Coleman Hughes defends the ideal of colorblindness, which he defines as “treat[ing] people without regard to race in our personal lives and in our public policy.” He calls for “policies aimed at reducing the gap between the haves and the have-nots [that] should be executed on the basis of class, not race.” First, class-based affirmative action, which punishes children for the success of their parents, is worse than the current system of explicitly anti-white, anti-Asian, and anti-male discrimination. A class-based affirmative action regime would not only discriminate against higher-performing racial groups. Within the white and Asian populations it would disproportionately target the most talented individuals, who are more likely to have high-SES parents. We need to end the war on nature, accept that talent is not distributed equally within or across groups, and allow people to succeed based on their merit. Second, the ideal of colorblindness is probably not tenable. Race provides important information about expected outcomes. That’s why AI ethicists find it so difficult to stop pattern-recognizing algorithms from becoming “racist.” People spontaneously organize themselves to some extent along racial lines, and groups can have conflicting interests. Racial realities will inform interpersonal behavior and public policy.
