From an interview with the author of a memoir by a “mixed-race” author:
It ended as an argument against race, just all the way, saying that we’re not going to transcend racism so long as we believe that you are a different race than I am, which necessarily imposes and implies hierarchies. So, I don’t think you can transcend racism without transcending racial categorization, and the book became a kind of memoir making an argument.”
One of the many, many ways that I feel we’ve backslid in my lifetime is that, all across the political spectrum, we seem to have abandoned the “color-blind ideal” as a path to human solidarity. Left and right promote identitarianism for their own purposes, and the ideal is lost. It’s bad, and no good will come of it.
I know one answer is “Color-blind is the ideal, but to get there we first have to go in the opposite direction.” Believe that if you want, but please count me out.
I know it’s difficult, and countless forces work against it, but I continue to believe that the ideal is the only way.
I was reminded of this powerful Bob Marley song, whose lyrics are excerpts from a speech by the Emperor Haile Selassie.