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By Root 768 0

Stephen quotes “noted beagle-abuser Lyndon Johnson” who likened the situation to a footrace between two runners, one whose legs have been shackled together before the race starts. If, after the unshackled runner had run fifty yards in the time it took the shackled runner to run ten, we were to try and make the race fair, Johnson asks, “Would it not the better part of justice to allow the previously shackled runner to make up for the forty-yard gap, or to start the race all over again?”183 According to Johnson, King’s colorblind society cannot be achieved until all races are on equal footing. This is true even if in making our way to a colorblind society we have to legally formalize policies which are, we might say, color-sensitive (that is, the opposite of colorblind).

Another contingent believes that supporters of race-based social equity programs, such as Affirmative Action, are advocating precisely that which King was against: using race to make decisions where race should play no role. Even if it were the case that promoting the interests of African-Americans would benefit society as a whole, they think that we must not succumb to the tendency to judge based on race lest we fail to be colorblind. Just as two wrongs don’t make a right, so failing to be colorblind cannot promote colorblindness in the future. Rather, it can only reinforce precisely that which King was against.

Now where does Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A., intellectual giant that he is, come down on the issue of Affirmative Action? He seems to be a critic of Affirmative Action programs, but his reasons are, for lack of a better term, kind of dumb. In the chapter on race in his book, Stephen worries that Affirmative Action encourages reverse discrimination, “so-called because it goes in the opposite way of how we naturally discriminate” (I Am America, p. 174). We can’t have that, right? But he also tries to reduce Affirmative Action policies to absurdity by drawing them to what he thinks is their logical conclusion. “Should Chinese guys,” he asks, “get a shot at my wife just because the conditions on the Transcontinental Railroad weren’t ideal?” Stephen’s point seems to be that social equity programs can easily balloon if we try to reimburse everyone for the wrongs done to their race in the past. It’s better to put a stop to the whole idea now lest we find ourselves on a rather slippery slope.

In the end, though, I think Stephen’s views on this point are not all that principled. Stephen would most likely either take the party line on this issue or let the free market decide, as he’s done with global warming ever since Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Either way, I don’t think we can expect Stephen to have a very deep opinion on the complexities of the issues raised by Affirmative Action. Race is a complex issue that Stephen’s black and white thinking is not well suited to.

In fact, this lack of reflection on Stephen’s part of the complexities of being colorblind (in the real world, as it were) might explain why his colorblindness is so absurd. He is so out of touch with the meaning of King’s words that he takes them to mean that one must be blind to race in some crazy literal sense. Only Stephen could engage in the high level of self-deception that would be required to not know what race one is in our contemporary society. The deeper point, though, is that no matter how absurd his version of colorblindness is, Stephen is colorblind not because he understands the in-and-outs of the issues involved, but because that’s what one should do in this time of sloganeering and political correctness.

Some of My Best Friends Are Black

Why does Stephen want a black friend? Perhaps we should ask: Why not? As Aristotle said, “The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.” No doubt a guy like Stephen could use all the friends he can get. Perhaps Stephen wants a black friend for the same reason that any of us wants any friend: just because it’s nice to have friends.

Well, now I’m just playing coy with you. One thing Stephen is most certainly