Winter 2025
The Virtue of Color-Blindness and the Classics
By Dr. Andre Archie, Associate Professor of Greek Philosophy at Colorado State University
As an undergraduate, I was introduced to the classics by an African American professor named Bill Hervey. Bill loved all things ancient Greek – especially Aristotle and Plato – and he taught me that the classical knowledge found in the works of ancient Greek political philosophy represents the very embodiment of a liberal-arts education.
It is significant that the classical tradition was introduced to me by an African American scholar because some Black Americans and their well-placed allies have mounted the fiercest and most effective attack against the value and relevance of the classical tradition in the name of racial justice. However, those attacks are misplaced.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in 1963 during his March on Washington, he famously declared his dream that his “four children [would] one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Earlier that same year, and in a radically different context, King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” spoke powerfully about the collateral damage of racial prejudice done to Black Americans and white Americans, as well as to “those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”
No other public figure in modern times has expressed sentiments so resonant with the color-blind principles of the Western intellectual tradition. Given King’s moral advocacy, he seems to have understood that he was a vessel of many strands of Western ethical thought that privilege individual character – and its choices and actions – over conventional and arbitrary markers of distinction such as a person’s race or sex.
The color-blind approach to race relations is grounded in the moral belief that the mere possession of hereditary qualities, such as race, should not confer moral merit simply by their possession or absence. Instead, moral merit should be conferred upon an individual’s actions, because actions reveal one’s character. The belief in character – as opposed to ascriptive qualities as the locus of moral agency – has a rich and comprehensive history in the West. It continues to animate our own Founding Documents and way of life.
To see just how significant prioritizing character over ascriptive qualities has been in the West, we must begin with some of the first recorded reflections on the moral importance of character. These begin with the ancient Greek ethical tradition known as eudaimonism. As an ethical framework, initiated by Plato and Aristotle, eudaimonism assumes that the ultimate human good is happiness, and the task of ethics is to figure out what happiness truly is and how it is achieved.
Accordingly, ancient Greek ethics is person-centered, which means that in thinking about the best way to live or what to do, the ancient Greeks focused on two essential elements: discerning the right course of action and carrying it out with proper motivation rooted in virtuous character.
Properly motivated actions are anchored in and generated by one’s virtuous character, which is the end result of a person’s autonomous choices. Character is not the product of factors that fall outside of the sphere of choice and voluntary action. Likewise, the body and what belongs to it are not involved with the manifestation of virtue. Thus, for the ancient Greeks, ascriptive qualities like race played no role in the formation of character nor the assessment of character. The content of one’s character determines one’s attitude towards the body and what belongs to it. This understanding brings me back to the color-blind sentiments of Martin Luther King, Jr. During a time of profound racial strife, he tapped into the rich Western philosophical tradition initiated by the ancient Greeks to gain much-needed support from a broad swath of Americans who knew that racism was wrong. King’s message – that character counts – resonated with the deep sense of dignity among many good, decent Americans.
It is clear that judging others by the content of their character is an abiding theme in the intellectual traditions of Western thought. Fortunately, with the demise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), starting with the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2023 against race-conscious admission policies in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, we now have the opportunity to reaffirm the importance of virtue, character, and color-blindness within America’s national identity.
However, the demise of the diversity regime is not an unconditional good if we, as Americans, fail to consider one of the most important questions facing us today: What should replace DEI? Without hyperbole, we can say that the answer to this question will determine the future trajectory of our domestic politics. As the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. For many Americans, DEI and its identity politics filled a void, but that void must be replaced by a positive American narrative that goes beyond creedalism and is grounded in a set of ideas and practices that are more substantial and enduring than what DEI offers. If we are unable to construct a narrative and promote practices robust enough to provide a degree of unity amid the competing identities currently vying for recognition in the public square, we will end up in a much worse place than where we were during the heyday of DEI’s divisive practices.
The void that DEI filled is both ideological and existential. Identity politics is not simply ideological identities in racial, cultural, or sexual disguise; it is a response to the same disruptive market and cultural forces that have fragmented and uprooted nearly all traditional communities and institutions in America — family, faith communities, and ethnic communities. The overriding question of those who embrace identity politics seems to be: “Who am I?” The question is not simply one’s personal reflection: but an expression of a deeper desire for belonging.
The question demands that one’s assumed identity be recognized. College campuses are especially filled with this type of corrosive identity politics. Alternatively, America’s ethnically diverse population, and the alienation that some of its members express through oppositional identities, would be well served by a positive American narrative and its attendant cultural practices.
Today, it is no longer enough to appeal to an American creedal identity in the way Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement did. But creedalism is only one part of the American identity, albeit a very important part. The other part is cultural. Of course, these two aspects of the American identity are not mutually exclusive.
The creedalist’s argument is captured eloquently by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address. His “new birth of freedom” was a call for Americans to ground their collective identity in substantive ideas, such as constitutionalism, rule of law, and human equality. Taken together, these ideals amount to a creedal, or notional, definition of citizenship.
In his first inaugural address in 1861, Lincoln also spoke about the “mystic chords of memory.” He appealed to the very real sentiments that unite Americans as Americans, North and South. He reminded us that the sacrifices of the Founders, should be a source of strength and comfort to a beleaguered nation during times of political disruption and a national identity crisis. The principles and way of life animated by the spirit of 1776 are both felt and believed.
Today, we are undergoing a similar period of national identity crisis and need comparable “chords of memory” to unite us as Americans.
The American national identity does not begin with creedal or notional ideas only. It begins in a particular geographic location, among a particular culture and among a particular people — a foundational core. Historian David Hackett Fischer, in his book Albion’s Seed, convincingly shows that the American identity was shaped by a core group of English-speaking settlers who arrived along the eastern United States from 1629 to 1775. These immigrants and their British folkways account for the various regional cultures that endure today.
Taken as a whole, it was these British cultures that John Jay seems to have in mind in Federalist No. 2, when he wrote that “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs.”
Americans no longer have a common ancestry, but we certainly have a common Judeo-Christian cultural heritage that goes beyond mere ideas. The United States consists of a core culture, animated by ideas and communicated through the English language. It has a civic, national, and cultural identity. The overriding feature of the core American culture is its Anglo-Protestant disposition: individualism (not excessive nor expressive), moral reform, religious influence, and a strong work ethic. The promotion of this cultural foundation amounts to a robust American identity.
Such an identity steers clear of an American racial identity and a feeble notional, creedal, or civic American identity. Embracing an American identity of this type does give, as the political scientist Samuel Goldman puts it, “constitutive status” to Anglo-Protestant culture. My argument, however, does not entail granting such status to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (“WASPs”) as an ethnic group. Culture can be separated from ethnicity.
Creedalism couples specific foundational principles with the cultural practices which define America and what it means to be an American. The particularities, preferences, and ascriptive qualities of one’s identity should be secondary if we are to take the American identity seriously. The creedalist’s conception in isolation grounds the American identity solely in propositional or notional ideas: constitutionalism, rule of law, and human equality. Creedalism without a cultural component is especially ineffective against racial identity politics.
There are two possible practices that I believe are instrumental to shoring up America’s core culture: (1) Make English the official language of the United States, and (2) Implement a nationwide national-service program.
Neither of these practices are foreign to American soil. In 1780, John Adams proposed that English should hold a more formal role in the United States by the creation of an academy to preserve and improve the language; however, the proposal was rejected. Since then, there have been several unsuccessful federal attempts to elevate the status of the English language in America. Making English our official language would, at minimum, complement the argument that we are not a nation of immigrants but rather a settler nation. More importantly, elevating the status of the English language on the federal level would play an important symbolic role in highlighting the unifying, core cultural features that we have employed to great effect during difficult times like the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. The legacies of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. testify to the power of the English language and the democratic culture it embodies.
Implementing a national service program would also contribute to strengthening America’s core culture. The program would be directed mainly toward young adults and would be modeled on the integrative procedures currently used by the armed services to instill a sense of esprit de corps and belonging among its enlistees. Aside from our all-volunteer military force, there are few places or institutions that bring together young people from diverse social, racial, and regional backgrounds. A national service program would motivate Americans to think more sympathetically about their fellow citizens when sorting themselves along the lines of class, race, region, or other sub-national identities.
In addition to the need for cultivating a broad American national identity that is more integrative than self-regarding identities based on race, gender, or religion, we need a positive, compelling American narrative in the public square that is more effective at promoting integration, belonging, and rootedness. Narratives are supposed to glue a people together.
That uniquely American narrative, and the story that it tells, should be top of mind as we seek to replace DEI identities. No other narrative is equipped to address the psychological and existential challenges of alienation among a sizeable group of Americans. As we witness the gradual decline of the DEI regime, we can take solace and confidence in the opportunity to articulate and renew a shared vision capable of guiding the nation forward.