Thanks, Mr. Vance! Great explanation of why being “colorblind” is counterproductive.

Please, please do not judge all of black people by this response. I am black and although I’m not sure where Lott was coming from, lumping all non-white people under various “colored” labels only divides the campus further, fosters a sense of division and hurts the internal as well as external and campus-wide perception of the identity of said groups. Lott’s push for a color-blind Dartmouth is not racist, but is revolutionary thinking and should be lauded as such. Encouraging students and the administration to look beyond something as obvious and one-dimensional as color when understanding a person or a group of individuals is the right way to go. Liberals, I included, must look deeper before automatically painting an argument as harmful or racist.

is what The D’s opinion page needs.

Rational voices. Thanks Anise. This was great.

Look, this is what I have a hard time understanding. This argument claims that forcing color-blindness also forces people to assimilate and lose their individual identities. But I just can’t imagine how being part of a community based on color (a distinction I personally find arbitrary) is conducive to an independent and individualistic lifestyle. Its rejecting one form of assimilation for another. And no one’s saying that we shouldn’t celebrate our different cultures, but a culture is different from a race. We can choose to practice a culture, but we can’t choose our skin color, so a community based around culture is infinitely more meaningful. Vance argues that the idea of color-blindness says that success happens despite a minority’s race, but he couldn’t be more wrong. The whole point is that it’s not the color of your skin that determines your success or lack thereof. That’s a fundamental truth in a color-blind society. Did anyone listen to Ms. Gordon-Reed’s speech at TEDx? It was basically an appeal for color-blindness. She argued why it was counterproductive to only see some historical figures as figures of color and not as individuals with their own life and accomplishments. If anything, color-blindness leads to a deeper appreciation of the individual.

King and Obama both make humanist arguments, not ones directed toward the importance of recognizing “difference.” While Lott might be a conservative and his politics suspect you might want to keep in mind that the left isn’t singing about the pleasures of recognizing our diversity with one voice. Tolerance isn’t the goal; equality is what we should be working toward. Read anything recent from, say, Zizek or Walter Benn Michaels before you slap yourselves on the back for being so wonderfully diverse (because you are not).

I dont think youre understanding. No one is saying to judge people solely on race. Instead, it’s important that we realize that color is also culture, community, and every day life experienced differently.

President Kim seems to agree with Lott here:

http://www.dartblog.com/data/2009/09/008631.php

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

This article is not calling for any special treatment because of skin color, but it is saying that for us to understand each other we have to not only celebrate the things we have in common but also the things that are different amongst us. You can take race completely out of the equation and use gender: How can I as a man ever form a relationship with a woman if I refuse to acknowledge that she is a woman aka gender-blind. This mean in our relationship I would not create a level of comfort where she would feel okay with speaking to me about some issues she may face as a woman. And here at Dartmouth there are concrete issues that woman face and we should create an environment where they can speak freely about those issues without people telling that the solution is for them to forget that they are women and essentially stop talking about the issues they have because they are women. You can change women with any minority category, low-income, race, or international student. No one in these categories should be treated differently but they should not be discredited by having others tell them that part of their identity should be ignored.

I’ve seen a lot of twisted logic in connection with race issues both on campus and in general, but Mr. Vance might take the cake. “Color-blindness tells me it is not OK to be of color?” What? If I were literally color-blind, i.e., unable to tell that Mr. Vance is black, then I wouldn’t be able to tell him “it’s not OK that you’re black,” because I wouldn’t know that he was! That just makes less than zero sense.

I think it’s fascinating to look at different students' backgrounds and how those affect the students' attitudes and experiences here at Dartmouth, whether it be race, religion, geography, etc. But I agree with everything ‘13 said above – this college goes way too far assuming that everything is about race and lumping people together by that characteristic alone.

“Color-blindness leads to a deeper appreciation of the world”? Really?

I would argue against that. There are differences between people period. We can all agree on that. All minorities are indeed different, but historically minorities share a common obstacle in white oppression that is relatively recent in a global context. Being colorblind, takes a way that context, ignoring the circumstances that have lead to the present. Forgetting slavery, prejudice, racism and other acts of discrimination, is flat out disrespectful to myself and my ancestral history. Just because I am black, I never lose sight of being an individual. It is just part of the knowledge-base that informs my individuality. I am also humanistic, and believe that people should be judged on the content of their character. Although I recognize the difference between myself and others, that DOES NOT cause me to not exclude them from my own sense of community.

Colorblindness does not exist; if your eyes work you see color. Lets stop pretending like it doesn’t affect people, families and cultures. Treat people with love and respect.

to exclude them*