They turn history ‘on its head and say whites have been the victim all these years’
The concept of “colorblindness” is anathema to contemporary progressives — they claim that by not seeing race, one cannot see (and thus, combat) racism.
The new head coach of the New England Patriots sees people’s race; he told the media just this at his introductory press conference last week, directly contradicting team owner Robert Kraft.
Progressives especially despise minorities who believe in colorblindness; several academics recently worried in Salon.com that the colorblindness (or “race-blindness”) of GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley and former candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is furthering … white supremacy.
The University of Michigan’s Vincent Hutchings noted that U.S. politics has been “racially based” for years, with Republicans “sweeping” the white vote and Democrats getting most of the minority vote. This means candidates like Haley and Ramaswamy have to be colorblind as most white voters prefer this philosophy.
Even Barack Obama had to “reassure” white voters he wasn’t “the president of Black America,” Hutchings said. (It’s certainly highly debatable, however, that Obama took a colorblind approach to governing.)
MORE: Is colorblindness really a bad philosophy?
For Drew University’s Sangay Mishra (pictured), it can’t be that Haley, Ramaswamy and other minority Republicans actually believe in colorblindness, but “how close [they can] take themselves to the idea of racial anxiety that [white conservative voters] are experiencing.”
Haley and Ramaswamy “want to appear as somebody who is willing to be in defense of white dominance or white supremacy [and] to communicate that they are not too far from where Trump is in terms of invoking white racial anxiety and white racial resentment,” Mishra said.
Mishra, whose specialties include “immigrant political incorporation, transnationalism, and racial and ethnic politics,” added that Haley noting how she and her parents overcame “racism and xenophobia” allows Republicans to believe their party is not racist.
The University of California, Irvine’s Claire Jean Kim agreed with this take, saying Haley and Ramaswamy “advanc[e] a white supremacist worldview.”
But Kim went further, claiming the candidates “literally take historical political reality and invert it. They turn it on its head and say whites have been the victim all these years of other groups trying to take things from them.”
Kim, who researches “comparative race studies, Asian American politics, Black politics, and human-animal studies,” added that both candidates are complicit in an alleged “century-long tradition” of politicians using Asian-Americans as a “front” to further white supremacy.
Hutchings, a professor of “diversity and social transformation,” accused Haley of “playing the appropriate racial game” (embracing colorblindness) which ends of supporting the “racial status quo.”
MORE: Historian: GOP Indian candidates use racist ‘dog whistles’
IMAGES: Shutterstock.com; Sangay Mishra/X
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
Please join the conversation about our stories on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, MeWe, Rumble, Gab, Minds and Gettr.