In the July 20th Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
A colorblind America is high on the wish list of many conservatives – right up there with two guns in every nightstand and a prayer in every classroom. They bemoan the scourge of hyphenated Americanism and wax eloquent on how much better off we'd be if we were all just Americans, period. If we no longer saw or acknowledged differences in race and culture.
I share their concern over the balkanization of the country. But their frequently proposed solution to that problem – that we ignore difference – is naive at best. It is also faintly insulting.
I speak from experience, having too frequently encountered white people who wanted me to know they didn't "see" me as black. Intending a compliment, I suppose. Or maybe a promotion. And each time, I wondered the same thing: Why is my heritage something you have to blind yourself to in order for us to have a relationship? Why do you have to pretend I'm not what I quite obviously am before I can earn your goodwill? If that's the case, maybe your will isn't as good as you think it is.
More likely what Pitts wants is for people to continue to divide themselves into color groups so that he and his friends in neo-Marxia can continue to use skewed and completely inaccurate statistical "race" data for the purposes of creating divisiveness and political gains for their cohorts. He goes on to utter such nonsense as "The truth is that so-called colorblindness is neither possible nor even desirable." Where does this "truth" come from? Why is it impossible? I don't trust people when they intimate that something involving "societal" change is not possible. At different points in history, there were always idiots like him who thought that slavery would last forever, that desegregation was not possible and that "interracial" marriage would never be completely legalized. It shows a mind that has already closed down to other possibilities. As soon as he started with this "neither possible" nonsense I wrote him off. Leonard Pitts, Mr. Impossible. Leonard Pitts, man with a "racialist" agenda. Leonard Pitts, your Marx is showing.