I think you make some good points, but I think there’s a counterposition you may have dismissed. Let’s take redlining. Redlining is clearly racist, at a systemic level, and clearly damaging to the black community. Take that as a given. The counter position is this: If the employees of the banks were colorblind, they never would have redlined.
Color consciousness is extremely important so that redlining is not ignored or diminished, so we can identify similar things in the present or future, such as Trump/Carson’s recent accusations about Facebook targeted advertising for bank loans, which is basically virtual redlining. The question is how you apply color consciousness, and to what ultimate ends, and whether those ends truly get you where you want to be. That depends entirely on the problem definition, which itself is contentious.
