Misrepresenting what people believe and then attacking them with lies appears to have replaced baseball as America’s national pastime.
Hence, the woke crowd is far from the only group engaging in the type of behavior I am about to describe. Nonetheless, proponents of woke who misrepresent the concept of colorblindness need to be called out.
They keep saying colorblindness is impossible, that people are always going to notice skin color.
Of course they are. But that isn’t what colorblindness means. The best way to explain it is by comparing it to handedness.
Obviously, in the 1990s, I could tell the difference between Tom Glavine who pitched left handed and Greg Maddux who threw right handed. It was also easy to notice that Tiger Woods swung a golf club right handed and Phil Mickelson left handed.
However, there are no longer any stereotypes attached to southpaws. In the seventeenth century, left-handedness was considered a sign of being in league with the Devil. Nobody, I hope, believes this anymore.
Likewise, people can tell Denzel Washington is of African descent and Jackie Chan is Asian. Colorblindness doesn’t mean nobody notices race, gender or sexual orientation. It means everyone is evaluated by individual merits and abilities, not stereotypes. Nonsense about all blacks being like this or all women being like that disappears.
The civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s was built on colorblindness and in the process became enormously successful. In a very short time color barriers were broken down and legalized segregation outlawed with the civil rights and voting rights acts being passed by congress.
Where colorblindness is still being practiced, it remains extremely successful. General managers of professional sports teams are aware of the skin colors of the players they draft and sign. But they no longer believe racial stereotypes that once had them selecting inferior white players over players of color. Wanting to win, they choose the best players available.
The majority of NFL and NBA players happen to be black. Nearly one third of MLB players are Latino. About 90% of NHL players and officials are white.
To those proposing colorblindness, this is fine. Race doesn’t matter. Everyone competes and the best players get selected. This should be the goal across society.
Now let’s compare professional athletics to academia, the hotbed of woke. The NFL, where the best players are being chosen despite race or ethnicity, is extremely popular, literally raking in money.
In sharp contrast, higher education has gained such a bad reputation that a major Democratic policy initiative is that students are being so ripped off that their debt should be forgiven. NFL players are practicing and working together to produce a popular sport while this spring colleges were so torn apart by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation and identity that many had trouble holding graduation exercises.
The core difference between colorblindness and woke is the way systemic racism is defined. Proponents of colorblindness recognize racism exists. Black quarterback Colin Kaepernick was almost certainly blacklisted from the NFL because of his political views about race. Proponents of colorblindness condemn this. The best players should be chosen despite their race or political views.
If blacks are more interested in football and basketball than hockey, then having few black NHL players is OK. If, however, the disparity exists because there are not enough youth leagues for black youngsters interested in the sport, that discrepancy needs to be addressed.
The woke definition of systemic racism centers on the perceived corruption of all institutions due to generational discrimination. The remedy is to include more women, people of color, gays and transgender people into every institution.
Let’s examine physics. For proponents of colorblindness, black astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is a success story. He has risen to the top of his field because of his abilities.
To many disciples of woke, this is not enough. Physics itself, many would argue, has been corrupted by discrimination throughout the centuries. Concepts such as getting answers right and relying on math and using scientific method are straight white male concepts. To rectify this, physics needs to include more members of historically marginalized groups who will introduce other ways of knowing.
Woke philosophy does not acknowledge that this would lead toward less qualified people entering the field of physics. They believe white straight male bias created the concept that people should be hired based on their abilities to get answers right and their excellence in math and scientific method. They see these basic tenets of physics as being the problem. Hence those who excel at them are not inherently more qualified.
Beyond the obvious problem of the United States quickly descending back into the Dark Ages if woke philosophy starts to dominate, I will return to handedness to describe the chaos that would still be ensuing had the woke approach been used.
If woke philosophy had been applied to handedness, we would be running about identifying each other as left handed or right handed, dwelling on stereotypes about lefties and righties, trying to make up for past discrimination by giving jobs to less qualified lefthanders, facing backlash from righthanders who believe they are victims of reverse discrimination. Lefthanders and righthanders would be tearing out each other’s throats battling for college admissions and jobs.
However, under colorblindness, major league executives are aware that Japanese baseball player Shohei Ohtani throws right handed and bats left handed. They are also aware that he is the best player in the league. Thus, the Los Angeles Dodgers are paying him more than $60 million a year.
Few Americans, I must believe, want either the white nationalism prevalent on the political right or woke being pushed by the left. They just want to get along while fully utilizing the skills and abilities of everyone instead of continuously ripping our nation apart over arguments about race, gender and sexual orientation. They want to strive toward colorblindness.
Good analysis and distilled in a way that everyone should be able to understand. Not sure how this [correct] description of color-blindness can be controversial unless you believe that all racial inequality is the result of ongoing, systemic racial discrimination. Subscribers of that CRT-based worldview seem to want to inject racial prioritization into policy decision-making - the opposite of color-blindness - based on the belief that it's the only way to alleviate racial disparities. This is the "equality of outcomes" approach that is very difficult to justify. It's the idea that past/current discrimination on the basis of racial requires "corrective discrimination" in order to right those wrongs. Sounds okay in theory but it's basically impossible to pull off without creating more costs than benefits. The tragedy in my opinion is that it's also largely a distraction from the underlying sources of racial inequality that we should be focusing on - poverty, education, healthcare access. In other words, we need to double down on achieving equality of opportunity in this country.