One of the central tenets of the Trump administration’s approach to issues of race is a narrow interpretation of “racial colorblindness.” Racial colorblindness theory takes the stance that a person’s race can and should be ignored.

Its adherents insist that, rather than applying the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion to help correct our social and cultural imbalances, “individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work” are sufficient for “protecting civil rights and expanding individual opportunity.”

However, race-related concerns are not just a matter of the race of individual people. Racial inequality in the U.S. is a highly complex social problem with a deep, dark history. Racial colorblindness, by contrast, is a grossly oversimplified ideal: If everyone ignores everyone else’s race, then the problems stemming from racism will simply go away. However, no theory based on “everyone” doing or believing the same thing is practicable.

I might “ignore” the race, or more accurately, the skin color, of people I know or meet. But doesn’t that imply ignoring the suffering they have endured or encountered because of their race? I may not have any racist animosity, but I will have turned a blind eye to their lived experience, as well their color. Racial colorblindness not only ignores the race of individuals; it thereby ignores the suffering brought about by the endemic racism that underlies the inequality long embedded in American society.

Thus, racial colorblindness theory itself becomes a particularly insidious form of racism.

John K. Bollard

Florence