Read on Twitter
A thread on why I know the limits and potential dangers of colorblindness - because I committed my life to it until it could not help me answer basic questions about how to deal with racial inequalities that were literally killing back people.
I began thinking about this recently as the early data on covid vaccinations kept becoming clear. Even though black people are being disproportionately killed, they have been at the back of the line for vaccinations.
Because of that, I asked a few people on this site how to resolve that, given their push for a kind of colorblindness (my word, not necessarily theirs) including @kmele, @thomaschattwill and @Yascha_Mounk. I didn't hear from Thomas and Yascha blocked me. Kmele sent an answer.
I asked Thomas in large part because of a tweet he sent awhile back. https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1340642128972623874
I asked Yascha because of pieces like this: https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-im-losing-trust-in-the-institutions
I was recently on a panel with Kmele talking about race and sent him the question after his much-discussed appearance on Bill Maher, during which he again said factoring in race was immoral.
This was the answer he gave me, on his podcast. (He said he wasn't calling me a moron.) https://twitter.com/kmele/status/1354168934656667648
His answer doesn't hold up for a very specific reason: If you prioritize the elderly, you are unwittingly prioritizing white people - because the 65 and older crowd is much whiter than the rest of the population, which means you will be re-entrenching racial disparities.
That does not mean age should not be a primary factor. It clearly should. I try to explain what that means as far as race, being necessary but also a contributor to racial disparities in covid vaccination rates. https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/vaccine-race-age/
The problem isn't the focus on the elderly; it is ignoring the other groups who are also disproportionately affected, black and brown people. We have to deal with them both. If we don't, many of the most vulnerable will be left behind - which has begun happening.
In state after state and cities where racial statistics are available, it is clear black and brown people are being left behind - even though they are being harmed by covid at alarming rates.
https://twitter.com/uche_blackstock/status/1355477359953113095
https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1354487274738774018 https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1356209656608206849
https://twitter.com/uche_blackstock/status/1355477359953113095
https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1354487274738774018 https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1356209656608206849
But that's today. Let me go back several years ago when I went down the colorblind road myself. I'm a black dude in South Carolina, the heart of the Deep South. I became convinced the best way to deal with racism was to get rid of race. I fully committed myself to it.
I joined a mostly-white Evangelical church that was trying to diversify; spent 18 years there. I voted for black and white and brown candidates who were Democrats, Republicans and independents; I turned over one of my columns in a local paper to a Tea Party member.
I began writing pieces and holding seminars about how we should stop focusing on race, because race was causing racism. I stopped identifying myself and my kids as black on official documents.
I balked at joining groups like NABJ and the like, challenged area NAACP members to work more closely white white Republicans. I went all in.
The problem, though, was that anytime someone asked me what to do about the clear racial disparities in our local schools when it came to discipline or in our local jails and prisons, I had no real answer for them. How can you solve a problem without naming it clearly?
I could never explain how undoing the decades-long damage of racism, which has left gobs of racial disparities and inequalities in its wake, without mentioning or dealing with race. And I still can't. That's why I asked them the question about covid and black people.
Kmele acknowledges the racial disparities but keeps saying that race isn't genetic. Well, so what? Just because it's not genetic doesn't mean it isn't real nonetheless. What does a debate about the genetic basis of race have to do with dealing with the very real problem at hand?
Kmele, Thomas and others are very concerned that a focus on "racial justice" or "wokeness" might hurt elderly white people, leave them out to dry. I'm glad they are concerned about elderly white people; we all should be, given what covid does.
But the facts on the ground are by now extremely clear: The group being disproportionately harmed by covid AND being left behind by vaccination efforts aren't old white people - it's black and brown people. So the question remains: What should we do about that?
Should we keep doing what we are doing and not factor in race as some kind of purity test? Or should we acknowledge reality and deal with it head on? Race and racism are messy and complex. That's why academic arguments and debate clubs about them won't ever do.
Where is the concern for black people unnecessarily dying as they are being left behind in these vaccination efforts? Don't those lives matter, too? And if they do, what to do about it?
There is no clever turn of phrase that can solve that problem. It will take policy - policy that takes into account our racial reality, which includes the legacy of racism that's still with us and how it continues affecting just about everything, including vaccination efforts.
This is not a call to focus solely or even primarily on race. This is a call to focus on all relevant factors - including race. To do anything short of that is to doom an unnecessarily high number of black and brown people to the wrath of covid. There's nothing moral about that.
