The Tyranny of Obliviousness–My Latest Post on the FAR Website

The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Michigan voter-determined ban on Affirmative Action in college admissions decisions is just the latest example of how white obliviousness suppresses America’s collective capacity to heal from the wounds of racism.

This obliviousness (a dynamic well described in Mary McClintock Fulkerson’s Places of Redemption) often manifests itself with pronounced potency among those who understand themselves as the well-informed stewards of fairness in our society. The Court’s decision in the Michigan case is a bewildering example of the self-perpetuating nature of obliviousness. When the ethos of a society is fed regularly with the pabulum of color-blindness, and when the affliction of racism is addressed most prevalently with the placebo of fairness then the conditions are ripe for obliviousness around race to flourish. This obliviousness becomes tyrannous when it is backed up and propped up by the sources of power in our society sanctioned as arbiters of justice—justice that is sought after because it is color-blind and fair. I am dizzy from the circularity of it all. (read the rest of this post on the Feminism and Religion blog)