“Why Can’t We All Just be Color-Blind”

The Colorful Mess Behind the Practice of Racial Color-blindness in the College Admissions Process

“Somebody's just assuming He's up to nothing good Cause he's not like the others There goes the neighborhood What kind of world are we living in When we judge a man by the tone of his skin Why can't we be color blind?” (Smith).

In this excerpt from his song entitled, “Color-Blind,” musical artist, Michael W. Smith, suggests a seemingly peaceful solution to racism: we should all just be color-blind. Smith’s lyrics propose that adopting this ideology will lead to a harmonious utopian society where the world is bereft of racism and we are all considered equal despite our physical differences. Racial color-blindness is defined as an ideology that encourages people to look past color and see others simply as people. Like Smith, some people view the adoption of this ideology as a sensible solution to settling tension in race relations. In an effort to eradicate racism, this phenomenon suggests that if the world could close its eyes to the disparities amongst the hues of each other’s skin, then we could all joyfully dance into the sunset together. As lovely as this quick fix to racism would be, it is nowhere near pragmatic. Race is woven into the very fabric of American history and culture. To ignore a person’s race would be to force the erasure of one of the most core aspects of their identity that molds the sculpture of their everyday lived experiences.

The act of deliberately practicing racial color-blindness in both the academic and professional realm has long been a controversial topic of debate. Specifically, in the world of academia, most colleges adhere to evaluating all potential students in a holistic manner during the college admissions process. Thus, the question is posed: would this concept of holism be compromised if evaluated through a racially color-blind lens? Will this practice work to increase diversity and improve race relations on campus or abate it? The ideology of racial color-blindness in the U.S. college admissions processes promotes a counterintuitive approach to the holistic acceptance process and suppresses critically important narratives of oneself. This is an imperative issue to my generation because its practice inevitably reverses efforts of racial inclusion, thus increasing racial tension in contemporary society.

It is first important to understand both the meaning behind, and the effect of, a holistic college admissions process. An article posted by ThoughtCo. discusses the process by which selective colleges choose their incoming admits. The article delineates the concept of holism and provides descriptions of what it actually entails, stating, “"holistic" can be defined as an emphasis on the whole person, not just select pieces that make up the whole person. Colleges with a holistic admissions policy are not simply looking for students with good grades. They want to admit interesting students who will contribute to the campus community in meaningful ways” (Grove). This excerpt addresses the idea that admission decisions rely heavily on the concept of holism through looking beyond a student’s extrinsic and statistical information and taking intrinsic factors into account as well. This is a practice of colleges across the nation because it is widely believed that GPA and SAT scores alone do not reveal the entire narrative of an applicant. In order to truly and accurately get to know an applicant, administrators must consider factors like social class, place of residence, extracurricular activities, etc. I would argue that one of the most important ingredients in this equation, the one that informs the aforementioned, is how all of these factors are translated through, and effected by, the applicant’s race. When we neglect to take race into account, we give way to the dismissal of race altogether, which can be dangerous for both minority and majority communities. Though some may argue that because race is a social construct and therefore not inherently real,there is no need to repeatedly introduce race into every space and discourse. However, I would argue that because race is a social construct, and therefore was borne of man-made ideologies, hierarchies, and social castes, race is now even more important than non-social constructs. It is people who create culture, enforce values, and single-handedly craft the zeitgeist of the time period. Therefore, culture is omnipresent and far from objective, leaving no room for escapism. Because America was explicitly and systemically built on the foundational stones of racial caste systems and crafted in the architecture of ethnic subjugation, colonialism, and disenfranchisement, to disassociate race from any contemporary discourse surrounding identity in America would be an egregious disservice to those whose ancestorial inheritance is stained with the damaging effects of this social construct. Without the context of race, stories are incomplete and unfinished. Therefore, how can an administrator select applicants that “contribute to the campus in meaningful ways” by solely evaluating partial information about them? This is inevitably contradictory to any academic adherence to, or application of, holism.

Racial color-blindness not only serves as a barrier to a holistic approach, but it also suppresses critically important narratives that are only visible through evaluating one’s race. For instance, lets evaluate two college applicants from the same city of Pasadena, who attend the same high school and are involved in similar extra-curricular activities. However, one is Black and the other is white. When their race is taken into consideration, they diverge into two distinct narratives. For instance, Pasadena is a city known for its melting pot qualities, but there is still a low percentage of African Americans that reside in this affluent area. As a minority in this city, the African American student can attest to what it’s like living in a predominantly Caucasian area as well as the struggles and benefits of this experience. Whereas, the Caucasian student can attest to what it’s like to look around and see faces similar to his/hers and discuss how this has both positively and negatively impacted their world view. Concealing their race is the equivalent of stating that the Black American experience is indistinguishable from that of the white American experience. An article posted on the Huffington Post entitled, “For White People Who Believe Color-blindness is Enough,” addresses the disparities in the social experiences amongst blacks and whites. The article states:

Inequality does not care whether or not you recognize it. It continues to bleed across the lives of people across America who wind up in prison for decades for selling marijuana to white college students or who are kept in cycles of abject poverty. More uncomfortably, it seeps into the lives of millionaire football players whose bodies we scrutinize for flaws before naming our price. (Lewis)

Our society is still recovering from the racial tragedies of the past. Thus, the prejudices and the hatred are still very much imprinted in our world no matter how hard we try to ignore them. Because of this, there are inevitably some situations that are distinctive to the minority experience and vice versa. To turn a blind eye to race is to deny the existence of these very prevalent inequalities mentioned in this article. Ergo, classifying all of the wrongful incarcerations, cultural exploitations, and unnecessary deaths catalyzed by racially motivated hate crimes, as pure farce. Such ignorance is sure to breed racial tensions, as it only serves to progress the erasure of the critically important narratives of those who are at the forefront of such prejudice.

In the world of academia, a student who has experienced social encounters like the aforementioned, is a vital aspect of cultivating a multifaceted culture on campus, making them an asset to the institution as a whole. Therefore, the recognition of every student’s ethnic background is necessary to the holistic and diversity-based admissions process. Both of the students mentioned in the hypothetical example can contribute a different perspective to a college environment because there is disparity in what they see through their own unique racial lens. Disregarding these students’ race is painting over their uniquely colored canvas’ with a grey paintbrush, eradicating any opportunity for the creation of a space for racial inclusion by lumping their distinct narratives into broad, nonspecific, categories. Race is the medium in which each individual retells their own individual story; without it, we’d all be repeating the same story, reading from the same book, and painting on the same monochromatic canvas. If colleges were to incorporate a racial color-blind ideology they would be ignoring the key ingredient that reveals the diversified narrative of oneself, while counteracting a holistic approach and actively participating in the erasure of each student’s personalized experiences.

While racial color-blindness unravels the threads of holism, it also plays a role in reversing efforts of racial inclusion. In a social experiment conducted and published on the Harvard Business Review, individuals of all races were asked to pair up and describe someone’s appearance to their partners. Researchers collected that most of the participants did not directly ask the race of the person being described, nor did the describer mention it. This caused the participants to alternatively use awkward and seemingly offensive descriptions. Based on these results the authors noted:

Our research, conducted with our colleague Sam Sommers, of Tufts University, shows that there are drawbacks to the color-blind approach. In a series of experiments, we found that when people avoided referring to race in situations that cried out for a mention of it, other people perceived them as more racially biased than if they’d brought the subject up (Harvard Business Review).

In this experiment, when the participants failed to describe the individual according to their race, they were forced to rely on offensive stereotypes and generalizations about their appearance, ultimately creating racial tension through insulting comments. As a society, we are conditioned to fear race because it is often equated to tension, thus we shy away from any discussion of it. However, it is not the recognition of race that causes tension but instead, it is the denial of its existence that creates a space for discomfort and division in the form of offensive insinuations. The acknowledgement of race and the various social encounters that intersect with it, would be an effort to move closer to racial inclusion and farther away from deliberate ignorance.

It may be argued that the implementation of racial color-blindness is inherently necessary to the college admissions process because it would ultimately eradicate the process of favoring one race at the expense of another, abolishing any opportunities for racial preferences. Likewise, The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article regarding the lawsuit against Harvard admissions, in which a Duke University economist, Peter S. Arcidiacono, accuses Harvard College’s admissions team of practicing racial preferences. He claims that based on his analysis, “Harvard College’s admissions process favors African-American, Latino, and Latina students at the expense of white and Asian-American applicants” (Gluckman). However, the article also presents Harvard College’s counter to Arcidiacono’s claim in which they stated that, “while they do consider race in their admissions process, it can only help an applicant” (Gluckman). According to Harvard College’s official undergraduate ethnic diversity breakdown, 6.7% of their students are African American, 10.8% are Latino, 17.1% of the students are Asian and 43.5% are Caucasian. Seeing that Caucasians and Asians are the majority on campus, it is hard to fathom the idea that the admission of minorities is “at the expense” of the two most dominant races on campus. In this situation, it is important to realize that the eradication of race in general is not the panacea to individual racial preferences and biases. The issue of an individual utilizing his/her racial preferences in the realm of academia is one that is subjective and difficult to solve. We all have our own biases and the explanation and evaluation of such preferences relies on a more self-reflective approach, thus having nothing to do with race at all. The implementation of racial color-blindness is not the solution to eradicating these biases within the college admissions process. Harvard claims that their consideration of race within the college admissions process is only utilized to “help” the applicant. This situation is an example of how race is often widely seen as a divisive tool when in reality, it is simply a magnifying glass, assisting in further evaluation. The practice of taking a student’s race into consideration during the admissions process is the only thing that will maintain not only diversity in terms of race, but also diversity in terms of thought, one of the most fundamental themes of the college atmosphere.

While the majority of colleges across the nation continue to take their applicants race into consideration in order to conduct a holistic admissions process, the controversy over the implementation of racial color-blindness still persists. Simply turning a blind eye to race will not prevent racial biases and/or preferences, nor will it instantly result in national racial inclusion. The only immediate effect that racial color-blindness has, is providing an excuse to ignore the racial tragedies of the past, present, and future. Just because we turn a blind eye to the racial horrors of this world, does not mean that they will magically disappear. This also does not entail that if we confront race head on that we will instantly change the world. The truth is, there is no instant fix to any of these problems; but there are gradual ones. Race recognition is not the panacea to all racial issues, but it is an advance in the right direction. Once we learn to embrace the colorful canvases of each other’s narratives reflected through our race, we will be one step closer to that harmonious utopian society that Smith poetically sang about.

Works Cited

Apfelbaum, Michael I. NortonEvan. “The Costs of Racial ‘Color Blindness.’” Harvard Business Review, 24 Mar. 2017, hbr.org/2013/07/the-costs-of-racial-color-blindness.

Gluckman, Nell. “The Lawsuit Against Harvard Admissions Turns Into a Courtroom Battle of Economists.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 26 Oct. 2018, www.chronicle.com/article/The-Lawsuit-Against-Harvard/244930.

Grove, Allen. “What Do Colleges Mean by Holistic Admissions, Anyway?” ThoughtCo, www.thoughtco.com/what-are-holistic-admissions-788426.

Lewis, Harry. “For White People Who Believe Colorblindness Is Enough.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11 July 2016, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/for-white-people-who-believe-colorblindness-is-enough_us_5782a4b0e4b0f06648f526a1.