# Let's segregate the races - new liberal solution **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 25, 2015, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798 "2015-05-25T15:21:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/21 "2015-05-25T19:56:32Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Casting colorblindness as the ultimate solution to White Supremacy misses the point entirely. The problem of American White Supremacy was not a lack of colorblindness. The problem was the creation of a racial category by one group of people for the purpose of subjugating that race, followed by centuries of successful plunder. Calling that problem a lack of colorblindness is like calling the Salem Witch Trials a problem of lack of due process. > > And this error in understanding the nature of White Supremacy is not an accident. Colorblindness is a very useful kind of blindness. It makes it possible to use anti-racism rhetoric to attack both deliberate black mistreatment and deliberate black empowerment equally. > > Actual racial justice requires more than colorblind laws instituted after centuries of plunder and mistreatment. It requires that a black daughter be no more negatively affected by that White Supremacy than a white daughter. And to get to \*that \*side of the mountain, you have to do more than just declare that our policy is to be colorblind going forward, as if the country could be created anew tomorrow independently from its history. Fixing the consequences of that history is almost certainly going to require some race-conscious efforts. Maybe these particular race-conscious efforts aren’t where its at. But those who do care about racial justice need to be prepared to assess such efforts on a case-by-case basis, and not reject them just because they try to fix racial problems in a race-conscious way. Thank you, **Richard Parker**. Responding to an ill-considered and small-minded OP you produced an eloquent demonstration of reason. And kudos to OP for asking the question. Got any more, **Terr**? ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/22 "2015-05-25T19:57:28Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Casting colorblindness as the ultimate solution to White Supremacy misses the point entirely. The problem of American White Supremacy was not a lack of colorblindness. The problem was the creation of a racial category by one group of people for the purpose of subjugating that race, followed by centuries of successful plunder. Calling that problem a lack of colorblindness is like calling the Salem Witch Trials a problem of lack of due process. That’s seriously twisted logic. If there was colorblindness, “American White Supremacy” could not have existed. Can you actually disagree with that? ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/23 "2015-05-25T20:17:27Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Based on race? Correct. No such thing as racial affinity groups, full stop. OK. Why, in your view, is it perfectly all right to have affinity groups for people who self-identify as coming from divorced families, for siblings, girls and religious beliefs, but not for, say, families of African, Asian or Indian heritage? What is the specific risk you see here? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/24 "2015-05-25T20:20:01Z")
Thanks **septimus**. > [@Terr](#): > > If there was colorblindness, “American White Supremacy” could not have existed. Can you actually disagree with that? Much of White Supremacy would not have existed but-for explicitly race-based government policies. That’s true. But not the point. The point(s): (1) Whether colorblindness would have prevented White Supremacy is irrelevant to whether colorblindness is an appropriate solution after centuries of non-colorblindness. (2) It’s a bowdlerized description of the problem, which was less the fact of color vision, and more the decision to create, subjugate, and plunder one of those colors. (3) Even if it were a noble goal, it’s a complete fantasy for 2015. Colorblindness is to racial justice as abstinence is to sexual health. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/25 "2015-05-25T20:24:33Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > OK. Why, in your view, is it perfectly all right to have affinity groups for people who self-identify as coming from divorced families, for siblings, girls and religious beliefs, but not for, say, families of African, Asian or Indian heritage? What is the specific risk you see here? “Heritage” in the sense of culture is one thing. “Heritage” in the sense of race is another. And in either case, those “affinity groups” should not be formed or promoted by the school. They would naturally form, if they would form at all. The “specific risk” is unless you ban racial discrimination in any form, you will always have racial discrimination. If the ideal is to have colorblind society, racial discrimination is definitely not the way to achieve it. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/26 "2015-05-25T20:26:26Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > (3) Even if it were a noble goal, it’s a complete fantasy for 2015. Colorblindness is to racial justice as abstinence is to sexual health. “Racial discrimination to achieve racial justice” is like “f\*cking for virginity”. If we’re doing slogans. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/27 "2015-05-25T20:29:44Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > “Racial discrimination to achieve racial justice” is like “f\*cking for virginity”. If we’re doing slogans. I posted about eight paragraphs of argument. If you’re interested in reasoned discussion on the topic, you could respond to some of it instead of reducing it to a metaphor. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/28 "2015-05-25T20:32:01Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > As for the OP, I’m not seeing a slippery slope here. I’m seeing a few misguided school administrators embarking on isolated incidents. As you can see from my other cites and from some responses here, those are not “isolated incidents”. Seems to be a general direction in liberal thinking. Racial discrimination as a method to alleviate racial discrimination seems to be the principle to which liberals have turned. And some seem to fully and unabashedly support such racial discrimination. I don’t really see any daylight between the gist of **Chief Pedant** ’s posts and **Richard Parker** ’s. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/29 "2015-05-25T20:35:02Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Casting colorblindness as the ultimate solution to White Supremacy misses the point entirely. The problem of American White Supremacy was not a lack of colorblindness. The problem was the creation of a racial category by one group of people for the purpose of subjugating that race, followed by centuries of successful plunder. Calling that problem a lack of colorblindness is like calling the Salem Witch Trials a problem of lack of due process. > > And this error in understanding the nature of White Supremacy is not an accident. Colorblindness is a very useful kind of blindness. It makes it possible to use anti-racism rhetoric to attack both deliberate black mistreatment and deliberate black empowerment equally. > > Actual racial justice requires more than colorblind laws instituted after centuries of plunder and mistreatment. It requires that a black daughter be no more negatively affected by that White Supremacy than a white daughter. And to get to \*that \*side of the mountain, you have to do more than just declare that our policy is to be colorblind going forward, as if the country could be created anew tomorrow independently from its history. Fixing the consequences of that history is almost certainly going to require some race-conscious efforts. Maybe these particular race-conscious efforts aren’t where its at. But those who do care about racial justice need to be prepared to assess such efforts on a case-by-case basis, and not reject them just because they try to fix racial problems in a race-conscious way. But what about these specific policies? It’s all good and well to have that high level discussion, but the issue in this thread, as I see it, is whether or not schools should be encouraging these affinity groups in the ways outlined in the examples in the OP. Should a school have a “black kids field trip” separate and apart from a “white kids field trip”? I’m at a loss to see how that helps things. And if we’re talking about public schools, wouldn’t such actions be unconstitutional? I can see where there is some value in forming these affinity groups within the private community, but not in schools. Once the kid is in his or her classroom, we should act under a doctrine of colorblindness. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/30 "2015-05-25T20:38:59Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Seems to be a general direction in liberal thinking. Race-conscious policies have been advocated by liberals for decades. Your colorblindness argument against it has also been asserted by conservatives for decades. You would think that after having been so deeply wrong on issues of race for so long, conservatives might have a little humility on the topic. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/31 "2015-05-25T20:39:46Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > I posted about eight paragraphs of argument. If you’re interested in reasoned discussion on the topic, you could respond to some of it instead of reducing it to a metaphor. We disagree on the axioms. I said: “If there was colorblindness, “American White Supremacy” could not have existed.” You respond: “much of White Supremacy would not have existed but-for explicitly race-based government policies. That’s true. But not the point.” No, the point is that if there was, in fact, colorblindness, there could not have been any race-based government policies OR race-based non-government anything. That’s what colorblindness means. Race is not taken into account. Period. You don’t seem to understand that. For the first 16 years of my life I lived in the atmosphere of fairly extreme prejudice against my ethnicity. Both government-based and people-based. I would have loved to have non-discrimination and I would have hated to have actual reverse-discrimination, I just wanted equal treatment, where no one would care what ethnicity I was and where nothing in the school or in the society would be different depending on what ethnicity I belonged to. I thought I would get closer to that ideal by moving to the US. Not fully, but closer. And now I see the liberals trying their hardest (for whatever well-intentioned stupidity) to move farther away from it. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/32 "2015-05-25T20:46:33Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Should a school have a “black kids field trip” separate and apart from a “white kids field trip”? I’m at a loss to see how that helps things. And if we’re talking about public schools, wouldn’t such actions be unconstitutional? Don’t you think it’s a problem to reject the value of these programs without knowing why a school would want to have a black kids field trip or form an affinity group, **John Mace**? That’s my whole point. You can’t just reject these things on their face because they are race-conscious. In order to evaluate any given policy, you need to know more than what you know about the policy and its goals and how it is carried out. I know a little, but not much, about the problems of racism in elementary and secondary school education. I know of a few different problems that affinity groups and the like might be trying to solve, but I would need to learn more before judging any particular program. ---
**Author:** ![robertliguori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/33 "2015-05-25T20:46:56Z")
Huh, this is great. I’m Jewish, you see, and so I’m glad to hear that I can expect loads of positive discrimination to counteract the centuries of persecution, exclusion, pogroms, being forced to live in ghettos, etc. Where’s our plunder recompense? Where’s our preferential admissions recognizing that we’d be doing so much better as a group if not for our oppression? Look, as much as people want to draw a bright clear line between being an oppressed minority and having negative outcomes with regards to income, education, and so forth, history does not bear this out. Either you need to redefine oppression so only your specially chosen victim groups have it, or you need to recognize that there’s no direct ordering between how oppressed your racial group was 50 or 100 years ago and how well-off it is now. I’m kind of with **Terr** here. We’ve got one side saying “Look, let’s stop racially discriminating and then things will fall out, because people are generally equal.”, and other people saying “No, these groups are scarred forever by their oppression (even though other groups who suffered similarly aren’t)! They will forever be relegated to underclass status due to their inherent properties unless we cheat in their favor!” And if colorblindness is a fantasy in 2015…huh. Well, let’s do triage. Greatest good for the greatest number and all. If we can’t not have racist policies, why do we want racial justice again? Why don’t we just pick groups that most people suck and treat them as a formal despised underclass? This is been an extremely successful strategy throughout history; if we’re allowing tactical racism for the greater good, why not examine pilot programs to see if we really want racial justice at all? I mean, as long as we’re determining that racism is inevitable and all. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/34 "2015-05-25T20:52:13Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > You don’t seem to understand that. Different people use the term differently. Some use it to refer only to government policies. In any event, that difference in definition has no relevance at all to the three objections I summarized for you. > [@Terr](#): > > I just wanted equal treatment, where no one would care what ethnicity I was and where nothing in the school or in the society would be different depending on what ethnicity I belonged to. Ok. So, in America, one of the consequences of centuries of plunder is wildly disparate wealth across the races. Black and white families \*with identical household incomes \*have vastly different wealth, for a whole range of reasons ranging from inheritance to housing discrimination. And wealth affects everything. If you want “nothing in the school or in the society would be different depending on what ethnicity I belonged to,” you can’t achieve that with colorblindness alone. You have to do something to fix the problem that non-colorblindness created. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/35 "2015-05-25T20:57:19Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Ok. So, in America, one of the consequences of centuries of plunder is wildly disparate wealth across the races. Black and white families \*with identical household incomes \*have vastly different wealth, for a whole range of reasons ranging from inheritance to housing discrimination. And wealth affects everything. It does? Cool. Do you know how much wealth Sergei Brin’s family had when they came to the US? I can tell you (since I was in the same immigration wave). They were allowed to take a couple of suitcases and $100 per person out of Russia. Did that “affect everything”? And if you think that Brin’s success was a wild outlier - well, definitely in the “100s of $Billions” terms it is. But in terms of “becoming middle class and higher” - I personally know hundreds of people from that immigration wave and I don’t know one who didn’t achieve it. Did “wealth affect everything”? > [@](#): > > If you want “nothing in the school or in the society would be different depending on what ethnicity I belonged to,” you can’t achieve that with colorblindness alone. Not only can you, but that’s the ONLY way you can. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/36 "2015-05-25T21:06:14Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Don’t you think it’s a problem to reject the value of these programs without knowing why a school would want to have a black kids field trip or form an affinity group, **John Mace**? > > That’s my whole point. You can’t just reject these things on their face because they are race-conscious. In order to evaluate any given policy, you need to know more than what you know about the policy and its goals and how it is carried out. > > I know a little, but not much, about the problems of racism in elementary and secondary school education. I know of a few different problems that affinity groups and the like might be trying to solve, but I would need to learn more before judging any particular program. Would the race-based field trips not be unconstitutional if done in public schools? If that is a good thing (and I think it is), then it’s not a good thing in a private school either. The field trips might be great, but they should not be run by schools. Students should not be treated differently, by race, in school. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/37 "2015-05-25T21:50:31Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > And if you think that Brin’s success was a wild outlier - well, definitely in the “100s of $Billions” terms it is. But in terms of “becoming middle class and higher” - I personally know hundreds of people from that immigration wave and I don’t know one who didn’t achieve it. Did “wealth affect everything”? So, in your view, why don’t black families pull themselves up by their own bootstraps like 100% of hundreds of immigrants you know? > [@John\_Mace](#): > > Would the race-based field trips not be unconstitutional if done in public schools? If that is a good thing (and I think it is), then it’s not a good thing in a private school either. > > The field trips might be great, but they should not be run by schools. Students should not be treated differently, by race, in school. Whether they are unconstitutional or not is very much in active debate. Indeed, that controversy over whether and when benevolent race-conscious programs are constitutional is what has generated this whole rhetoric of “colorblindness.” It is worth noting that the status quo is that students aren’t treated equally by race in school. There are hugely racially disparate rates of, for example, school discipline (starting in kindergarten!)–which is the principal component of school dropout rates in many places. The question is whether race-conscious policies can help get us to a place where schools (and all the other institutions in society) treat kids of different races the same. **Terr** says that’s impossible. The mainstream of the modern civil rights movement disagrees. \*\*Terr \*\*will probably have the chance to test his version first, given the politics and racial resentments engendered by discussions of policies designed to help one race or another. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/38 "2015-05-25T22:45:29Z")
“So, Doctor, how about this? Chemotherapy sucks, and I don’t want to do it, but how about I do about half the course of chemo and then we take the “cancer free” approach to my treatment?” “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a prescription for stupid…” ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/39 "2015-05-25T22:52:15Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > So, in your view, why don’t black families pull themselves up by their own bootstraps like 100% of hundreds of immigrants you know? The culture of victimhood, instilled in them by people like you. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2015, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798/40 "2015-05-25T22:52:25Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > “So, Doctor, how about this? Chemotherapy sucks, and I don’t want to do it, but how about I do about half the course of chemo and then we take the “cancer free” approach to my treatment?” > > “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a prescription for stupid…” And people complain that _my_ posts have too\_many/too\_few emoticons. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-segregate-the-races-new-liberal-solution/720798.md?page=3)