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"Color-blind" is just a fancy way of saying that all races are treated equally. The issue that many liberals have with the concept is that it completely fails to address the issue of past race discrimination. This accusation is entirely true, but those that level it are missing a crucial point.
Affirmative action and other programs of that ilk are reverse discrimination programs, explicitly. They look at the "color" of an applicant or candidate and treat that person differently based on racial considerations. In modern times, this is done under the guise of helping races that have been systematically discriminated against.
So why would having a color-blind admissions process (at a college, for example) be preferable to undoing centuries of racial hatred through Affirmative Action?
The simple answer is that nothing, not even AA, is able to counter racism. I'll elaborate: the people who design an AA program must decide the amount of disadvantage members of Race A are exposed to. Then, this same handicap is applied (non-numerically now) to each applicant of that race. The obvious problem is that not all members of a particular race are equally discriminated against.
The goal of AA (ideally) should be providing fairness to individual members of a race, rather than trying to lift up a race as a whole. Thus, the AA approach is excessively blunt. A case example:
John is white. Steve is black. David is black.
John is from West Virginia. His family is extremely poor. His high school was of very low quality. Steve is from Southern California. His family is middle class. He attended a high-quality private high school. David is from Sierra Leon. His family is upper class. He attended a high-quality private high school in Sierra Leon.
John is treated exactly the same way as all the wealthier, better educated white applicants because, speaking in general terms, white people are wealthier than black people.
Steve receives the same handicap as the black students who grew up in the inner city attending failing schools because, speaking in general terms, black children live in poor, urban areas and have poor educational opportunities.
David receives the same handicap as the black students who grew up in the inner city attending failing schools because, speaking in general terms, black children live in poor, urban areas and have poor educational opportunities.
John receives no advantage based on his circumstances because it is just assumed that, as a white person, he doesn't need or deserve an advantage.
Steve receives a handicap despite the fact that he is as well educated and as wealthy as his white peers. Racism has not played a major role in his life, but the fact that he is black is enough for him to receive special treatment.
David receives a handicap despite the fact that he is from a country where black people are in the vast majority. His background is far more privileged than the majority of his white peers. On top of that, he has not suffered from anti-black racism because he was raised in a black society. Nonetheless, the AA program rewards him with a handicap.
So you see, AA targets race as the cause of non-competitiveness in school admissions (and other things). But in reality, race is just a factor that is correllated with the actual causes of the non-competitiveness:
1. school quality
2. familial wealth
3. wealth of neighboring families
4. access to reading materials...
...the list goes on.
Color-blindness is attractive because it bans "reverse-racism" as an acceptible policy choice. I think we all can agree that, in an ideal world, AA would not exist: it is a rather distasteful means to the end of racial equality. The time has come for us to take a step back and consider whether we would be better served by directly confronting the factors that make students unable to succeed rather than pretending that being black automatically makes you hopelessly unable to compete with your white peers.
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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