"Color-blind" society
A "color-blind" society refers to an ideal where racial differences are considered largely irrelevant in social interactions and legal frameworks, aiming for justice and harmony among diverse racial groups. This concept gained prominence during the civil rights movement of the 1960s as a response to the historical injustices of slavery and segregation in the United States. Advocates, including notable figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., envisioned a society where individuals would be judged by their character rather than their race. Key legislative measures, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, were influenced by the goal of achieving color-blindness under the law.
However, by the early 1970s, it became apparent that systemic inequalities persisted, as evidenced by employment and income disparities between racial groups. Polls indicated a disconnect between the perceptions of White Americans, who often felt the nation was color-blind, and the experiences of minority groups, who voiced ongoing challenges and discrimination. As a result, some minority leaders began to critique the color-blind approach, arguing for a pluralistic society that recognizes and respects cultural differences instead of promoting a homogenous standard. This perspective is especially relevant in education, where critics assert that color-blind policies can disadvantage minority students by overlooking the structural inequities they face.
On this Page
Subject Terms
"Color-blind" society
The idea of a “color-blind” society is one response to the question of how a society with people of diverse races can live together in justice and racial harmony. More specifically, a color-blind society can be defined as a society where racial differences among people would be largely irrelevant with respect to both the laws that govern people in that society and the judgments that members of one race make about those of another.
The idea that society should be color-blind received widespread attention during the civil rights movement of the 1960s as an antidote to the legacy of slavery in the American South. Although slavery was officially made illegal with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865 and all American citizens were given equal protection under the law by the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, new laws legitimizing segregation, typically known as Jim Crow laws, quickly arose in states where slavery had been practiced. These laws established separate schools, voting places, and other facilities for Whites and Blacks, so they had the effect of sustaining a racially divided society. In 1896, the Supreme Court further legitimated racial segregation when it decided in Plessy v. Ferguson that such laws did not intrinsically discriminate against Blacks. In dissenting from this decision, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote: “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”
When the Supreme Court reversed Plessy v. Ferguson with its decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the question of how to create a racially integrated society based on the color-blindness of the Constitution became a pressing issue. In the 1960s, civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. called for the color-blindness of the Constitution to be accompanied by color-blindness on the part of American citizens. In his most famous public address, the “I Have a Dream” speech delivered to a crowd of thousands before the Washington Monument on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington, King expressed the hope that one day his children would be able to live in a society where others would judge them not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Behind King’s belief in the desirability of a color-blind society was the idea that people should not be oblivious to the race of others, but that race, much like eye or hair color, should be largely irrelevant in their interactions with other human beings. Public policies resulting from the civil rights movement such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal for employers to discriminate against job applicants on the basis of their race and other characteristics, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed literacy tests as a condition for voter registration, were influenced by the ideal of a color-blind society. Their intent was to create a racially integrated society in the United States in which all people, regardless of race, would be treated equally under the law.
By the early 1970s, it was obvious that legislation had not brought about a color-blind society. Evidence of lingering discrimination could be found in the rate of employment and the level of the average annual yearly income for African Americans, which continued to lag behind those of White Americans. Yet, in a 1994 Louis Harris poll, a majority of Whites responded that minorities—Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans—by and large had equal opportunity with Whites, that the nation was basically color-blind. These same minority groups, when polled by Harris, did not feel their opportunities were equal to Whites.
In addition, an increase in racial and ethnic pride made many people doubt the wisdom of color-blind measures, which seemed to require a homogeneous society, with basically White values. Minority leaders began to argue that color-blindness was a White goal, symptomatic of White people’s inclination to measure or value all cultures according to their own and to ignore or fail to acknowledge differences. They instead sought a pluralistic society, where racial and ethnic minorities would be free to live under their own value systems and respected by members of other groups.
In education, the idea of color blindness has been deeply criticized as failing to meet the needs of minority students. UCLA Professor Gary Orfield explains in his book "The Walls Around Opportunity,” that colorblind policies make college inaccessible for many students and advantages the privileged, often White, students, leaving students of color walled off from opportunities because of ingrained racial inequalities. Many researchers have noted that ignoring race and racial differences does not create equity in education.
Bibliography
Apfelbaum, Evan P., Michael I. Norton, and Samuel R. Sommers. "Racial Color Blindness: Emergence, Practice, and Implications." Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 21, no. 3, 2012, pp. 205–9, doi:10.1177/0963721411434980. Accessed 21 Nov. 2024.
Neville, H. A., et al. "Color-Blind Racial Ideology: Theory, Training, and Measurement Implications in Psychology." The American Psychologist, vol. 68, no. 6, 2013, pp. 455–66, doi:10.1037/a0033282. Accessed 21 Nov. 2024.
Orfield, Gary. The Walls Around Opportunity: The Failure of Colorblind Policy for Higher Education. Princeton University Press, 2022.
Richeson, Jennifer A., and Richard J. Nussbaum. "The Impact of Multiculturalism versus Color-Blindness on Racial Bias." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 40, 2004, pp. 417–23, doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2003.09.002. Accessed 21 Nov. 2024.