Colorblindness is Rude

For real. Crazy right? Colorblindness is a cultural norm in white America, especially among liberal white folks who are not racists. We proudly claim to be colorblind, treat all people the same regardless of skin color and, as coined by MLK Jr., long for the day when we live in a world where everyone else also judges man by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. But while white culture views this behavior as benign and polite, to every other culture it is neither. It’s a lie (rude!) and racist to boot. And as a content colorblind white girl, when I first learned this in the few months after George Floyd was murdered it shook and jarred to my core, especially when I realized I had it twisted. And my twisted was actually based on racist ideas sold to me by white America as the way to behave to show that I was definitely NOT racist. Yeah, turns out Colorblindness is just a white culture created idea to normalize the silencing of all non-dominant races, soooo, pretty racist. Yup, at its best willful ignorance, and at its worst epistemic violence that daily perpetuates our racist systems. Well shit. If you are as floored as I was, I feel you, it’s taken me a minute to understand what that means to even begin to know exactly how all that is true, and just how profoundly Colorblindness hurts America. The good news is, once understood, you can dismantle (in fact it’ll just fall off like you swallowed Morpheus’s red pill). Let me unpack and break it down for you.

To begin: The cultural term “Colorblind” means that to claim one can’t “see” color in our interactions with folks. Seems nice enough, wtf is so racist with that right? I mean, for sure no one believes it ‘cause of course we got eyes, we can see that the person we are talking to is white, or black, (or anything else they might be). And although we tell ourselves we are not changing our behavior based on the other person's race, we are even if just a bit because our thoughts processed it. And if the interaction is via paperwork, and you can’t see the other person at all then none of this comes into play at all right? Maybe. To be honest, the claim itself on the face of it is not necessarily racist, but it is a big fat lie. To claim that we don’t use the information from one of our 5 human senses to inform our interactions with another is just a straight up lie (every human, even medically colorblind folks, can see skin color)! We’re not ignorant, we know it’s a lie. We should just stop claiming Colorblindness doing it based on that alone. And tbh, I did. But my insatiable need for context, I had to know why in God’s name my culture, white culture, had come up with a bald faced lie as a way to interact with our fellow citizens, and more importantly, where exactly is the racist part?

The other shoe: The cultural term Colorblind means that to claim one can’t “see” color in our interactions with folks, and in doing so we ensure that everyone is treated equally. It’s the equality idea that trips up white folks. Wait, what is wrong with treating everyone equally? That’s a good thing right? Sadly idea and action don’t really play out that way. To be real, when a white person politely says “I don’t see color”, the message sent is, “I can only see one color, white”. And… (sorry to pile on but sometimes it’s best to just get it all the way out)... “I can only see white existence”, “I can only see white cultural norms”. Oof, gut punch. Turns out ignoring someone’s race also ignores the value and validity of everything that their race and culture brings to the table. Let me say that again, when one chooses to ignore a person’s skin color in interactions, one proactively chooses to ignore the reality of their race, and erases the value and validity of their life, their culture and the impact of white culture on them. And that is not only racist, it’s epistemic violence to boot. Ouch.

Once I realized the chasm of knowledge the Colorblindness had blocked from my American understanding, now I wanted to see everything! If Colorblindness is bs, what else is? I didn’t know shit all about black America’s existence or culture, not on a meaningful level, and I was not at all sure how to learn to understand another's experience more fully. A friend suggested a book called “Black Like Me”, and that was the final nail in the Colorblind coffin for me. IMHO Black Like Me is about the closest a white person can come to getting an unfiltered glimpse into the reality of being black in America. While the author, John Howard Griffin, would NEVER be allowed to do what he did in today’s America - I do appreciate that he was brave enough and crazy enough to research and write that book. Unfortunately, he is able to break down for white folks so many things that we can never see or feel, and would not even think existed in the world around us. It exposes just how insular white culture is, and how many little things in our day to day existence we are blind to. Not purposely on an individual level are we blind, but simply because so many things are taken for granted as exected behavior cause white folks never encounter otherwise. For example, I have never been denied a glass of water, use of bathroom (private or public), or a place to rest for a moment during my day. I have never been given a hard time for being in any space I chose to be in….and especially if it’s a predominantly or exclusively black space. And I have never thought of that as privilege.

Fuck, seriously?! As I sank into the realization of how much being Colorblind had clouded my understanding of America and hurt my fellow citizens, I began to notice examples every day as I moved around a world seeing different things for the first time, and for the first time, a little less confused. I had always just thought of American culture, or America, as a monolith, and how much of that was because I was white? Now that I’d been jarred into the reality that my America was really white America, and was just one piece of the puzzle. Black America, and all the other Americas were suddenly vividly in view. (And other America’s are definitely not Colorblind!). Rejoicing in my discoveries of new America’s to explore (I’ve always loved history, especially American and Western Civilization generally) helped ameliorate some of the more uncomfortable moments that being conscious of whiteness was bringing me. There are examples everywhere around us, evidenced by in the predominately monochromatic spaces that make up America, of how Colorblindness keeps folks separate, how limiting it is to individuals and society alike. Colorblindness touches everything. Literally everything, from communications, government, business profit margins, movies, tv, education, consumer products, Main Street, Wall Street, military, civilian and on and on are limited by lack of understanding of any culture other than our own. Did you know white culture is the only one that does not talk about race directly? Yup, it’s true. A side effect of Colorblindness is that as a white kid, I was taught that to mention someone's race because that would be racist. Oy vey. Little weird things like this, so simple, yet demonstrate a huge chasm in cultural competency between white Americans and every other color Americans.

Personally, to move forward without Colorblindness to insulate me, I needed to be open to more pinched and uncomfortable feelings about being white that I had never ever had before. Honestly, I’d never been fully conscious of that being white meant anything. And while the thrill of re-learning history and discovery ameliorated some of the pain, it certainly did not let me escape it all, and in particular not the shame. There were plenty of days that the idea of being white left me flat footed, and then to add the idea that I had white privilege would send me into a deep shame spiral. I did not have a clue that I was privileged, so realizing that that the Colorblind behaviors taught to me by my very respectable, middle class white mother and grandmother were not antiracist behavior at all, and the true number of difficulties that having black skin can present in America are far far beyond my white understanding took some getting used to. I got to rethink everything, realizing a whole new set of privileges I never knew I had, and completely sure they were nothing I personally had done to deserve, and it was a lot. I imagine some of you are feeling shades of the same about now (or not). For those who are I’ll share a quote I eventually stumbled across that has helped a lot as I recovered from discovering I had a bunch of racist ideas:

White Privilege doesn't mean my life isn’t not difficult,

it just means my skin color isn’t one of the things making it difficult

Peace and Love.

Mar 15 23