Philosophy Professor James Hudson’s letter to the Star (Friday, Aug. 31) asking why the new Faculty Senate demonstrated so much “special concern for minority representation” answers his own question.

Certainly the university “is an ideal setting for genuine community across diverse races and cultures,” but the problem for most areas in our society is that the “ideal” of a “race-blind community” is unfortunately already well established.

American literature provides ample testimony from minority writers that racial blindness significantly contributes to the social invisibility of minorities.

Racial, cultural, ethnic and gender blindness can only be considered an ideal by representatives of the dominant cultural order.

That order historically and today is still European, white and masculine; those outside this hegemony recognize full well the chains forged of blindness to difference.

Affirmative action, programs on unity in diversity and bylaws like the one professor Hudson decries are motivated by the realization that “genuine community” is not blind but fully conscious of the issues of race, class, gender and cultural ethnicity that shape our social identities.

Robert Self

English professor