{"id":41119,"date":"2025-03-14T12:10:04","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T19:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=41119"},"modified":"2025-04-23T16:44:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T23:44:35","slug":"anti-racism-is-not-unifying-will-colourblindness-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/anti-racism-is-not-unifying-will-colourblindness-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Racism is not unifying. Will Colourblindness Help?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America<\/em>, Coleman Hughes calls for an end to racial identity as a primary marker for people, because it has not produced a more flourishing and equal society. His argument is \u201cthat colorblindness is the wisest principle by which to govern our fragile experiment in multiethnic democracy\u201d [1].<\/span><\/p>\n

I was born in 1970, and grew up one hour from the Windsor-Detroit border. It was the major city we frequented for concerts, arts, sporting events, and conferences. Because of the race riots in the 1967, I lived with the storied impact of that era, what History.com refers to as full of \u201curban blight, poverty and racial discord\u201d [2]. On the heels of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the struggle against racial disparity was met with deep-seated anger and violence in those riots.<\/p>\n

This is not our first encounter in this program with racism, or Critical Race Theory (B. Fuller, 2021, Y. Mounk, 2023). So this book reinforced things I know from lived experience and from other authors. Let me unpack a couple of already-known ideas, and some new ones.<\/p>\n

Race, racial discrimination, and racial bias have all been studied and applied throughout the 20th C, particularly in the United States, where race has been used to justify slavery, to fuel segregation, and to exclude Black Americans from certain inalienable rights and privileges within USA society, and racism is therefore seen by anti-racists as the root of every evil. Coleman Hughes simply suggests that that argument is overplayed. <\/span><\/p>\n

The very concept of race, he argues, is \u201c<\/span>neither completely natural nor completely socially constructed. It\u2019s a social construct inspired by a natural phenomenon\u201d [3] He adds that those he calls Neoracists (anti-racists who are in fact perpetuating racism) are the ones who have created a red herring with race that prevents dealing with the real issues. He explains, \u201c<\/span>There\u2019s no version of \u201cwhite people are X\u201d or \u201cblack people are Y\u201d that provides an accurate rule of thumb for addressing issues like poverty or historical injustice\u201d[4]<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

His thesis uses a word that I have often heard of as being harmful – colourblindness. I have avoided using it, because I have not intended to diminish the pain and torment from slavery, systemic injustice experienced by Jim Crow laws, and the accompanying higher numbers of incarcerations and socio-economic disparities that are experienced across the Black American community.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never heard the kind of colourblindness that Hughes is presenting. \u201cTo advocate colorblindness is to endorse an ethical principle: The colorblind principle: we should treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives\u201d [5]. In framing colourblindness this way, Hughes is calling for a robust acknowledgement that more harm has been done by overextending the racism card. It is reminiscent of one of Yasha Mounk\u2019s recommendations in The Identity Trap<\/em> is \u201cclaim the high ground, stay clear of social pressures that rely on slogans and lip service\u201d [6].<\/span><\/p>\n

I long to stay clear of virtue signally, but to push for an equality that I receive from my faith. I currently maintain my fundamental view that the great equalizer among everyone in the human race is the Imago Dei. <\/em>\u00a0I never meet someone who is not made in the Image of God (Genesis 1:26). Therefore, there is no room for bigotry or hatred against anyone. Hughes\u2019 railing against Neoracism is in line with this: \u201cNeoracism is the latest form of bigotry that American society has failed to stigmatize sufficiently. It\u2019s the latest form of socially approved bigotry\u201d [7].<\/span><\/p>\n

The statement which most resonated with me is<\/p>\n

\n

Any act of injustice adds to the sum total of injustice in the world. Anti-black discrimination in the past added to the sum total of injustice in the world, and anti-white discrimination in the present adds yet more injustice to the world\u2014without canceling the effects of past discrimination against blacks [8].<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I close with this reflection. When Brett Fuller came and shared with us in Washington Advance in September, 2024, he wisely spoke of the difficulty and resolve in walking the road of an inter-racial church. He shared as if nobody was perfectly happy with him. I believe God was well pleased though. I still remember the gift he offered to me as a White man in response to racial discrimination and pain in his book, Dreaming In Black and White<\/em>. I could offer three phrases that help: <\/span><\/p>\n

I feel your pain. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry. <\/span><\/p>\n

How can I help? [9]<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I will do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

[1] Coleman Hughes, <\/span>The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America,<\/span><\/em> (Penguin Publishing Group, 2024. Kindle edition)<\/span>, xvii.<\/p>\n

[2] \u201c1967 Detroit Riots \u2011 Causes, Facts & Police.\u201d 2021. March 23, 2021. https:\/\/www.history.com\/topics\/1960s\/1967-detroit-riots.<\/p>\n

[3] The End of Race<\/em>, 3.<\/p>\n

[4] Along with this, he offers, \u201cOne in five black Americans is either a first-or second-generation immigrant, which means they have no ancestral connection to American slavery\u201d. To Hughes, it\u2019s always more complicated that simply implicating racism.<\/span>\u00a0The End of Race<\/em>, 11.<\/p>\n

[5] The End of Race, <\/em>19.<\/p>\n

[6] Yascha Mounk, <\/span>The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time<\/span><\/em>, (Penguin Publishing Group, 2023. Kindle edition), 5.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[7]\u00a0The End of Race<\/em>, 44.<\/span><\/p>\n

[8] The End of Race, <\/em>122.<\/span><\/p>\n

[9] Brett Fuller, <\/span>Dreaming In Black And White<\/span><\/em>, (S.L.: Bookbaby, 2021), 139, 144.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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