Colorblind Ideology is a Form of Racism

[struggle4progress]

19. (1) All popular notions of race are vacuous from a scientific PoV; (2) these notions have arisen

in various contexts, usually because somebody wanted to exploit somebody else and needed some justification, such as

they are ignorant and primitive heathen savages, so we are bringing them the blessings of civilization by taking their land

or

they are inferior and fit only to be slaves, so it is our duty to bring them the blessings of civilization by enslaving them;

(3) cultural notions almost always reflect the practices and mythologies of an earlier time, and these inevitably reproduce themselves if we adopt them without critical reflection about the histories that created them, including self-justifications people invented for their behavior in their times

The task for progressives is to abolish all the mythologies involved in racial thinking without forgetting the actual histories associated with such thinking: there is no such thing as race, but there certainly is such a thing as racism, and the major use of racist thinking has been to justify certain forms of exploitation and oppression, the effects of which have not vanished -- and will not quickly vanish unless we have taken appropriate material steps to eliminate those effects, something that requires much more than simple attitude changes