Racial Discrimination in Color-Blind Policies: A Discussion Essay          

Color-Blind Policies

Color blindness conveys a dislike for racial attitudes and practices prevalent in the earlier era. In that sense, color-blind Constitutionalism is perceived to be a wholly suitable strategy for attaining the equal rights of those who have been subjugated but an inadequate guide to undoing the societal detriments that racism has produced. Nevertheless, the whites benefit from color-blind policies through their vested commitment to creatively defending and maintaining the ideologies that buttress white supremacy and racial domination.

Despite using the same context of Constitutional color blindness, Supreme Court justices have made very different verdicts on racial preferences. Arguably, this has been possible due to the changing faces of the whites who seem to benefit most from racial preferences. From the end of the Civil War to the dawn of the 21^st Century, as the country underwent a civil-rights transformation, color-blind Constitutionalism changed from logic advanced by racial progressives to an argument advocated for by racial conservatives (Johnson, 2019). In this way, what was formerly a legal context for justifying the rights and extension of citizenship to oppressed black Americans is currently an argument for the unconstitutionality of any measure aimed at addressing the harms resulting from a state-sanctioned denial of those civil liberties. Thus, in its application, color-blind implies safeguarding white Americans from the prejudice that some conservatives discern results from efforts to remediate historical injustices.

Racial Discrimination

At the same time, blacks and other racial minorities are missing the advantages of color-blind policies. The Constitution, at its inception, was construed as reasonably color conscious. However, until the implementation of the Fifteenth Amendment, almost a century after its creation, it did not mention race. Thus, it is evident that the framers of the Constitution drafted the three-fifths compromise as an approach to delineate Native Americans and black Americans from the rest of the citizenry (Johnson, 2019). The remedy for this involved Congress passing housing rights, voting rights, and civil rights legislation outlawed racial discrimination. The Court also continued prohibiting racial discrimination in interracial marriages, electoral disenfranchisement, and public transportation. Nonetheless, some white citizens led a backlash to these massive societal shifts. In brief, they resented efforts at leveling the playing field through disparate-impact standards, affirmative action, racial quotas, and busing policies.

Conclusion

In brief, it is the whites who benefit from color-blind policies. The groups that once made a color-conscious argument in the backing of racial discrimination started applying the color-blind Constitutionalism principles to argue that racially progressive policies were segregating against white Americans. The case herein is that the measures infringed on their liberties apart from discriminating against white citizens.

References

Johnson, T. R. (2019, November 19). How conservatives turned the ‘color-blind constitution’ against racial progress. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/colorblind-constitution/602221/.