Information about Race Blind

Race-blind (sometimes called Color-blind in a pun with color blindness) is a term describing activities undertaken and services provided without regard to the racial characteristics of those who participate in an activity or receive a service.

In race-blind operations, there is no use of racial data. An example of this would be a college processing admissions without regard to or knowledge of the racial characteristics of applicants [1]. Various approaches have been tried to remove any impact of race, for example one based on lottery drawing to determine school allocations.

This equal opportunity approach contrasts with positive discrimination or affirmative action that would actively attempt to favour those people considered to have been disadavantaged by historical racial prejudice, or whose racial group might otherwise be considered under-represented, for example in a university [2].

Mandatory affirmative action in race-blind operations has been criticised as symptomatic of a fundamentally racist society^[1] For example, in her book Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America Stephanie M. Wildman writes that many Americans who advocate a merit-based, race-free worldview do not acknowledge the systems of privilege which benefit them. For example, many Americans rely on a social and sometimes even financial inheritance from previous generations. This inheritance, unlikely to be forthcoming if one's ancestors were slaves, privileges whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality.^[2] There is a variety of opinions about whether or not such criticism is justified.

Notable Supporters of Race-Blindness

Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute, has promoted and won a series of ballot initiatives in the states of California (California Proposition 209 (1996)), Washington (1998 - I-200), and Michigan (the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative - MCRI, or Proposal 2, 2006). California's initiative was co-authored by academics Tom Wood and Glynn Custred in the mid-1990s and was taken up by Connerly after he was appointed in 1994 by Governor Pete Wilson to the University of California Board of Regents. Each of the ballot initiatives have won, and Connerly plans what he calls a "Super-Tuesday" of five additional states in 2008.

Professor Carl Cohen of the University of Michigan, who was a supporter of Michigan's Proposal 2, have argued that the term "affirmative action" should be defined differently than "race preference," and that while socio-economically based or anti-discrimination types of affirmative action are permissible, those that give preference to individuals solely based on their race or gender should not be permitted. Cohen also helped find evidence in 1996 through the Freedom of Information Act that lead to the cases filed by Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter against the the University of Michigan for its undergraduate and law admissions policy - cases which were decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 23, 2003.

Some national bloggers and internet resources who favor the "equal opportunity" approach over "positive discrimination" include John Rosenberg's Discriminations, Tim Fay's Adversity.net, and Chetly Zarko's Power, Politics, & Money.

Actor-producer-director Kenneth Branagh frequently uses race-blind casting in his Shakespearean films, something rarely or never attempted previously. In Much Ado About Nothing, he cast Denzel Washington as Don Pedro; in his four-hour Hamlet, Francisco, one of the sentries in the first scene, was played by an African-American; and in his As You Like It, David Oyelowo portrays Orlando. There are also several Japanese actors in this film. All of these characters are usually played by white actors.

References

See also

• Gender-blind
• Constitutional colorblindness

External links

• A Look at Color-Blindness