Last February, my book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America was published. In it, I argued that color blindness—the principle that people should be treated without regard to their race—should guide American public policy. For this, I was called a “charlatan” by Sunny Hostin on The View.
I did not foresee that less than a year later Donald Trump would become president again, and that upon taking office, he would end decades of race-based presidential directives and with the stroke of his Sharpie adopt my call for racial color blindness. As Trump put it in his inauguration address: “We will forge a society that is color-blind and merit-based.”
Trump’s Executive Order 14171 is titled Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity. It describes how vast swaths of society, including the “Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI).”