In my column today, as on so many other occasions, I write about the denigration of colorblindness and the elevation of color-consciousness. I like the former ideal. The country, apparently, does not.

I’d like to publish a letter on this subject, a letter that makes an impact:

Jay,
After college and ROTC, I spent four years as a junior officer at Little Rock Air Force Base, where I was assigned to the Directorate of Personnel. In around 1965, I was in charge of the section responsible for maintaining personnel records on all the officers and enlisted people on base (among other tasks).
Word came from on high that all records — many sheets of paper in cardboard folders — were to be purged of anything that mentioned the race of the service member. This meant a number of weeks with sergeants and senior airmen in the section sitting at tables with stacks of record folders and black felt-tip pens, carefully lining through the offending references. (Even before this, the military was possibly the most colorblind segment of American society, but our task was to make it even more so.)
I left active duty in July 1967 and less than a year later embarked on my European Adventure. I came back in June 1977 (with a Dutch wife and a 15-month-old daughter, but that’s another story). I was surprised to find that the colorblindness we had begun striving for ten years earlier was being replaced by a growing (and increasingly militant) color-awareness.
Sometimes I’m glad that I am a septuagenarian and will be spared seeing where this will probably lead in another few decades.