“The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a State to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.” —Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, Dissent, Plessy v Ferguson (1896).
Colorblindness is not about whether or not you see race. To be sure those who keep racial preferences alive want you to think this way. But the meaning of the term is unambiguous: Colorblindness is the principle that institutions should not privilege individuals on the basis of skin color. Put another way, decisions in law should be made without reference to race. To do otherwise is to engage in racial discrimination. And racial discrimination is wrong.
It’s disappointing that there are members of our Supreme Court who, when the matter of racial preferences comes up, argue that we are not a colorblind society and therefore we must keep on making life-altering decisions on the basis of skin color. If they believe this, then they have been made dumb by antiracism. They posit an impossible contingency. We cannot wait for people to stop seeing color to practice the colorblindness that lies at the heart of our constitutional system. I promise you that you will never live in a society that does not take note of skin color. It is moreover guaranteed that neither your children and grandchildren will not see color—for sure as long as we continue to keep in place policy that allows institutional actors to make decisions on that basis.
Does race matter? Yes. Progressive urban policy that results in racially selective underprotection of blacks in impoverished inner-city neighborhood is the outstanding instance of racism in today’s America. Knowing, for example, that the presence of police officers is the single most effective deterrent to criminal perpetration, policies that de-police at-risk communities weaken public safety and put black lives in danger. The rates of homicide in blue cities are truly horrifying and the overwhelming proportion of victims are black people.
This example is the paradigm of why failing to work from colorblind principle is so wrongheaded. These communities are de-policed because of antiracism, i.e., the new racism. Critical race theory has it that the disproportionality of blacks, especially young black men, in arrest, conviction, and prison statistics is due to white supremacy, the negation of which is to reduce police patrols in black communities. They would have use believe that overrepresentation of blacks in serious crime is the result of white people over-controlling black people. It’s the “New Jim Crow,” we’re told by Michele Alexander.
This conclusion misses a crucial step. The police don’t usually take an individual into custody without an associated criminal offense. In fact, they almost never do this. The same is true for prosecution, conviction, and incarceration. The legal system forbids arbitrary arrest, detention, conviction, and confinement. If an innocent person ever finds himself in such a situation it is an error—and there are very few errors given the vastness of the system and civilian involvement in it. The reality is that the disproportionality in these statistics is because of the drastic overrepresentation of blacks in serious criminal offending.
Why are black overrepresented in serious criminal offending? This is where you will find some of the racism that persists in America. This situation is the consequence of progressive policymakers in the Democratic Party disorganizing neighborhoods where blacks live by disrupting the black family system and idling individuals through public assistance and transnationalism, i.e., off shoring of jobs and replacing native black workers with cheap foreign labor.
I have said this before, but it bears repeating: the white majority who is blamed for racism in America doesn’t run the blue cities. The white majority runs the red parts of America where families are integral and crime is low. The white majority is not the cause of the overrepresentation of blacks in serious crime. Progressive elites are the cause of the problem.
It should not be lost on us, then, that white conservatives are the ones most devoted to colorblindness in law and social policy. That’s not ironic. The modern white conservative, essentially a classical liberal with religious commitments, is at heart an individualist. They have made their peace with existence in a multiracial society. In the South, this has always been a white person’s experience. What they oppose is the continuing injustice of racial preferences—the other place you find some of the racism that persists in America—because they are individualists.
Perhaps, if progressives recognized the injustice of antiracism, they could recognize the problems that plague working class Americans who live in impoverished inner-city neighborhoods and solve those problems rather than exacerbate them. They should consider beginning with closing our borders and abolishing the custodial arrangements their predecessors created that they maintain. Instead of sending military aid to Ukraine, they would send jobs to the American ghetto. But progressives are aligned with the corporate state, and corporate state imperative is at odds with making America safe and secure and prosperous. The project they advance is managed decline. Black people are a subpopulation whose lives require administering in the meantime. And Democrats need the votes.
This is why the masses are misdirected on the question of colorblindness. You need to be tribalized culturally and socially in order to be disorganized politically. It’s a political-economic project.
freedom and reason 