Yet, despite its superficial appeal, race-blindness is an ideal at war with itself: Strict adherence to
this principle would impede its own enforcement and inhibit addressing the harmful effects of its own
past violation.
That doesn't make much sense. The idea may be "at war with" affirmative action, or even equal opportunity laws, but it isn't at war with itself. It doesn't impede its own enforcement. If the law says that people will not be required to state or check off their race by the government then you just eliminate such requirements. You don't have to know the race of the people effected by violations of the idea of race-blindness to eliminate those violations.
Fair employment laws are most effectively policed when courts and government agents can compare
the racial composition of a company's work force with the racial demography of qualified prospective
workers in that company's local labor market. But doing so requires the collection of data that classify
individuals by race.
I'm against most fair employment laws when they apply to non government employees. I support the idea behind them, that people should not be unjustly discriminated against based on race, but I think people should be able to hire or fire and generally associate with anyone they want to associate with. When the employer is the government then I think they should not be able to discriminate based on race (or at least that laws passed by democratic representatives forbidding such discrimination are not unconstitutional and not unjust) but I also see how breaking everyone down by race contributes to the ideas and feelings that cause unjust racial discrimination in the first place.
I believe many fewer are prepared to endorse race-neutrality because, in light of our history,
race-neutrality is not a very attractive moral stance.
I am a supporter of the idea that the government should be required to be race neutral. I also think that it would usually be good if private individuals and companies where as well but that this should not be a legal requirement.
The single-minded adherent of race-neutrality would see no problem in the fact that black Americans
are vastly overrepresented among those going to prison and among those infected with the AIDS virus.
A single-minded adherence to most values can be bad if you ignore other values and practical interests entirely, but this fact doesn't mean that anything is wrong with the principle.
Black Americans are overrepresented among those going to prison because they are over represented among those committing crimes that are punishable with prison terms. Of course they may also be statistically overrepresented even when you take that fact in to account but this is much less certain. In any case I think a more general effort to make the enforcement of the law fair and just, will have more of a positive effect, while causing less divisiveness then making it in to a racial issue.
Black Americans do not get infected with the AIDS virus at a higher rate then whites because of discrimination. The virus doesn't care what color your skin is, and there is no government agency or private organization that is going around infected black people because of their racist hatred. It may be that black people are slightly more likely to engage in risky activity that may spread HIV, or it may be more of a random thing but it isn't a racial issue.
If people are suffering from a disease or from being unjustly charged and convicted of a crime then we might want to help the person but I don't see why their race is important in this effort. If they where justly convicted of a serious crime and went to prison then it isn't a racial issue as far as I am concerned.
I know some people are racists, and some of these people have power. Someone might manage to arrange for the conviction of an innocent person because of racial predjudice, but I don't think this calls for more attention to people's race but rather more attention to those meeting out justice. Making everything a matter of race just keeps everyone focused on race. The sooner we can just treat everyone as people, rather then as white people, black people, ect. , the better.
We should be willing to allow for modest violations of race blindness that yield significant reductions in racial inequality as a morally acceptable tradeoff.
I think I can agree with Loury on this, but I would probably disagree as to what constituted "significant reductions in racial inequality", and I would focus on legal equality first, equal opportunity to a lesser extent, and equality of outcomes, not at all.
Unfortunately, the failure to make a distinction between blindness and neutrality has led to doubts about the validity of discussing social justice issues in racial terms at all.
I do not view this as being unfortunate.
Tim |
