Roger Lott: Truly Color Blind

My son Roger has a new piece in The Dartmouth. It starts this way:

All the recent alarm about the resignations of three minority faculty members (See: “A Troubling Trifecta,” Feb. 18) has inevitably led to calls for special efforts to make certain racial groups feel welcome at Dartmouth. If the College really wants to foster a color-blind environment, however, it would be well advised not to treat minorities as though they need extra attention.

Unfortunately, minorities at Dartmouth are often encouraged to define themselves according to a special, “colored” status. Recent Martin Luther King, Jr. celebrations included a showing of the film “For Colored Girls” and an “Alliance for Children of Color Playdate” whose accompanying picture on Dartmouth’s website shows an all-black group of parents and youngsters. Events like these hardly lead to the kind of positive interracial interactions the College talks about so much. . . .