The first problem with racialists is that their conclusions are factually untrue. Most people don’t make their decisions based on race unconsciously or otherwise. Most opposition to President Obama isn’t due to racism as they claim, nor was Hurricane Katrina large scale “ethnic cleansing”, as Tim Wise has written. Disparities among racial groups in education, housing, wealth, employment, health, and the justice system largely can’t be explained by discrimination and racism (all of this will be argued for in great detail).
But this isn’t simply a fact checking mission, racialists do great damage by their false interpretations and the policies they wish to institute because of those interpretations. We are at a point in time where we need to do exactly what the “race-blind” people silently accomplish which is to reduce the significance of skin color. Racialists do great damage to racial harmony causing many whites to be legitimately defensive and many minorities to falsely feel assaulted. The examples of whites who are racist and the minorities who are truly assaulted seem less significant in the storm of false accusations. The “anti-racists” think that people who have a problem with their perspective are to some degree pro-racists, or pro-oppression. This self-righteous view that anyone who disputes their claims is by definition pro-racist, along with their tendency to view whites as “oppressors”, causes them to be subject to bigoted views themselves. Viewing whites as systemically damaging to society, is just as bigoted as a racist thinking “people of color” are damaging to society.
They will never reach their goal of racial equality because their very purpose in life is to constantly find racial inequality, whether it is real or not. They have drifted very far from an “honest conversation of race.” Their method, even if it was based on truth, is ineffective; the cases of minorities reaching achievement levels of whites or above was not largely done by nationwide observance of their alleged disadvantage. The fact of the matter is that skin color is an arbitrary distinction among humans, and racialist do more in society than anyone else, including racists, to perpetuate this superficial view of people.
As mentioned earlier, a lot of people see being “race-blind” as an admirable goal. The way to make race less of a determining factor in how people treat each other is to minimize its role in society. Someone who is truly race-blind is hardly a danger to society. And typically, whites who have been converted to racialism only become more clumsy around “people of color” because race is constantly on their mind. Even though those who try to be race-blind are generally harmless, they represent the opposite approach as the racialists, and are therefore a priority for them. Because of this, their strategy is less to convince people that racism is bad and more to convince people that they are racist, which turns a lot of people off to any conversation about race. This is clearly dangerous and a step backwards, for example the Washington Post reported that most “diversity training” is ineffective and even counterproductive:
A comprehensive review of 31 years of data from 830 mid-size to large U.S. workplaces found that the kind of diversity training exercises offered at most firms were followed by a 7.5 percent drop in the number of women in management. The number of black, female managers fell by 10 percent, and the number of black men in top positions fell by 12 percent. Similar effects were seen for Latinos and Asians.
The study goes on to say that mandatory programs that are forced on individuals are useless and harmful. This is reinforced by common sense. When decent people are told to start treating people of another skin color differently, then they will either artificially comply or defensively reject such a notion, both of which can be harmful. Professional racialist aren’t just wrong in formulating premises, interpreting facts, and making conclusions, they are a step backwards in terms of race relations.
