Jamelle Bouie
From a first glance, you might be inclined to say Mr. Bouie has a point. But upon further inspection, it would appear that his objection is rooted in wanting to perpetuate the myth he began with, which would be the claim that racism is defined as white supremacy.
Then there’s this little gem:
And the magic of white supremacy is that its presence is obscured by the focus on race.
What? The only thing to say about this sentence is that it is a massive contradiction that can only be classified as abject stupidity masquerading as profundity.
Millennials have grown up in a world where we talk about race without racism—or don’t talk about it at all—and where “skin color” is the explanation for racial inequality, as if ghettos are ghettos because they are black, and not because they were created. As such, their views on racism—where you fight bias by denying it matters to outcomes—are muddled and confused.
Talk about race without racism? What backwards delusional fantasyland is Mr. Bouie living in where we talk about race without racism? What color is the sky in this Bizarro world? Racism is all we talk about in this country.
You can’t turn around without listening to someone whine about racism. The idea that we talk about race without racism is manifestly absurd. The fact that this article and others like it get so much attention is proof that Mr. Bouie’s claim is preposterous.
And then there’s his claim that the Millenial response to bias is denying it matters. This is not what colorblind means. Aspiring to a colorblind society does not mean denying racial bias matters—it means denying that race matters when you interact with other people. This is what treating everyone equally means, sir.
Which gets to the irony of this survey: A generation that hates racism but chooses colorblindness is a generation that, through its neglect, comes to perpetuate it.
Another abjectly stupid claim. Choosing colorblindness means showing the world that you hate racism, something the Millenial generation should be applauded for to the extent that they practice colorblindness in real life.
It appears that Mr. Bouie’s solution to racism is to continually focus on it like it’s the only thing that matters. I will take a different path, which derives from a Robert Frost poem, which incidentally was the topic of the morning sermon today (since I am writing this on Sunday):
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
