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Color blindness (sometimes spelled ''colour-blindness''; also called race blindness) is a sociological term for the disregard of racial characteristics when selecting which individuals will participate in some activity or receive some service. In practice, color-blind operations use no racial data or profiling and make no classifications, categorizations, or distinctions based upon race. An example of this would be a college processing admissions without regard to or knowledge of the racial characteristics of applicants. Proponents of "color-blind" practices believe that treating people equally inherently leads to a more equal society and/or that racism and race privilege no longer exercise the power they once did, rendering policies such as race-based affirmative action obsolete. As described by Chief Justice John Roberts, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race, is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Opponents of "color-blind" practices believe that racism and white privilege remain defining features of American society and that "color-blindness" simply allows whites to ignore the disadvantages of the non-white population. In ''Social Inequality and Social Stratification in US Society'', Christopher Doob says that white people believe they live in a world in which "racial privilege no longer exists, but their behavior supports racialized structures and practices." The goal of the 1960s landmark civil rights legislation was to remove racial discrimination and so establish a race-blind standard. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s central hope was that people would someday be judged by "the content of their character" rather than "the color of their skin".〔 Contributors are Lawrence Bobo, Gretchen C. Crosby, Michael C. Dawson, Christopher Federico, P.J. Henry, John J. Hetts, Jennifer L. Hochschild, William G. Howell, Michael Hughes, Donald R. Kinder, Rick Kosterman, Tali Mendelberg, Thomas F. Pettigrew, Howard Schuman, David O. Sears, James Sidanius, Pam Singh, Paul M. Sniderman, Marylee C. Taylor, and Steven A. Tuch.〕 Whether color-blind policies provide the best means of achieving racial equality remains controversial. ==Support of color blindness== The American Civil Rights Institute, led by founder Ward Connerly, has promoted and won a series of ballot initiatives that prohibit state government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education. Such initiatives have been passed in California (California Proposition 209 (1996)), Washington (1998 - I-200), and Michigan (the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative - MCRI, or Proposal 2, 2006). California's initiative was co-authored by academics Tom Wood and Glynn Custred in the mid-1990s and was taken up by Connerly after he was appointed in 1994 by Governor Pete Wilson to the University of California Board of Regents. Professor Carl Cohen of the University of Michigan, who was a supporter of Michigan's Proposal 2, has argued that the term "affirmative action" should be defined differently from "race preference," and that while socioeconomically based or anti-discrimination types of affirmative action are permissible, those that give preference to individuals solely based on their race or gender should not be permitted. Cohen also helped find evidence in 1996 through the Freedom of Information Act that led to the cases filed by Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter against the University of Michigan for its undergraduate and law admissions policy - cases which were decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger. Professor William Julius Wilson of Harvard University has argued that "class was becoming more important than race" in determining life prospects within the black community. Wilson has published several works including ''The Declining Significance of Race'' (1978) and ''The Truly Disadvantaged'' (1987) explaining his views on black poverty and racial inequality. He believes that affirmative action primarily benefits the most privileged individuals within the black community. This is because strictly race-based programs disregard a candidate's socioeconomic background and therefore fail to help the poorer portion of the black community that actually needs the assistance.〔 In a society where millions of blacks live in the middle and upper classes and millions of whites live in poverty, race is no longer an accurate indication of privilege. Recognizing someone's social class is more important than recognizing someone's race, indicating that society should be class-conscious, not race-conscious. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the only current black Justice, supports color-blind policies. He believes the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids consideration of race, such as race-based affirmative action or preferential treatment. He believes that race-oriented programs create "a cult of victimization" and imply blacks require "special treatment in order to succeed". Some national bloggers and internet resources who favor the "equal opportunity" approach over "positive discrimination" include (John Rosenberg's Discriminations ), (Tim Fay's Adversity.net ), and (Chetly Zarko's Power, Politics, & Money ). Actor-producer-director Kenneth Branagh frequently uses race-blind casting in his Shakespearean films. In ''Much Ado About Nothing'', he cast Denzel Washington as Don Pedro; in his version of ''Hamlet'', Francisco, one of the sentries in the first scene, was played by a black British actor; and in his ''As You Like It'', David Oyelowo portrays Orlando. There are also several Japanese actors in the latter film.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url = http://www.hbo.com/films/asyoulikeit/interviews/ )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Color blindness (race) in the United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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