Hi. Welcome to Feminist Fridays, a series where we explore the social, the political, and the media
from a feminist and an intersectional perspective... and use a lot of F words.
So today we're going to talk a little bit about colorblindness.
Not physical colorblindness, but racial colorblindness.
A lot of people grow up nowadays under the assumption that it's a good thing to be colorblind,
which means that you don't judge people based on their race. And I can understand how people would be like,
"Well, duh... that's how you solve racism. Besides, racial prejudice seemed to be the cause of past injustices
against people of color, right?" However, the problem with this idea is that it assumes that racial prejudice
no longer exists. Which, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's not the case.
The idea of being colorblind has made race a taboo subject to talk about.
The act of talking about race has become racist in itself, which, I think, stems from a fundamental
misunderstanding that a lot of people have about racism.
First off, it's okay to notice race. As much as people try to assert that they "don't see color," unless they're
physically blind, then pretending not to see someone's race is pointless.
For example, I'm a mixed race Asian American. That is an indisputable fact about me.
I don't have a problem with people noticing this about me because it's not a bad thing to be.
Personally I get a little skeeved out when people try and pretend that my racial identity doesn't exist at all.
When someone says something like, "You don't seem like a black person," or an Asian person, or whatever...
meaning that person defies the societal expectation of what that race should be,
then that's actually really racist.
First off, that denies that person's racial identity and experiences.
Second off, it says, "You don't seem like this specific race because you don't adhere to the stereotypes
associated with it." Someone adhering to or not adhering to the stereotypes of their race doesn't
invalidate their racial identity and lived experiences.
This is also usually said in an attempt to compliment someone, which is actually super gross, and insulting.
The second point I want to make is that individual prejudices aren't the only contributing factors to racism.
We're going to look at racism as two forms. Individual racism which is on a person to person level,
and systemic racism, which involves the way that society is structured to benefit some races
more than others. Even if a person doesn't participate in individual racism and discrimination,
it still doesn't get rid of the institutions in society that disadvantage people of color.
For example, the criminal justice system.
People of color, black men in particular, are much more likely to be racially profiled and stopped,
and also experience violence, than white people.
Even though white people commit crimes at equal rates to people of color, the disproportionate stopping of
black men leads to higher rates of arrrest and mass incarceration.
There are also many instances of police brutality against black men and black women that you're probably already
aware of, that leads to the unjust murders of these people by police.
On the surface you can look at each separate case of racial profiling as an act of individual racism,
but these cases add up to form a criminal justice system that disproportionately disadvantage and
harm people of color. This is what we call institutional racism.
So the problem with colorblindness is that it makes these issues taboo to talk about.
Police brutality becomes a problem caused by something other than racism,
so we look for ways to justify it.
If Michael Brown wasn't killed because he's black, because we supposedly live in a colorblind society,
then it must have been another factor at work.
It doesn't matter how many black boys and men are unjustly killed, the ideology of colorblindness
makes race irrelevant. It's basically like saying this,
Hey, let's talk about Latina immigrant women and how they're often relegated to low paying domestic labor and
service jobs. Oh, and also their race, class, gender, and citizenship make them particularly vulnerable
to abuse and exploitation.
And then if someone were just to come up and say,
Yeah, but we're like one race man... the human race.
Like, cool... but how does that solve the problem?
I don't see color, man.
Okay, but that doesn't actually fix anything...
Wow. Like, quit being so racist.
Basically it makes no fucking sense.
The ideology of colorblindness assumes that our society has fixed racism, which is obviously not true.
All of us are raised with implicit biases about race, and pretending that they don't exist and don't cause harm
only causes us to perpetuate these biases.
If we're no longer allowed to talk about race, then how are we going to question and challenge systemic racism?
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