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   Many shared the view that interaction between the races is all but
   impossible without the guiding hand of race experts. A white student at
   UC Irvine told me that his school’s efforts to “ensure a positive
   climate” for black students isn’t enough: they need seminars on racial
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   Microaggressions” lists various potentially offensive phrases that
   students and faculty should avoid using. It includes: “When I look at
   you, I don’t see color;” “There is only one race: the human race;” and
   “I don’t believe in race.”

     Challenging racial thinking doesn’t mean denying the reality of
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   It goes on to say that “colorblindness,” a refusal to “acknowledge
   race,” is about “denying the individual as a racial/cultural being.” I
   thought that was precisely the aim of the liberal project: to deny that
   individuals are “racial beings,” and in fact to fight against such a
   foul idea. What happened to the truism that race is a construct? Having
   gone through my life refusing to treat people as “racial beings,” must
   I now change tack, and think racially, if I want to be seen as good?
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   This is what the politics of identity has wrought. As we’re implored to
   define ourselves by our race, gender, sexuality or some other given
   trait over which we have little control, we become separated from one
   another. Some will say I can afford to be colorblind because I’m a
   white man. I don’t experience racialized hardship, so it’s easy for me
   to say: “Race doesn’t matter.” But challenging racial thinking doesn’t
   mean denying the reality of racism.