Excuse my French. But there is something wrong when people start to believe the only way to end racism is to not see race.

Something is “wrong”: homo sapiens is a competitive species in a competitive universe. The question is not whether “color-blindness” is the only way to end racism, but whether it is the only viable way to do so. Not seeing race may well be the “democracy” of anti-racist goals — the worst except for all the rest. At least, that’s the argument that those asking for more must address (I think they call that “steel-manning”), yet none of the other prescriptions ever comes with a feasibility study.

This article argues against itself. All of the harms recited appear to result entirely from White people at some point “seeing” color. The effects of centuries of damage cannot be undone overnight, but all of them assume that color-blindness was not operating in the past, because it wasn’t. How the world would look in fifty years if everyone were color-blind is the test of whether not seeing color would end racism. It is not, however, a test of whether it would make the effects of racism go away quickly, which is really a wholly distinct inquiry.

The victims and woke perpetrators of “racism” (as anti-racists are trying so hard to redefine that word), are full of ideas on how to mitigate its effects, but the jury of history is still out. My guess is that the project is a bridge too far when the subject of it — human beings with needs they find more pressing than ending racism (e.g., making rent) — is taken into account. But an asymmetrical ad hominem argument is at play. White people are thought to be too self-interested in White privilege to be credible about how to surrender it, but Black people are thought to be experts on the subject because they are its victims. The implication is that the side with the greatest grievance has the greatest wisdom. That doesn’t really compute. But then, what do I know?