Race Relations on Campus: The Case Against “Colorblindness”

Last Monday’s campus town hall meeting titled, “The Tape Comes Off: Race, Rights, and Law Enforcement,” sparked a great intellectual discourse on campus. However, what is missing from that discourse, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects of the topic at hand: the acknowledgement that racism, in an American context, is white supremacy, and thus — unfortunately — works to benefit white people.

This is most evident in one of the most prominent responses I’ve heard form white students, which is: “I don’t see color.” While well intentioned, this sentiment is problematic in various ways.

First, and most obviously, the statement flies in the face of nearly all statistics on racial bias. For example, people of color are 30 percent more likely to be imprisoned for than white defendants of the same crime. And while whites report marijuana drugs at the same rate, people of color are four times to be arrested for possession. NYPD's stop-and-frisk trends also offers a great example.

And the list goes on.

In fact, Cornell West, a leading African-American scholar, philosopher, and activist, drives this point home well when he notes that even he — someone who has both been a victim of and a lifelong crusader to end racism — is inflected by the white supremacist ideology. In short, if Cornell West sees color, than you too see color.

Second, the statement erroneously implies that racism is exclusively interpersonal. It, in other words, ignores that racism is also systemic, which is not only evidenced above, but also in the racialized wealth gap. Thus, it further disregards that white people, in many ways, benefit from racism and, by the same token, releases one of responsibility for all of the material and social benefits one has accrued from white supremacy. Ultimately, ignoring these problems only serves to perpetuate them.

There are many other reasons why this sentiment is problematic, but, as a white guy, I am ill-equipped to justly articulate them. To grasp the rest, it is indeed pertinent to read works written from a black perspective; I've collected a few I've found helpful, here.

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Indeed, race is only a social construct, and not a material fact; it is a phenomenon created and perpetuated by social norms and ideology—but it is also a social construct that has serious lived consequences: beneficial consequences for whites, and negative consequences for people of color.

Thus, for white people, dismantling white supremacy means, in the context of a capitalist-republic, to cede a great deal of political power and material wealth. Until this becomes a salient goal for white people, we don’t get to revel in the self-aggrandizing sentiment, “we don’t see color.”