What happened to the goal of a color-blind America?

By Clifford F. Thies

Perhaps you also noticed it. On this decade’s census form, there’s a space for Guamanians. Finally, my brother and sister qualify for special status! They even have the birth certificates to prove it.

With the adoption of the Constitution, several classes of persons were recognized. There were natural-born citizens who, as distinct from naturalized citizens, qualified to be President. There were citizens, both naturalized as well as natural-born, who, by reason of the privileges and immunities clause, enjoyed the same rights of all other citizens. There were persons subject to servitude. They were counted six-tenths for representation and taxation. Finally, there were Indians not subject to taxation. These persons were considered to be members of other, subordinated nations (their tribes).

Originally, the distinction between persons subject and not subject to servitude was not the same thing as color. In early colonial Virginia , people of European and African origins intermingled by class as distinct from color. Indentured whites worked alongside indentured blacks. And, free men of color alongside free men of … how should I put this … paleness. But, over time, servitude and color came together. Servitude degraded into what is called American Negro Slavery and, by the 1840s, most of the states of the South took away the rights of free men of color. Thus, instead of perfecting our experiment in democracy, we became a nation divided, north and south, and white and black.

Slavic descent, Irish, Swedes, southern Mediterraneans don't count as "diversity"?

Following a Civil War and three Amendments to the Constitution designed to protect the freedom and equality of all of our citizens, a new form of racism emerged: Jim Crow and the doctrine expressed in Plessy v. Ferguson, of “separate but equal.” Under this doctrine, states could create separate institutions, such as public schools, for those it categorized as belonging to this or that race.

It would take another hundred years of struggle, but, eventually, through the grace of God, we would enshrine into law the principle expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. That the government should be color-blind. Or, did we? What do all the classifications of racial or national origin on the census form indicate, but that our rights depend on our race, color, national or linguistic origin?

Why should it matter to the government that I was born in New York and that my brother and sister were born in Guam ? Why should they and their children have any advantages when it comes to matters such as admission to college, home mortgage loans, and government contracts? For that matter, what about my cousins who are, partly, of black and Arabic African, and Puerto Rican and Argentine descent?

And, why am I supposed to check off a box merely described as “white,” when other Americans get to check off much more descriptive boxes? Why isn’t the government as interested in the diversity of the people of this country of European origin? Could it be that, to the government, all white persons are created equal?

Dr. Thies has a Ph.D in econometrics and statistics.