sounds eerily similar to, 'Let's pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Let's take control of our own community. Let's make the free market work for us.'
I could have sworn this school of thought was a staple in conservative philosophy (or used to be)."
The rate limiting step for many people when discussing colorblindness are the MAGA faces seen leading the charge. There is no trust. There are obvious Progressives rail about colorblindness and identity politics, but Black voters largely ignore them. Bernie Sanders is more comfortable talking about class than race. Sanders never caught fire with the most reliable segment of Black voters.
Yeah, we discussed that story at length many months ago. I wrote about it before you brought it up to me.
I don't see the upside of forever clinging to a silly taxonomy like "race".
One thing that stands in your commentary about color blindness and the Million Man March is that you don’t have the votes. The thousands of men who attended the Million Man March were peaceful, they still were not respected. There is no guarantee that being colorblind will change anything. The caste system will still survive. The female entrepreneurs who received grants from the Fearless Fund likely disagree with your willingness to force your standard on them.
Coleman Hughes argues that Martin Luther Jr.was colorblind, he was not. Hughes points us to “Why We Can’t Wait” as proof. When we go to King’s book, we find the following:
No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of the labor of one human being by another. This law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law.
And
Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner. Several years ago, Prime Minister Nehru was telling me how his nation is handling the difficult problem of the untouchables, a problem not unrelated to the American Negro dilemma.… The Indian government spends millions of rupees annually developing housing and job opportunities in villages heavily inhabited by untouchables. Moreover, the prime minister said, if two applicants compete for entrance into a college or university, one of the applicants being an untouchable and the other of high caste, the school is required to accept the untouchable. Professor Lawrence Reddick, who was with me during the interview, asked: “But isn’t that discrimination?” “Well, it may be,” the prime minister answered. “But this is our way of atoning for the centuries of injustices we have inflicted upon these people.”
Forgive me for not remembering all the details of our conversations.
#1, when did I ever suggest that I wanted to "force" my vision of colorblindness on anybody? Answer: Never.
#2, if you recall our discussion many months ago, I applauded Fearless Fund for taking control and making the market work for them. I was critical of their adversaries, not them; and unequivocally so.
#3, yes, the thousands of men who attended the Million Man March were indeed peaceful, as I emphasized in my original post. What do you mean they were not respected? Some folks respected them, some didn't; some will never respect them. So what?
Nobody is respected by "everybody".
#4, I favor reparations for living victims of Jim Crow. (So does Coleman Hughes, by the way.) I have stated this multiple times in this forum and elsewhere. And guess what? I don't have the votes for that either. But I think it is the right thing to do.
A lot of things seem (and sometimes are) unattainable in this lifetime. But that doesn't mean we discard the goal or the effort.
"There is no guarantee that being colorblind will change anything"
I don't know what your point was here. There's no guarantee the Buffalo Bills will find nirvana if they win a Super Bowl.
What does a guarantee have to do with this? Since when did guarantees begin dictating where humanity goes next?
It's okay for a person--or an organization, or a society--to have goals that are unachievable in this lifetime. Ever heard of abolition? Gay marriage? The dismantling of Jim Crow?
How does the Fearless Fund not violate colorblindness?
(I’ll track down the earlier conversation)
It *does* violate colorblindness. And gender blindness as well. That doesn't bother me.
If you read my words, you would know that I am hardly cult-like about this stuff, especially in the short run.
Quoting myself: "Colorblindness is an ideal; something to aspire to. It does not mean that a person is too stupid to realize we live in a world that doesn't see it that way."
Quoting myself again: "The bottom line for me: When race is relevant, we should talk about it. When it's not, we shouldn't."
Quoting myself again: "When the natural hair movement took root among African-American women, I was quite pleased, simply because something had to counter the perpetual disgusting message to Black females and other darker-skinned females throughout the globe.
It was not an issue we could address by not talking about race. I would have to be a fool to think otherwise, and I am anything but that."
Quoting myself yet again (from my Substack Notes about the lawsuit against Fearless Fund): "It is too easy to say, 'We stand against racial discrimination!' Real life is a bit more complicated."
"In the case of Fearless, it didn't matter; it’s about their solution: 'Let's do our own thing. If others wish to join us, we will welcome them with open arms.' Sounds eerily similar to, 'Let's pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Let's take control of our own community. Let's make the free market work for us.'
I could have sworn this school of thought was a staple in conservative philosophy (or used to be)."
It's all on the record. Zero contradictions.
Thanks for taking the time.
The rate limiting step for many people when discussing colorblindness are the MAGA faces seen leading the charge. There is no trust. There are obvious Progressives rail about colorblindness and identity politics, but Black voters largely ignore them. Bernie Sanders is more comfortable talking about class than race. Sanders never caught fire with the most reliable segment of Black voters.