Refreshingly careful piece. You make all the right distinctions, like ethnicity being the real thing behind “racial relations.” On integration, speaking from a majority mixed-race country (Brazil) where different races are under the same broad ethnicity, what we do here is to associate ethnicity to location. There’s no risk of black culture from Bahia disappearing into the majority culture because, well, it’s in Bahia. Same thing for white gaucho culture in the South. While we know one is more black and the other more white, we rarely think it’s all black or all white (or all indigenous, or all caipira). We’re used to thinking there will be racial variation within each ethnic group. As for our famous music, we know that Samba, for instance, is not all black and we have great white sambistas in our history. Still, Samba is indeed thought of as blacker than Bossa Nova. What wokeness brought us, to our detriment, was the emphasis on this dichotomy, which is very American and not very Brazilian. We are now rediscovering mestizos, the majority of the country, thanks to work by intellectuals like Antonio Risério.
Good comment, but let's also think about the downside for blacks under Brazil's Latin system of a color continuum rather than a color line.
African-Americans have a lot of problems, but one thing they don't lack are famous African-Americans. Over the last century, an enormous number of the most famous people on earth (e.g., Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Barack Obama, Stephen Curry, and so forth) have been African-American.
Black Brazilians? There was Pele and ... well ...
Consider soccer star Neymar. In Brazil, transracialism is as fashionable as transgenderism in the US, so Neymar has gone back and forth between looking like a typical black kid when he was young and poor and, after he got rich, looking at times like one of those skateboarders you see living around Southern California military bases who are a quarter black, a quarter white, a quarter Asian, and a quarter Mexican. Or something. Nobody can tell.
In America, outside of Louisiana, it has been extremely difficult for lineages to transitions from black to white, so high-achieving African-American families tend to stay African-American. In Latin America, however, among ambitious people of color, it's a reasonable ambition to have white (or whitish) grandchildren. So, in Latin America, talent tends to flow toward the white end of the color continuum. But in the USA, talent seldom crossed the color line from black to white, which helps explain the famous amounts of talent found among African Americans.
Hi Steve. I’m not sure I understand your points. It seems you are using fame as a proxy for talent, and going with the small amount of famous Brazilian black people you know as an indicator. But there are more of them who are famous among Brazilians that you probably have never heard about. Like composer and singer Milton Nascimento, or geographer Milton Santos.
The latter had an interesting perspective on race, he was against racial quotas and he used to say he was primarily Brazilian in his identity before being black. Pro-black and indigenous racial quotas are now widespread in Brazil, unfortunately in my view, since we already struggle with so little to show in terms of meritocratic institutions.
You are right that in the past, with some effect today, mixed-race Brazilians saw being whiter as a social ladder they wanted to climb. But this is changing rapidly with the incentives set in place by preferential treatment, so now more of them claim a black identity. Mestizos are still struggling to set themselves apart because, well, they’re not really apart from anything.
Risério, the mixed-race intellectual I mentioned, says that a lot of things attributed to black people alone are actually the product of mestizos, like Samba. This is not to downplay black talent, but to take back some talent that was taken away from mestizos in the name of black pride.
Anyway, my impression is that the amount of black people with prestige in the country is about as much as they are present in the general population: 7-10%. The identitarian black movement tries to artificially raise this number by adding together black (“preto”) and brown (“pardo”) to what they call “negro.” With this strategy they can get to over 50% of the population by sleight of hand, which they use dramatically to ask for even more quotas. But in Portuguese, “preto” and “negro” are synonyms. Where I was raised, “negro” was fine but “preto” sounded a bit like a slur. So it’s bewildering for me to see even our largest statistics government agency using “preto” willy nilly. As for brown (“pardo”), which is de facto mestizo, that’s the word Portuguese explorer Pero Vaz de Caminha called the natives in a famous letter he wrote after visiting the country in 1500. There is a lot about Brazilian culture, like our multiple showers per day, that comes from the natives. Their influence is hugely downplayed, even by the black movement.
Coming back to your thesis that mixing was bad for black people’s status in Brazil, I think that’s not accurate. In any case, I agree with Risério that we Brazilians should rediscover ourselves as mainly mestizos and celebrate “mulattos” (now a forbidden word) like our great novelist Machado de Assis. But we do have enough black talent.
On the idea that colorblindness dissolves ties that bind ethnic groups together, I think the point can be put even more strongly. In a thoroughly colorblind society, there wouldn’t even be ethnic distinctions. That is, ethnic distinctions only persist because of disparities in mate choice. If Nuyoricans were no more likely to couple with other Nuyoricans than with anybody else, then it doesn’t take too many generations before you don’t really have Nuyoricans anymore.
This is sort of what’s already happened with lots of “white” ethnic groups in the United States. My maternal grandmother immigrated from Poland before the holocaust (the rest of her family didn’t get out), and when she got to the United States, she was in Jewish social circles, where she met my Jewish maternal grandfather. Jewish ethnic identity persisted into the next generation (my mother), but more weakly, so it wasn’t surprising that my mother married a man (my father) with two Italian parents. Parallel story on his side. For me, while I have both Jewish and Italian ancestry, neither played a role in my life anything like the one they did for my grandparents, and so no surprise that when I got married, the woman I married was neither Jewish nor Italian, and I don’t think my children will have any sense of a distinctive ethnic identity the way all eight of their great-grandparents almost certainly did.
Thanks! I do think it’s kind of jarring to think that the sort of 90s ideal I grew up with, where we absolutely celebrated multiculturalism—as opposed to a kind of melting pot ideal where everyone is supposed to assimilate to a generic American identity—but also had a kind of default suspicion about strong ethnic/homophilic preferences in dating, is in a way incoherent. (Incoherent in that it’s not a long-run stable way for society to be organized; you can only have it for a few generations, as a transitionary period.)
Great piece, but I think you are missing one key point. You never mention disparate impact, specifically its legal framework. Disparate impact essentially makes colorblindness illegal, as long as racial disparities exist. Trump is theoretically working on repealing disparate impact through Executive Order, but there’s no guarantee the Supreme Court will agree and overrule their existing precedent. You mentioned the worry about being seen as racist, but it’s currently much more magnified by the hefty legal liability.
In defense of colorblindness, let me just say that disparate impact liability mainly arises in employment law (thanks to Griggs). So the law may be a barrier to colorblindness, but not in every domain.
Great piece, Daniel! I think it’s important to break down seemingly-monolithic behavior from institutions and show how it can reduce to a series of ordinary decisions made by ordinary people. This helps to shed a bit of light on some of what’s going on with the culture war.
This valuable piece, including helpful historical context, would benefit from further discussion of the purpose for which race morally should, or should not, be considered. On the one hand are situations in which colorblindness should eventually be the norm (government policies, hiring, university admissions, etc.) but not applied to ignore intentional discrimination. On the other are those, mostly involving private relations and associations, where sharing and celebrating a common ethnicity or heritage is acceptable, or even socially beneficial. This line is not always clear, and there are certainly counter-examples for each category. But most people intuitively understand the difference between intentionally favoring certain racial groups for public jobs or college admissions, and letting Nuyoricans (or Cherokees) form a private association where they share their common heritage, where any exclusion of others seems perfectly understandable. (To be clear, I'm not defending white supremacist groups. But I do recognize limits on the desirability and practicality of policing every form of morally noxious belief.)
Very good piece. Maybe I'm missing something but I think Coleman mostly refers to colorblindness as an approach for public policy whereas the "ties that bind ethnic groups together" are something more private that I can imagine could coexist with public policies that promote integration. Coleman says "the aim of colorblindness is to consciously disregard race as a reason to treat individuals differently and as a category on which to base public policy." As a Hispanic in the US, the fact that my daughter school has a Hispanic Heritage months is not a driver of my ties to other Hispanics, the ties come from a shared language, food, and customs. Why can those practices coexists, mutate, and develop in a context of colorblind policies?
Thanks for the comment, Gabriel! I should’ve emphasized this more, but in the book, Coleman does define colorblindness so that it applies “both in our public policy and in our private lives” (p. 19). Still, I think you’re right that it might be possible to maintain cultural ties (language, food, etc.) while also having broadly colorblind government policies.
I’ve been mulling the idea of race abolitionism for the past couple of years after reading a piece and subsequently interviewing David and Subrena Smith on the Reconstructing Inclusion podcast.
I also encountered the Theory of Racelessness in meeting and speaking to the author of the “Raceless Antiracist” Sheena Mason last year.
The overall premise for them is that wherever race resides, racism follows and it needs to be let go of completely.
Having a son who is of Spanish (Galician) and African-American (Kansas) heritage, was born and lives in Swiss-German speaking Switzerland and whose mother tongue is Swiss-French and Spanish, ascribing a race to him occurs as grossly limiting to me.
I am learning how to speak to him about it as he grows older. He might experience some semblance of racism because he is a darker complexioned than most kids he plays with, but he is also a local. And, me not having the advantage of being local rarely feel that race plays a role in my daily life here.
Yeah, racism exists but the occurrences are rare and if they do occur, I pass them off as ignorance. Not all can emotionally compartmentalize like that but it is something that I came to conclude over time—another’s belief system is not my problem it’s theirs unless they do something violent to make it mine—“sticks and stones. . .”
I will work with my son to not subscribe to racialization even if it is ascribed to him by others.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment, Amri. “Grossly limiting” sounds right: I feel for mixed-race kids who are pressured to define themselves in ways that don’t make sense to them or to their families. And thanks also for the tips — looking forward to listening to those interviews you did.
If ethnic identity is a legitimate source of self-respect and self-esteem, and the desire to be a part of a separate (ethnic) nation is also legitimate, would you support the reification of a White American ethnic identity?
I’m not trying to tie you to Jared Taylor or other White Nationalists (although cultivating a distinct White Amerian identity is explicitly his project), but I can’t help but notice that if the benefits of ethnic identity are so great as to outweigh the benefits of colorblindness, it appears incumbent upon White Americans to find a way to participate in it.
It’s a fair question. I think lots of White Americans take pride in their ethnic backgrounds: Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc. But I don’t like the idea of a “White identity,” because White Americans have so little in common that the group identity ends up being mainly defined in opposition to other races. “Opposition to other races” tends to attract racists — so it doesn’t surprise me that “White pride” is usually just racism. Better to have a unifying national identity instead!
I’m concerned that, given both the lack of other commonality across White Americans you cited, and the negative connotations surrounding Whiteness in the American context, an increased emphasis on ethnic self-identification will encourage White Americans to interpret what it means to be American through an ethnic lens.
This is already being encouraged on the Right, by people like Scott Greer, who have popularized the term heritage Americans to refer to White (often specifically Anglo) Americans. On the Left, I see people like Nikole Hannah-Jones also engaging in this project; the 1619 project is an attempt to reframe America as an explicitly White (supremacist) country.
It’s cliche, but I hope we manage to preserve the notion captured by Reagan, that it doesn’t matter if you’re British, Hungarian, Japanese, or Nigerian, if you come to America, you are American, and your children and children’s children will be American. If White Americans co-opt the American identity as exclusively their own, that ideal disappears.
Well said. By the way, you might like the last section of Joe Heath’s “Two Dilemmas for American Race Relations,” where he argues that, if you look outside the American context, the countries that have the most success with integration generally make race less salient. (Of course, part of what I’m arguing here is that people have understandable reasons for not wanting to integrate. So I see the issue as something of a dilemma with no easy solution in the near future.)
"White Americans have so little in common that the group identity ends up being mainly defined in opposition to other races."
Everything is defined in opposition to something else.
Do Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Indians, and Pakistanis all see themselves as possessing Asian solidarity back home in Asian the way they do in America?
Not in my experience, nor from reading worrisome headlines about World War III possibly breaking out between India and Pakistan.
In this globalized world, white Americans have a huge amount in common with each other relative to the rest of the world, as the rest of the world readily recognizes. The vast majority of white Americans' ancestors before 1607 lived in what they referred to as Christendom, spoke Indo-European languages, and formed a common civilization. Most white Americans are either descended from Brits or had their ancestors fairly aggressively Anglicized (e.g., Germans in 1917). There hasn't been a big immigration of non-Hispanic whites into the United States since roughly World War I. The Protestant - Catholic divide among white Americans vanished soon after JFK entered the American pantheon of martyrs on 11/22/1963.
The only reason people nod their heads to this self-evidently wrong talking point how little in common white Americans have is because they want to cajole white Americans into not asserting their potential political power.
I take your point, Steve, that White Americans have a lot in common. But I think it has more to do with being American than with being White.
And while you’re right that it’s okay to have an identity that’s defined in opposition to others, I don’t want that for *racial* identities in the US, because that would lead to more conflict and teeth-gnashing. (Solve for the equilibrium, as Tyler Cowen likes to say.)
Actually, 21st Century DNA scans have shown that the white - black distinction in America is pretty much real. A big discovery of this century was the great majority of self-identify non-Hispanic African-Americans who have two parents who identify as black tend to be about 5/8ths to 31/32nds blacks genetically.
Similarly, most Americans who self-identify as non-Hispanic whites are well over 90% white genetically. Unlike in, say, Brazil just aren't a lot of non-Hispanics who are mostly white but kind of black until quite recently.
Once you know that genetic reality, it's pretty easy to figure out why: the one-drop rule and opposition to endogamy led to two different marriage and thus gene pools, and moving from one to the other was onerous. These cultural norms socially constructed America's genetic reality of having highly genetically distinctive white and black races.
In contrast, in Latin America, different social norms socially constructed quite different distributions of genes. It's common there for people to be 80% white and 20% black, a proportion that was only rarely seen in the US among non-Hispanics until quite recently.
It remains curious to me that the most important voice on the relationship of race history in America and how individuals think of themselves today -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. -- only shows up in a footnote. Watching a single episode of Finding Your Roots might help here. There is so much more to this conversation that the American public understands, quietly.
An issue with implementing colorblind policies is that many people (certainly progressives, but many conservatives too likely) would feel uncomfortable by the effects of colorblindness—folks, I suspect, don’t want to see a Harvard graduating class that’s 1% black, even if such a disparity were “benign.” Such an outcome would challenge our deep-seated belief that all men are created equal. (This challenge would be mistaken and, nevertheless, I fear, prevalent. I worry that most people don’t have the decoupling power to say “the mean black IQ is a standard deviation below the mean white IQ, but also that’s not a threat to the dignity or moral equality of either group.”) You mentioned that people might have been deceived into supporting affirmative action, but affirmative action has also helped blunt people’s awareness of the severity of the group disparities.
The recognition of ethnic groups, I think, introduces a double-bind and fails to elide many of the concerns we have about racial identitarianism. On the one hand, recognizing ethnic identities as having legitimate interests can allow us to take important steps against cultural erasure. On the other hand, I think many (though I won’t pretend to know your politics) would be uncomfortable with someone’s saying “Germany for the Germans,” “France for the French,” or “England for the English,” (see Enoch Powell, Jonathan Bowden, the AFD, etc.). Earlier, I asked whether folks would be prepared to accept the consequences of colorblindness; similarly I’ll ask whether we’re prepared to accept the consequences of free association and the destigmatization of ethnic in-group preference.
The arguments that this article presents against color blindness strike me as oddly weak. For example:
“Unless people stop caring about being stigmatized, ‘neoracism’ is never going to disappear completely, and we’re never going to live in a completely colorblind world.”
Maybe I just misunderstand, but statements like this one strike me as wrongheaded in many ways.
First, and perhaps most obviously, I don’t think someone like Hughes is really arguing for a “completely” colorblind world. Your average liberal (such as Hughes) accepts the fact that we live in an ideologically diverse country and, that being the case, that there will never be complete unanimity. Hughes may very well be arguing for a predominantly color blind world, but only an illiberal ideologue would entertain any serious notion of completely imposing their preferred worldview.
Also: yes, we all have to stop caring about being stigmatized by the Social Justice ideologues. I thought that was obvious. This is, I would argue, one of the main arguments of John McWhorter’s book on Woke Racism. Among other prescriptions he presents for a healthier society, he points out that we cannot simply allow a group of secular fundamentalists to continually impose their will by way of stigmatizing the rest of us with terms such as “racist.” Hence, McWhorter, concludes, accepting the fact that a group of identitarian radicals are inevitably going to call us racist (if we dare to disagree with them) is ultimately a necessary sacrifice to help maintain our open society (in which debate and disagreement can still happen). And, again, I thought these points were clear years ago.
Thanks for the commenet! These are good points; let me see what I can do.
> "The arguments...against color blindness strike me as oddly weak"
I agree about the argument you're quoting ("just a splash of cold water," I called it). But I think the third argument about ethnicity is pretty strong. Hughes argues that races (Black, White, etc.) are shallow while ethnicity is deep. But if Heath is right, then "Black" in US politics is more like an ethnic category than a racial one, so Hughes' argument doesn't work.
> "we all have to stop caring about being stigmatized by the Social Justice ideologues"
But Hughes *does* care about stigma! In a colorblind world, we're supposed to shame people who are racist (as well as "neoracists"). My point here is just that if we do this, rational people are going to start acting like "neoracists" in order to avoid looking like racists.
Come to think of it, by the same logic, rational people might act like *racists* to avoid looking like *neoracists*!
> "I don't think someone like Hughes is really arguing for a 'completely' colorblind world"
True -- if I ever write a follow up to this, I think I'll focus on *where* we should be colorblind and to what extent. Hughes gets into a bit of this in interviews, like with Tyler Cowen.
I am very confused. It is very odd for someone to present 3 points to back up an argument and then, when those points are challenged, to just admit that some of them are weak.
Also, in his many debate appearances, Hughes impresses again and again with his capacity for calm and reasoned argument. It strikes me as inaccurate and misleading to lump him in with the Leftist ideologues who clearly utilize ad hominem attacks (tarring dissenters themselves as racist) as a way to shut down debate and impose their views. Hughes is the anti-Leftist not just in substance but also in style.
And we very much need a clear understanding of who are the bullies and who are not. Because we must not give in to the bullies. Not to be too melodramatic, but, to be honest, I will in fact be melodramatic: the fate of our free society depends very much upon our resistance to the bullies. And your point in question regarding the ostensible weaknesses of a color-blind society is more than just weak, it's wrongheaded and potentially dangerous. Here it is in full:
"Imagine Bob lives in a colorblind society, where racist bigotry is stigmatized, and there are few racists still around. Now suppose Bob works in the math department, which, thanks to the college’s colorblind hiring, has always hired the most qualified candidates. This process usually leads to a diverse faculty. But Bob’s department, through sheer chance, has a 'benign disparity'—they’re all White. Won’t Bob worry about how this looks? Even if he knows he’s not racist, any rational observer will at least be suspicious. This gives Bob a powerful incentive to make his department more diverse, even if Bob’s values are intrinsically colorblind."
Bob's response to any so-called "rational observer" who wants to insinuate (or openly proclaim) that he is racist should be this: go pound some f*cking sand!
Neither Bob (whoever he may be) nor anyone else should compromise their values or personal truths to the herdmind. In fact, the Left regularly condemns exactly that kind of capitulation: but only when it is practiced by Republicans. There is a literally nonstop stream of columns and editorials published day after day condemning Republicans for failing to stand up to the bullying tactics of Trump, failing to state what they actually believe in (if and when it differs from Trump), and ultimately failing to uphold American values and the constitution itself.
But, according to you, when Bob faces a Leftist bully he'll probably just capitulate because he doesn't want to be called a racist. And somehow that's not the same kind of cowardice that's regularly condemned in Republicans? No, it's just the normal course of affairs?
I really have to wonder if you have thought this through.
It is the behavior of a child to try and get their way through tantrum and name calling. And those are the very tactics which you quite accurately identify on the part of the leftist activists in question. But, frankly, I find it astonishing that you then assume that capitulation to these childish tactics is now simply an established practice in our culture.
I personally am having none of it. If someone wants to interpret my behavior negatively (due to the influence of whatever religion or ideology they may follow), that is their right. And it's my right to then take stock of my own behavior, proceed how I see fit, follow my own values, and tell the fundamentalists to go stuff it. And that's exactly what Bob and every other American should be doing as well.
1) Presenting an argument isn't the same as endorsing it! My own judgment isn't that the three arguments against colorblindness are decisive -- in fact, I explicitly conclude that colorblindness is probably a good idea in some official contexts (like hiring & admissions), even if not across the board (as Hughes claims in his book).
2) Where did I say that Bob *should* capitulate? I didn't say anything about what he should do. My point was a descriptive one. If Bob implements a colorblind policy, he might end up looking like he's racist by sheer luck, which in Hughes' ideal colorblind world means that he'll be stigmatized. Maybe Bob should just accept the unfair stigma. Maybe. My point is just that ordinary human beings in that sort of situation will, on average, feel a strong pull towards avoiding stigma. This is a fact of human psychology that will tend to make many people act in "woke" ways even if they are colorblind in their personal convictions.
3) You're talking as though only the left wants to stigmatize racism. Everybody should want to stigmatize racism -- even Hughes explicitly calls for this!
The religion which prevents science from elucidating the result of 10,000 years of religion and politics doing eugenics against their adherents to produce supporters of the administration is called political correctness, which also does eugenics.
good post daniel, agree with your conclusions about colorblindness but come at it from the opposite direction since i think evolution is true (and is not magically restricted from operating above the neck, i.e. selection has heavily influenced the cognitive dispositions of populations). this review of coleman’s from last year was worthwhile.
Refreshingly careful piece. You make all the right distinctions, like ethnicity being the real thing behind “racial relations.” On integration, speaking from a majority mixed-race country (Brazil) where different races are under the same broad ethnicity, what we do here is to associate ethnicity to location. There’s no risk of black culture from Bahia disappearing into the majority culture because, well, it’s in Bahia. Same thing for white gaucho culture in the South. While we know one is more black and the other more white, we rarely think it’s all black or all white (or all indigenous, or all caipira). We’re used to thinking there will be racial variation within each ethnic group. As for our famous music, we know that Samba, for instance, is not all black and we have great white sambistas in our history. Still, Samba is indeed thought of as blacker than Bossa Nova. What wokeness brought us, to our detriment, was the emphasis on this dichotomy, which is very American and not very Brazilian. We are now rediscovering mestizos, the majority of the country, thanks to work by intellectuals like Antonio Risério.
What a fascinating comment - thank you, Eli!
Thank you for making me see a different side of this issue.
Good comment, but let's also think about the downside for blacks under Brazil's Latin system of a color continuum rather than a color line.
African-Americans have a lot of problems, but one thing they don't lack are famous African-Americans. Over the last century, an enormous number of the most famous people on earth (e.g., Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Barack Obama, Stephen Curry, and so forth) have been African-American.
Black Brazilians? There was Pele and ... well ...
Consider soccer star Neymar. In Brazil, transracialism is as fashionable as transgenderism in the US, so Neymar has gone back and forth between looking like a typical black kid when he was young and poor and, after he got rich, looking at times like one of those skateboarders you see living around Southern California military bases who are a quarter black, a quarter white, a quarter Asian, and a quarter Mexican. Or something. Nobody can tell.
In America, outside of Louisiana, it has been extremely difficult for lineages to transitions from black to white, so high-achieving African-American families tend to stay African-American. In Latin America, however, among ambitious people of color, it's a reasonable ambition to have white (or whitish) grandchildren. So, in Latin America, talent tends to flow toward the white end of the color continuum. But in the USA, talent seldom crossed the color line from black to white, which helps explain the famous amounts of talent found among African Americans.
Hi Steve. I’m not sure I understand your points. It seems you are using fame as a proxy for talent, and going with the small amount of famous Brazilian black people you know as an indicator. But there are more of them who are famous among Brazilians that you probably have never heard about. Like composer and singer Milton Nascimento, or geographer Milton Santos.
The latter had an interesting perspective on race, he was against racial quotas and he used to say he was primarily Brazilian in his identity before being black. Pro-black and indigenous racial quotas are now widespread in Brazil, unfortunately in my view, since we already struggle with so little to show in terms of meritocratic institutions.
You are right that in the past, with some effect today, mixed-race Brazilians saw being whiter as a social ladder they wanted to climb. But this is changing rapidly with the incentives set in place by preferential treatment, so now more of them claim a black identity. Mestizos are still struggling to set themselves apart because, well, they’re not really apart from anything.
Risério, the mixed-race intellectual I mentioned, says that a lot of things attributed to black people alone are actually the product of mestizos, like Samba. This is not to downplay black talent, but to take back some talent that was taken away from mestizos in the name of black pride.
Anyway, my impression is that the amount of black people with prestige in the country is about as much as they are present in the general population: 7-10%. The identitarian black movement tries to artificially raise this number by adding together black (“preto”) and brown (“pardo”) to what they call “negro.” With this strategy they can get to over 50% of the population by sleight of hand, which they use dramatically to ask for even more quotas. But in Portuguese, “preto” and “negro” are synonyms. Where I was raised, “negro” was fine but “preto” sounded a bit like a slur. So it’s bewildering for me to see even our largest statistics government agency using “preto” willy nilly. As for brown (“pardo”), which is de facto mestizo, that’s the word Portuguese explorer Pero Vaz de Caminha called the natives in a famous letter he wrote after visiting the country in 1500. There is a lot about Brazilian culture, like our multiple showers per day, that comes from the natives. Their influence is hugely downplayed, even by the black movement.
Coming back to your thesis that mixing was bad for black people’s status in Brazil, I think that’s not accurate. In any case, I agree with Risério that we Brazilians should rediscover ourselves as mainly mestizos and celebrate “mulattos” (now a forbidden word) like our great novelist Machado de Assis. But we do have enough black talent.
Really nice piece.
On the idea that colorblindness dissolves ties that bind ethnic groups together, I think the point can be put even more strongly. In a thoroughly colorblind society, there wouldn’t even be ethnic distinctions. That is, ethnic distinctions only persist because of disparities in mate choice. If Nuyoricans were no more likely to couple with other Nuyoricans than with anybody else, then it doesn’t take too many generations before you don’t really have Nuyoricans anymore.
This is sort of what’s already happened with lots of “white” ethnic groups in the United States. My maternal grandmother immigrated from Poland before the holocaust (the rest of her family didn’t get out), and when she got to the United States, she was in Jewish social circles, where she met my Jewish maternal grandfather. Jewish ethnic identity persisted into the next generation (my mother), but more weakly, so it wasn’t surprising that my mother married a man (my father) with two Italian parents. Parallel story on his side. For me, while I have both Jewish and Italian ancestry, neither played a role in my life anything like the one they did for my grandparents, and so no surprise that when I got married, the woman I married was neither Jewish nor Italian, and I don’t think my children will have any sense of a distinctive ethnic identity the way all eight of their great-grandparents almost certainly did.
That's a really great point, Daniel. Thank you!
(I promise that's not what I say in the mirror after writing these pieces.)
Thanks! I do think it’s kind of jarring to think that the sort of 90s ideal I grew up with, where we absolutely celebrated multiculturalism—as opposed to a kind of melting pot ideal where everyone is supposed to assimilate to a generic American identity—but also had a kind of default suspicion about strong ethnic/homophilic preferences in dating, is in a way incoherent. (Incoherent in that it’s not a long-run stable way for society to be organized; you can only have it for a few generations, as a transitionary period.)
Great piece, but I think you are missing one key point. You never mention disparate impact, specifically its legal framework. Disparate impact essentially makes colorblindness illegal, as long as racial disparities exist. Trump is theoretically working on repealing disparate impact through Executive Order, but there’s no guarantee the Supreme Court will agree and overrule their existing precedent. You mentioned the worry about being seen as racist, but it’s currently much more magnified by the hefty legal liability.
I'm kicking myself for not making this point!
In defense of colorblindness, let me just say that disparate impact liability mainly arises in employment law (thanks to Griggs). So the law may be a barrier to colorblindness, but not in every domain.
------
Source on Griggs v. Duke Power Company (ground zero for disparate impact): https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1213&context=vlr
A critical take on disparate impact jurisprudence more generally: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3482015
SCOTUS's decision to use disparate impact liability in housing: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2014/13-1371
Great piece, Daniel! I think it’s important to break down seemingly-monolithic behavior from institutions and show how it can reduce to a series of ordinary decisions made by ordinary people. This helps to shed a bit of light on some of what’s going on with the culture war.
Cheers, Jessie! And very well said.
This valuable piece, including helpful historical context, would benefit from further discussion of the purpose for which race morally should, or should not, be considered. On the one hand are situations in which colorblindness should eventually be the norm (government policies, hiring, university admissions, etc.) but not applied to ignore intentional discrimination. On the other are those, mostly involving private relations and associations, where sharing and celebrating a common ethnicity or heritage is acceptable, or even socially beneficial. This line is not always clear, and there are certainly counter-examples for each category. But most people intuitively understand the difference between intentionally favoring certain racial groups for public jobs or college admissions, and letting Nuyoricans (or Cherokees) form a private association where they share their common heritage, where any exclusion of others seems perfectly understandable. (To be clear, I'm not defending white supremacist groups. But I do recognize limits on the desirability and practicality of policing every form of morally noxious belief.)
Very good piece. Maybe I'm missing something but I think Coleman mostly refers to colorblindness as an approach for public policy whereas the "ties that bind ethnic groups together" are something more private that I can imagine could coexist with public policies that promote integration. Coleman says "the aim of colorblindness is to consciously disregard race as a reason to treat individuals differently and as a category on which to base public policy." As a Hispanic in the US, the fact that my daughter school has a Hispanic Heritage months is not a driver of my ties to other Hispanics, the ties come from a shared language, food, and customs. Why can those practices coexists, mutate, and develop in a context of colorblind policies?
Thanks for the comment, Gabriel! I should’ve emphasized this more, but in the book, Coleman does define colorblindness so that it applies “both in our public policy and in our private lives” (p. 19). Still, I think you’re right that it might be possible to maintain cultural ties (language, food, etc.) while also having broadly colorblind government policies.
Thanks for this thoughtful article.
I’ve been mulling the idea of race abolitionism for the past couple of years after reading a piece and subsequently interviewing David and Subrena Smith on the Reconstructing Inclusion podcast.
I also encountered the Theory of Racelessness in meeting and speaking to the author of the “Raceless Antiracist” Sheena Mason last year.
The overall premise for them is that wherever race resides, racism follows and it needs to be let go of completely.
Having a son who is of Spanish (Galician) and African-American (Kansas) heritage, was born and lives in Swiss-German speaking Switzerland and whose mother tongue is Swiss-French and Spanish, ascribing a race to him occurs as grossly limiting to me.
I am learning how to speak to him about it as he grows older. He might experience some semblance of racism because he is a darker complexioned than most kids he plays with, but he is also a local. And, me not having the advantage of being local rarely feel that race plays a role in my daily life here.
Yeah, racism exists but the occurrences are rare and if they do occur, I pass them off as ignorance. Not all can emotionally compartmentalize like that but it is something that I came to conclude over time—another’s belief system is not my problem it’s theirs unless they do something violent to make it mine—“sticks and stones. . .”
I will work with my son to not subscribe to racialization even if it is ascribed to him by others.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment, Amri. “Grossly limiting” sounds right: I feel for mixed-race kids who are pressured to define themselves in ways that don’t make sense to them or to their families. And thanks also for the tips — looking forward to listening to those interviews you did.
With pleasure. Sheena will be later but she writes on here, I believe; as does David Smith on Dehumanization.
If ethnic identity is a legitimate source of self-respect and self-esteem, and the desire to be a part of a separate (ethnic) nation is also legitimate, would you support the reification of a White American ethnic identity?
I’m not trying to tie you to Jared Taylor or other White Nationalists (although cultivating a distinct White Amerian identity is explicitly his project), but I can’t help but notice that if the benefits of ethnic identity are so great as to outweigh the benefits of colorblindness, it appears incumbent upon White Americans to find a way to participate in it.
It’s a fair question. I think lots of White Americans take pride in their ethnic backgrounds: Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc. But I don’t like the idea of a “White identity,” because White Americans have so little in common that the group identity ends up being mainly defined in opposition to other races. “Opposition to other races” tends to attract racists — so it doesn’t surprise me that “White pride” is usually just racism. Better to have a unifying national identity instead!
I’m concerned that, given both the lack of other commonality across White Americans you cited, and the negative connotations surrounding Whiteness in the American context, an increased emphasis on ethnic self-identification will encourage White Americans to interpret what it means to be American through an ethnic lens.
This is already being encouraged on the Right, by people like Scott Greer, who have popularized the term heritage Americans to refer to White (often specifically Anglo) Americans. On the Left, I see people like Nikole Hannah-Jones also engaging in this project; the 1619 project is an attempt to reframe America as an explicitly White (supremacist) country.
It’s cliche, but I hope we manage to preserve the notion captured by Reagan, that it doesn’t matter if you’re British, Hungarian, Japanese, or Nigerian, if you come to America, you are American, and your children and children’s children will be American. If White Americans co-opt the American identity as exclusively their own, that ideal disappears.
Well said. By the way, you might like the last section of Joe Heath’s “Two Dilemmas for American Race Relations,” where he argues that, if you look outside the American context, the countries that have the most success with integration generally make race less salient. (Of course, part of what I’m arguing here is that people have understandable reasons for not wanting to integrate. So I see the issue as something of a dilemma with no easy solution in the near future.)
"White Americans have so little in common that the group identity ends up being mainly defined in opposition to other races."
Everything is defined in opposition to something else.
Do Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Indians, and Pakistanis all see themselves as possessing Asian solidarity back home in Asian the way they do in America?
Not in my experience, nor from reading worrisome headlines about World War III possibly breaking out between India and Pakistan.
In this globalized world, white Americans have a huge amount in common with each other relative to the rest of the world, as the rest of the world readily recognizes. The vast majority of white Americans' ancestors before 1607 lived in what they referred to as Christendom, spoke Indo-European languages, and formed a common civilization. Most white Americans are either descended from Brits or had their ancestors fairly aggressively Anglicized (e.g., Germans in 1917). There hasn't been a big immigration of non-Hispanic whites into the United States since roughly World War I. The Protestant - Catholic divide among white Americans vanished soon after JFK entered the American pantheon of martyrs on 11/22/1963.
The only reason people nod their heads to this self-evidently wrong talking point how little in common white Americans have is because they want to cajole white Americans into not asserting their potential political power.
I take your point, Steve, that White Americans have a lot in common. But I think it has more to do with being American than with being White.
And while you’re right that it’s okay to have an identity that’s defined in opposition to others, I don’t want that for *racial* identities in the US, because that would lead to more conflict and teeth-gnashing. (Solve for the equilibrium, as Tyler Cowen likes to say.)
Actually, 21st Century DNA scans have shown that the white - black distinction in America is pretty much real. A big discovery of this century was the great majority of self-identify non-Hispanic African-Americans who have two parents who identify as black tend to be about 5/8ths to 31/32nds blacks genetically.
Similarly, most Americans who self-identify as non-Hispanic whites are well over 90% white genetically. Unlike in, say, Brazil just aren't a lot of non-Hispanics who are mostly white but kind of black until quite recently.
Once you know that genetic reality, it's pretty easy to figure out why: the one-drop rule and opposition to endogamy led to two different marriage and thus gene pools, and moving from one to the other was onerous. These cultural norms socially constructed America's genetic reality of having highly genetically distinctive white and black races.
In contrast, in Latin America, different social norms socially constructed quite different distributions of genes. It's common there for people to be 80% white and 20% black, a proportion that was only rarely seen in the US among non-Hispanics until quite recently.
It remains curious to me that the most important voice on the relationship of race history in America and how individuals think of themselves today -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. -- only shows up in a footnote. Watching a single episode of Finding Your Roots might help here. There is so much more to this conversation that the American public understands, quietly.
Was there a particular idea that you thought was missing? (I like Gates’s work, and I might engage with him more in a follow up!)
All of it? Your piece is tops of waves, a good intro to the vast conversation, which he has kept active more than any living figure.
Really nice article.
An issue with implementing colorblind policies is that many people (certainly progressives, but many conservatives too likely) would feel uncomfortable by the effects of colorblindness—folks, I suspect, don’t want to see a Harvard graduating class that’s 1% black, even if such a disparity were “benign.” Such an outcome would challenge our deep-seated belief that all men are created equal. (This challenge would be mistaken and, nevertheless, I fear, prevalent. I worry that most people don’t have the decoupling power to say “the mean black IQ is a standard deviation below the mean white IQ, but also that’s not a threat to the dignity or moral equality of either group.”) You mentioned that people might have been deceived into supporting affirmative action, but affirmative action has also helped blunt people’s awareness of the severity of the group disparities.
The recognition of ethnic groups, I think, introduces a double-bind and fails to elide many of the concerns we have about racial identitarianism. On the one hand, recognizing ethnic identities as having legitimate interests can allow us to take important steps against cultural erasure. On the other hand, I think many (though I won’t pretend to know your politics) would be uncomfortable with someone’s saying “Germany for the Germans,” “France for the French,” or “England for the English,” (see Enoch Powell, Jonathan Bowden, the AFD, etc.). Earlier, I asked whether folks would be prepared to accept the consequences of colorblindness; similarly I’ll ask whether we’re prepared to accept the consequences of free association and the destigmatization of ethnic in-group preference.
I have greyscale automatically turn on for all social media, so I can’t read the dots test.
The arguments that this article presents against color blindness strike me as oddly weak. For example:
“Unless people stop caring about being stigmatized, ‘neoracism’ is never going to disappear completely, and we’re never going to live in a completely colorblind world.”
Maybe I just misunderstand, but statements like this one strike me as wrongheaded in many ways.
First, and perhaps most obviously, I don’t think someone like Hughes is really arguing for a “completely” colorblind world. Your average liberal (such as Hughes) accepts the fact that we live in an ideologically diverse country and, that being the case, that there will never be complete unanimity. Hughes may very well be arguing for a predominantly color blind world, but only an illiberal ideologue would entertain any serious notion of completely imposing their preferred worldview.
Also: yes, we all have to stop caring about being stigmatized by the Social Justice ideologues. I thought that was obvious. This is, I would argue, one of the main arguments of John McWhorter’s book on Woke Racism. Among other prescriptions he presents for a healthier society, he points out that we cannot simply allow a group of secular fundamentalists to continually impose their will by way of stigmatizing the rest of us with terms such as “racist.” Hence, McWhorter, concludes, accepting the fact that a group of identitarian radicals are inevitably going to call us racist (if we dare to disagree with them) is ultimately a necessary sacrifice to help maintain our open society (in which debate and disagreement can still happen). And, again, I thought these points were clear years ago.
Thanks for the commenet! These are good points; let me see what I can do.
> "The arguments...against color blindness strike me as oddly weak"
I agree about the argument you're quoting ("just a splash of cold water," I called it). But I think the third argument about ethnicity is pretty strong. Hughes argues that races (Black, White, etc.) are shallow while ethnicity is deep. But if Heath is right, then "Black" in US politics is more like an ethnic category than a racial one, so Hughes' argument doesn't work.
> "we all have to stop caring about being stigmatized by the Social Justice ideologues"
But Hughes *does* care about stigma! In a colorblind world, we're supposed to shame people who are racist (as well as "neoracists"). My point here is just that if we do this, rational people are going to start acting like "neoracists" in order to avoid looking like racists.
Come to think of it, by the same logic, rational people might act like *racists* to avoid looking like *neoracists*!
> "I don't think someone like Hughes is really arguing for a 'completely' colorblind world"
True -- if I ever write a follow up to this, I think I'll focus on *where* we should be colorblind and to what extent. Hughes gets into a bit of this in interviews, like with Tyler Cowen.
I am very confused. It is very odd for someone to present 3 points to back up an argument and then, when those points are challenged, to just admit that some of them are weak.
Also, in his many debate appearances, Hughes impresses again and again with his capacity for calm and reasoned argument. It strikes me as inaccurate and misleading to lump him in with the Leftist ideologues who clearly utilize ad hominem attacks (tarring dissenters themselves as racist) as a way to shut down debate and impose their views. Hughes is the anti-Leftist not just in substance but also in style.
And we very much need a clear understanding of who are the bullies and who are not. Because we must not give in to the bullies. Not to be too melodramatic, but, to be honest, I will in fact be melodramatic: the fate of our free society depends very much upon our resistance to the bullies. And your point in question regarding the ostensible weaknesses of a color-blind society is more than just weak, it's wrongheaded and potentially dangerous. Here it is in full:
"Imagine Bob lives in a colorblind society, where racist bigotry is stigmatized, and there are few racists still around. Now suppose Bob works in the math department, which, thanks to the college’s colorblind hiring, has always hired the most qualified candidates. This process usually leads to a diverse faculty. But Bob’s department, through sheer chance, has a 'benign disparity'—they’re all White. Won’t Bob worry about how this looks? Even if he knows he’s not racist, any rational observer will at least be suspicious. This gives Bob a powerful incentive to make his department more diverse, even if Bob’s values are intrinsically colorblind."
Bob's response to any so-called "rational observer" who wants to insinuate (or openly proclaim) that he is racist should be this: go pound some f*cking sand!
Neither Bob (whoever he may be) nor anyone else should compromise their values or personal truths to the herdmind. In fact, the Left regularly condemns exactly that kind of capitulation: but only when it is practiced by Republicans. There is a literally nonstop stream of columns and editorials published day after day condemning Republicans for failing to stand up to the bullying tactics of Trump, failing to state what they actually believe in (if and when it differs from Trump), and ultimately failing to uphold American values and the constitution itself.
But, according to you, when Bob faces a Leftist bully he'll probably just capitulate because he doesn't want to be called a racist. And somehow that's not the same kind of cowardice that's regularly condemned in Republicans? No, it's just the normal course of affairs?
I really have to wonder if you have thought this through.
It is the behavior of a child to try and get their way through tantrum and name calling. And those are the very tactics which you quite accurately identify on the part of the leftist activists in question. But, frankly, I find it astonishing that you then assume that capitulation to these childish tactics is now simply an established practice in our culture.
I personally am having none of it. If someone wants to interpret my behavior negatively (due to the influence of whatever religion or ideology they may follow), that is their right. And it's my right to then take stock of my own behavior, proceed how I see fit, follow my own values, and tell the fundamentalists to go stuff it. And that's exactly what Bob and every other American should be doing as well.
I don't think you're being fair to what I said.
1) Presenting an argument isn't the same as endorsing it! My own judgment isn't that the three arguments against colorblindness are decisive -- in fact, I explicitly conclude that colorblindness is probably a good idea in some official contexts (like hiring & admissions), even if not across the board (as Hughes claims in his book).
2) Where did I say that Bob *should* capitulate? I didn't say anything about what he should do. My point was a descriptive one. If Bob implements a colorblind policy, he might end up looking like he's racist by sheer luck, which in Hughes' ideal colorblind world means that he'll be stigmatized. Maybe Bob should just accept the unfair stigma. Maybe. My point is just that ordinary human beings in that sort of situation will, on average, feel a strong pull towards avoiding stigma. This is a fact of human psychology that will tend to make many people act in "woke" ways even if they are colorblind in their personal convictions.
3) You're talking as though only the left wants to stigmatize racism. Everybody should want to stigmatize racism -- even Hughes explicitly calls for this!
The religion which prevents science from elucidating the result of 10,000 years of religion and politics doing eugenics against their adherents to produce supporters of the administration is called political correctness, which also does eugenics.
good post daniel, agree with your conclusions about colorblindness but come at it from the opposite direction since i think evolution is true (and is not magically restricted from operating above the neck, i.e. selection has heavily influenced the cognitive dispositions of populations). this review of coleman’s from last year was worthwhile.
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/the-god-that-failed
Well duh! BLM riots and propaganda!