The Problem with So-Called “Antiracism”

<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW66335942 BCX4"> <p><a href= "https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/anti-racist-color-blindness-dei-programs/674996/"> <span data-contrast="none">In a recent piece in</span> <em><span data-contrast="none">The Atlantic</span></em></a><span data-contrast="none">, Tyler Austin Harper, a black professor from Bates College, argued that so-called “anti-racism” has gone too far. </span><span data-ccp-props= "{"201341983":0,"335559731":720,"335559739":0,"335559740":480}"> </span></p> <p><span data-contrast="none">"In their righteous crusade against the bad color-blindness of policies such as race-neutral college admissions, these contemporary anti-racists have also jettisoned the kind of</span> <span data-contrast="none">good</span> <span data-contrast="none">color-blindness that holds that we are more than our race, and that we should conduct our social life according to that idealized principle. Rather than balance a critique of color-blind law and policy with a continuing embrace of interpersonal color-blindness as a social etiquette, contemporary anti-racists throw the baby out with the bathwater</span><span data-contrast="none">."</span> <span data-ccp-props= "{"201341983":0,"335559685":720,"335559739":0,"335559740":480}">  </span></p> <p><span data-contrast="none">The term “anti-racist” came from a recent explosion of writing such as Robin DiAngelo’s</span> <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-sociologist-examines-the-white-fragility-that-prevents-white-americans-from-confronting-racism"> <em><span data-contrast="none">White Fragility</span></em></a> <span data-contrast="none">and Ibram X. Kendi’s</span> <a href= "https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist"><em><span data-contrast="none"> How to Be an Antiracist</span></em></a><span data-contrast="none">, and it carries enormous ideological implications. According to</span> <a href= "https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist"><span data-contrast="none"> Kendi,</span></a> <span data-c