It's unpleasant only because people are unwilling to face the truth. The truth about themselves and the truth about others. They would rather paint each other with a stereotype rather than look at themselves and change their own hearts and minds.
You criticize those who advocate a color blind society. How do you expect people to get over race hang ups until they start ignoring race and looking at the merits of their actions?
We all need to take responsibility for our actions as individuals and learn to love our neighbor as ourself. I don't think this will ever happen as long as we continue to emphasize race as important when it's not.
Actually, the conversation turned out to be pretty pleasant. I'm surprised. I think maybe I kinda forced everyone to be civil and nonpartisan.
But to your point. I think that color blind society is the end goal. For instance in King's speech, his dream. But that was in the future. He didn't try to give the whole speech from a color blind perspective.
Why do we need to talk about race? Because it is so central to our society, and that's not going to change if we ignore it. People are perceived differently. And then people are treated differently. So people have similar opportunities, similar obstacles. They end up in similar situations.
This would happen whether we talked about it or not. Further more, it's not just a mistake. There are still those who are proudly racist. And they're not just going to stop because we stop talking about race. We have a responsibility to stop them, in word and in deed, and to do that we need to talk about it.