Trump has already broken a lot of norms. But his reference to a "colorblind society" fits into a long history.

There’s lots to wrap your head around with Trump’s first few days back in office, including a slew of executive action, some of which is symbolic. But as in the first term, there’s a consistent theme around race, immigration, and DEI initiatives. Apparently Harvard has laid off the team of researchers working on the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Project. Activity in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has been frozen.

Trump introduced all of this with a significant line in his inaugural address (the first one, not the rally one), delivered this year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Monday: he announced that our society will be “colorblind and merit-based.” The latter phrase introduced a hard edge that reflects the politics of the moment, implying that merit-based policies are at odds with prioritizing a more diverse workforce. But the concept of colorblindness has been an important one in American racial politics for some time now, and has especially guided the relationship between race and the American presidency.

What does “colorblind” mean in American politics?

This is really tricky, because the idea behind being “colorblind” – attuned to people as individuals and not as representatives of a particular racial group – is connected to important ideals. In an idealistic view, a colorblind viewpoint acknowledges that racial groups are socially constructed, and that people deserve equal treatment in society, employment, and the law. So why do so many experts in race and politics have a problem with it? Academic critiques of the concept aren’t, generally speaking, arguing against the idea that people should be treated equally in they eyes of the law, nor are they arguing that race and identity define individuals. They’re making a larger systemic critique.

The main thrust of this argument is that the term “colorblind” papers over historical and structural racism. Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has written extensively about this phenomenon, identifying a new era of “colorblind racism,” which eschews old-fashioned ideas like biological differences among groups. Instead, he argues colorblind racism is pernicious in its own way. It minimizes experiences of racism, and even casts them as the “natural” outgrowth of cultural differences among groups. Not mincing words, Bonilla-Silva argues that colorblind ideology is about maintaining white power in American society.

Writing about the lack of progress among millennial voters on race issues, Candis Watts Smith and Christopher DeSante identify colorblindness as a powerful set of political norms that make it “impolite” to discuss race. Like Bonilla-Silva, they emphasize how the “colorblind” formulation allows people to disavow any connection with racism by claiming their innocence and reducing racism to an individual and interpersonal problem.

Norms of colorblindness make it difficult to point out racism, both because it becomes such a serious interpersonal accusation and because it’s such a difficult, awkward topic. This in turn opens up a lot of space for dog whistles and racially-laden statements like Trump’s about “merit-based” policy; these have become a lot more overt and less subtle since around 2015. And things like the Willie Horton ad or Reagan’s statements about “welfare queens” were never really all that subtle. But something has certainly changed since then. Let’s take a look at the presidential use of “colorblind” in history.

When presidents talk about “colorblindness”*

The way that this term has been used by presidents illustrates its complexity and its evolution. Lyndon Johnson used the term to hold up an ideal for desegregated schools of equal quality for children of all races, announcing in November 1965, “Tomorrow I will ask the Commission on Civil Rights to turn its careful attention to the problems of race and education in all parts of this country. I am asking them to develop a firm foundation of facts on which local and State Governments can build a school system that is colorblind.”

My search in the papers housed on the American Presidency Project didn’t turn up any uses of this phrase by Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter, but Ronald Reagan brought it back into usage. Notably, Reagan used the phrase in his remarks upon signing legislation to make Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a holiday in 1983: “Dr. King had awakened something strong and true, a sense that true justice must be colorblind, and that among white and black Americans, as he put it, "Their destiny is tied up with our destiny, and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom; we cannot walk alone."

Context about both Reagan and King day is in order. Reagan saw himself as prejudice-free and genuinely colorblind, and was fond of talking about how he grew up in a household with parents who were unusually racially liberal for their time. At the same time, Reagan was responsible for carrying a number of loaded phrases into the mainstream political lexicon. Among these were strong criticisms of affirmative action, which was rooted in the ideal of colorblindness – choosing the best applicants for jobs regardless of personal characteristics. (The “quotas” that Reagan and subsequent Republicans railed against have never really been a big part of these policies; they are devised to address discrimination in a variety of ways.) But the colorblind rhetoric against affirmative action was a powerful reframing, which Reagan presented as carrying out, rather than subverting, the ideals of the civil rights movement.

Reagan’s history with the bill making King day a holiday is instructive here. Reagan was not initially a fan of this legislation, suggesting that the government could not create holidays for all important and worthy Americans. Writing about the formation of collective memory around King, Hajar Yazdiha points out that while Reagan eventually came around to signing the bill, his administration thwarted and even reversed civil right enforcement in numerous ways. Two communication scholars, Denis Bostdorff and Steve Goldzwig, wrote about the connection between these: they argue that Reagan “appropriated” the message of King day to talk about civil rights in terms of individual actions and an equality of opportunity that King and those working with him had largely achieved, ultimately undermining the larger ideals of the civil rights movement.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama used the term somewhat differently, still holding it up as an ideal, but maintaining that society had a long way to go. Obama, in particular, remarked at various points that minority citizens remained acutely aware that the justice system was not colorblind. It’s important to note that three fairly popular presidents held this up as an ideal (not without good reason!) and used this language.

But what I argue in my book is that Obama disrupted the era of “colorblind” political rhetoric and norms in a more profound way, making it difficult not to talk about race and racism in the course of mainstream politics. Two crucial moments that illustrate this were Obama’s statement that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” when arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates outside his own home – and the ensuing controversy – and when Obama noted that if he had a son, he’d look like Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old child shot while walking. These comments also drew some backlash. It’s much harder to talk about a colorblind society, or uphold norms against discussing race, when the president can and does make those kinds of statements.

The significance of Trump’s remarks

It’s hard to separate Trump’s entrance into mainstream politics from the Obama backlash. We have plenty of documentation about how racial attitudes drove the 2016 election.

But things were a bit different in 2024. We’re still a pretty racially polarized country, both by identity and by attitudes. And much of Trump’s racial agenda proved unpopular in his first election and term. There are still norms against overt racism, even if they’ve loosened in the last eight years. Instead, my hypothesis is that Trump was able to do better in the 2024 election because he was able to appeal more broadly. Some of this was talking about egg prices, or whatever, but it’s also true that drawing on these older norms about colorblindness has some resonance. After the multi-decade campaign against it, affirmative action is fairly unpopular, with a definite racial divide. Campaigns against DEI initiatives, among the earliest targets of Trump’s executive actions, have been successful in turning the tide of public opinion. A concept like colorblindness lands with the public even if some of Trump’s more controversial ideas don’t. Looking at how these ideas have been used and norms have been established helps us understand the basis of Trump’s appeal outside his most committed MAGA base. It’s his ability to win over these voters that ultimately returned him to power.

*I just wrote a book about race and the presidency, and had a handy Excel sheet of presidential uses of this term, ready for just this occasion, I guess.