This is such a bizarre response.

https://twitter.com/TEDchris/status/1707817509905187143

Firstly, the literature on "color blindness" for like 2 decades has come from an overwhelmingly biased place and I doubt very much a simplistic survey of abstracts would tell you much useful... Other than that it's a minority position among sociologists, who are overwhelmingly leftists, highly ideological, and hostile to most challenges to the orthodoxies they endorse.

The replication crisis is generally worst in social psychology, and there are countless studies in that field which have garbage designs, bad statistical analysis, and report sweeping conclusions from tiny sample sizes.

So assuming that a cursory glance at a single survey of mostly weak research disagreeing with Coleman Hughes is giving you important insights is kind of silly to begin with.

But secondly, the whole point is that Hughes was going to make a case that contradicted that orthodoxy and suppressing his talk is just another way of enforcing the dominant ideology. @TEDTalks is (in theory) an organization dedicated to promoting debate. But that promise is negated if a few easily offended ideologues inside the company can silence disagreement.

Thirdly, color blindness as a concept is not inherently a question of empiricism in any case. It's also simply a matter of philosophy. If you recognize people as individuals, you should treat people as individuals instead of as avatars for some collective group. This is a logical proposition that can be argued from fundamental premises, regardless of what you imagine the consequences are going to be.

Now... All that said, the consequences of the last many years' relentless focus on parsing people's identities and endlessly dividing people according to traits such as race and gender have been undeniably horrific. We have many massive social problems now which I think can absolutely be traced back to the embrace of collectivist ideologies that demand we treat others completely differently based on assumptions made about them simply because of their race, etc.

Lastly, the response to the outrage makes it seem like the problem is people being angry and upset at TED. But TED created their own problem because of the outrage and intolerance coming from their own staff.

Why is it always the most intolerant people preaching about "diversity" and "inclusiveness" when what they clearly actually want is homogeneity of ideological viewpoints?