The dream of a colorblind society is one that has fascinated many Americans for some time. The recent battle over affirmative action has brought the issue to the fore once more. Proponents of affirmative action point out that America is not a colorblind society and is not likely to be and that reparations for past injustice and current disparities have to be made. Opponents of affirmative action sometimes state that a colorblind society is possible but that to achieve it we have to create colorblind laws and programs, as if a colorblind society can be created by fiat. The United States has never been a colorblind society, and it is not likely that it ever will be so long as there are racial divisions among human beings. Some futurists have proposed that centuries from now there may no longer be separate races, but short of such a shift, the United States will continue to have to face racial divisions and accompanying disparities far into the future.
Hacker (1992) believes there are two nations in America today, one black and one white, and he notes first that race has been an American obsession since the time the first Europeans arrived on these shores and found the Native Americans. Race became a different sort of issue when slaves were imported from Africa and forced to work in the fields. The fact of slavery in itself has been one of the major reasons for the continuing obsession with race and for the way race has become a social and political football:
Black Americans are Americans, yet they still subsist as aliens in the only land they know. Other groups may remain outside the mainstream--some religious sects, for example--but they do so voluntarily. In contrast, blacks must endure a segregation that is far from freely chosen. So America may be seen as two separate nations (Hacker, 1992, 3).
The position of African-Americans in American society today is much improved over what it was in the 1950s, but the pro...