Colorblind equal treatment perpetuates rather than ends racial hierarchy

Evidence

Blackmun gave America a timeless lesson: “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently. We cannot—we dare not—let the Fourteenth Amendment perpetuate racial supremacy.” … Supporters of affirmative action were “hard-core racists of reverse discrimination,” argued Yale law professor and former solicitor general Robert Bork. … Four years after Regents v. Bakke, White students were two and a half times more likely than Black students to enroll in highly selective colleges and universities. By 2004, that racial disparity had doubled. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1072

Categorization

• XREF: The Bork invocation of the Fourteenth Amendment against affirmative action maps directly onto Kendi’s core inversion: colorblind ideology (assimilationist/conservative) is produced to justify status-quo policy. Connects to the reader’s stated purpose of placing arguments into the segregationist/assimilationist/antiracist scheme. — connects to: Formal colorblindness preserves racial inequality in privatized, unnamed form. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 129; Official colorblindness lets familiar-partner privilege continue unchecked as exclusion — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1621; Colorblind mestizaje narratives re-suppress already marginalized racial subjects — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1840 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: The data jump from 2.5x disparity in 1982 to doubled by 2004 — worth chasing the exact source/citation for this enrollment ratio in selective colleges.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the reader’s broader project of testing whether ideas precede policy: here policy (Bakke upholding white access) precedes and generates the ‘reverse discrimination’ rhetoric, not the other way around.