Despite the fact that total color blindness disqualifies individuals from operating a motor vehicle, in our political climate, the term has become a shorthand to describe positively the absence of discrimination of people based on color and associated ethno-cultural traits. Bafflingly, colorblindness, a disabling condition, is now commonly used to signify a supposed meritocracy in which diversity, equity, and inclusion policies do not exist. In the immediate aftermath of an aviation accident involving a US Army Blackhawk and a regional jet, President Trump claimed that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the Federal Aviation Administration supporting disabled people and minorities were to blame for the tragedy. It is “common sense,” Trump said, that disabled people and minorities are by nature the least qualified to hold influential positions.

Efforts by activists to purge “diversity, equity, and inclusion” from all educational venues rely heavily on color blindness as a policy term in their consequential legal filings. In early 2025, a group calling itself Students Against Racial Discrimination filed a lawsuit against the University of California seeking to force it to conduct admissions “in a color–blind manner” in order to “eliminate the corrupt and unlawful race and sex preferences that subordinate academic merit to so-called diversity considerations,” supposed “preferences” that have been statutorily prohibited in California since 1996. This comes as just another instance of opponents of race-conscious admissions and critical race studies curricula in higher education equating colorblindness with policies that promote equality. In what he calls the “Counterrevolution Blueprint,” the anti-D.E.I. activist Christopher Rufo wrote: “Trump can end these programs under his executive authority and replace D.E.I. with a policy of strict colorblind equality. This action would deliver an immediate shock to the bureaucracy.” Indeed, President Trump’s administration has wasted no time in implementing such “colorblind” policies, from shuttering federal D.E.I. initiatives that help recruit talented Americans from the broadest cross section of experience to removing the disaggregation of data in public health research that seeks to understand how policies might affect people in some communities differently than in others.

The irony that a term of disability is used to exclude disabled people from government jobs or higher education is not lost on me. I was born with a very rare retinal condition called achromatopsia. Due to an inherited genetic mutation, the cone cells in my retina did not develop, so I am left with the sight received through the rod cells, resulting in an inability to see in sunlight, greatly reduced distance vision, and a complete inability to see or distinguish colors, except for black, white, and shades of grey. Why is it, then, that journalistic reporting and policy statements are based on a false analogy to a disabling condition, one that makes it more difficult to see nuance? Take it from me, calling for an end to diversity, equity, and inclusion in favor of a “colorblind” approach based on merit is not only shortsighted (see what I did there?) but also nonsensical.

For me, to navigate the world safely and productively, I need to discern more, not less, about a person, place, or institution to understand best its merits. I use all of my senses and intellect to gather as much information about how the world works. If I cannot grasp some detail, I use assistive devices to help me view what I would otherwise miss.

When you are one of the few people uniquely qualified actually to know what colorblindness is, the notion of a “colorblind” approach to learning about and including people to form a more productive society is laughably ridiculous and often dangerous. In the classroom, I cannot distinguish between students based solely on their appearance. For students to participate in discussion and exchange ideas with their peers, their presence and potential for contribution has to be recognized. As such, I memorize their names and voices, which I then connect to facts I have learned about them through an introductory survey. Knowing more about someone, especially what makes them unique, allows me to see and recognize their contributions and potential growth as individuals within a broader community. I learn to see the nuances of individuals despite my colorblindness and low vision, not to shift standards and expectations in my demanding courses on Shakespeare and Milton, but to create opportunities for all to achieve at the highest level of excellence that I expect from each of them.

Ultimately we might reconsider whether we want to live in a colorblind world, either in its literal or misappropriated figurative sense, one where you could never really discern the brilliant and unique flecks of color in your child’s eyes, one where your child’s individual potential would be discarded out of hand if for whatever reason they exhibit qualities that “common sense” names inadequate.

If our society and government are truly intent on creating opportunities for all and elevating individual merit, then we need to stop pretending that the disabling symptoms of colorblindness, either metaphorically or literally, are the way to promote success. On the contrary, we need to see more of people, discern more, and find more ways of looking at distinction. Otherwise, we should just call politicians’ invocation of colorblindness, especially when it comes to the higher education policy arena, for what it is: meritless.

Much like Adam McKay’s catastrophe-driven “Don’t Look Up” (2021), “White Noise” comes at a time when news stories and opinion pieces that describe climate change as some sort of apocalypse seem to pop every other week. In the past month alone, the New York Times has run headlines like “Another Step Toward Climate Apocalypse” and “God and Horses and the Pre-Apocalypse.” Given its frequent appearance in pop culture and op-ed pieces, as well as its profound significance to Christian beliefs, is the term apocalypse losing its significance as a meaningful term to describe our present moment?

When activists and journalists invoke apocalypse to talk about the crisis of climate change (or, for that matter, pandemics and political violence), they take a page out of their ideological opponents’ playbook, which uses the same apocalyptic rhetoric to stoke racist fears for political gain. To be sure, for climate change activists and opinion writers, apocalypse might be a helpful shorthand to communicate the surrounding fears of disaster and human suffering and a way to broadcast an urgent call to action (and indeed, there is an ongoing debate in the climate change community about whether to use the language of catastrophe or meliorism in public messaging).

Yet apocalyptic thought is central to right-wing fear-mongering about immigration and the promotion of racist conspiracies such as the “great replacement”—the belief that a cabal of powerful Jews are flooding White America and Europe with Black and Brown migrants to politically disenfranchise White Christians forever. The “great replacement” has been a theme of former President Donald J. Trump’s speeches, from his inaugural address’ warning of “American carnage” that only he could stop to his remarks from November 2018 that “large well-organized caravans of migrants are marching towards the southern border” for an “invasion.” Only days before, the gunman that opened fire at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh complained that Jewish organizations “bring invaders to kill our people,” meaning White people.

Indeed, as my research shows, this is not a uniquely recent phenomenon. There’s a long history that links apocalyptic and racist thinking: even in Shakespeare’s time, the English regarded Spaniards as a menacing Satanic threat, not simply because Spain was a Catholic economic rival to Protestant England, but because Spaniards were viewed as having a bloodline tainted by satanic ancestry.

Such racist apocalyptic rhetoric does not emerge in isolation, but is a consistent part of right-wing ideology. When Tucker Carlson, for example, talks about how “they”—the liberal “ruling class”—care more about migrants than about the average American, he doesn’t need to mention the Apocalypse of the Bible explicitly to communicate that his audience—“us”—is waging a zero-sum battle of good against evil.

In many ways, the reason why climate change activists and racist conspiracy theorists alike invoke the apocalypse, either directly or indirectly, is that apocalypse is a notoriously broad term that evokes simultaneously the broadest human hopes and fears regarding universal justice and power.

If you ask theologians or historians what apocalypse means, they’ll point out the term’s Greek etymology of mystical unveiling, or they’ll talk about how the biblical Book of Revelation (aka Apocalypse) hearkens to Jewish beliefs about the end of life or the political prophecies that predict the future triumph of God’s righteous justice over evil.

Evangelical Christian believers, meanwhile, may tell you that the Book of Revelation reveals God’s plan for future history: the succession of earthly political power, the persecution of the faithful, and God’s ultimate establishment of an eternal, just kingdom for his chosen and the damnation to destruction of those who opposed him. The Christian faithful (the “us”) are chosen and sealed to Christ the Lamb, while the Beast, the Antichrist, and his followers (the “them”) are marked for total annihilation.

Secular pop culture’s references to the apocalypse are typically some grab bag of a catastrophic disaster that kills lots of people and reorders society (i.e. “Mad Max” franchise or the asteroid plot-driven movies of the 90s). Or, in short, something really bad is going to happen. Indeed, Hillary Rodham Clinton during the final months of the 2016 presidential race pitched her campaign to defeat Mr. Trump in apocalyptic terms, saying “I’m the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse.”

In other words, the 2016 presidential election had no shortage of self-proclaimed saviors. Trump promised to save America from the migrants and the liberals; Clinton promised to save America from Trump.

Given these various understandings of apocalypse, when climate change activists invoke the apocalypse in its secular sense, they tend to overlook and ignore a large group of Americans— evangelical Christians—who view the apocalypse in broadly different terms, leading to this group’s potential alienation from the climate change conversation.

The key differences between climate activists’ apocalypse and the right-wing conspiracies or racial apocalypse are timing and power. For climate activists, the apocalypse is a bad thing, it should be avoided, and it is up to humankind to prevent it. For some evangelical Christians, the apocalypse is a good thing, it is inevitable, and humankind, with the direction and help from God, must prepare the world for it by countering their enemies’ quest for power.

Perhaps the language of apocalyptic fear and crisis will not exit public discourse anytime soon—it is too valuable to let go for its power to provoke. But if we are serious about addressing political polarization and stagnant policymaking in our present moment, activists and journalists may want to stop throwing around a term that is synonymous with perhaps the most polarized view of human politics—a protracted, zero-sum fight between good and evil.