Color-blindness

Color-blindness is a concept that refers to people behaving and living as if there were no race or ethnicity, or as if race / ethnicity were irrelevant. "I don't even notice race!"

Critique

Sometimes framed as a normative goal -- "the way to end racism is for all of us to be color-blind" -- the concept has come under significant criticism from activists involved in so-called identity politics, and from anti-racist theorists and activists. In these critiques, the notion is considered a liberal white fantasy that erases people's individual differences and valuable experiences.

Color-blindness marks or renders invisible the person of color

Those attributes that mark one -- i.e., cause one to "stand out" from the default norm, which is always the oppressor's attributes -- become the distinguishing features or attributes of the oppressed class, not the oppression itself.

Color-blindness then shifts focus to the person of color

This gimmick also completely shifts the frame from the member of the oppressor class to the member of the oppressed class. In other words, it shifts the focus entirely from the white person and their actions, behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, and onto the person of color and their actions, behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes.

Color-blindness then permits "blaming the victim"

Finally, the tactic then permits a subtle (sometimes not so subtle) form of blaming the victim: The individual is responsible for not receiving the privileges of equal treatment, because they have failed to fit in. "Acting Black" or "dressing Hispanic" or speaking with an accent is now the crime: it's what sets members of the oppressed class apart, and effectively "colors" them -- calling attention to their race by the otherwise benignly color-blind white people. Thus people of color can be blamed for triggering, or even causing, racism. "Jewish people segregate themselves." "The Black kids keep to themselves." Ghettoization and separatism are treated as the reasons for racism, not responses to it.

"Blame the victim" -- Mentioning racism is racist

When discussions are so framed, raising the issue of racism can be treated as if that itself was racist. Pointing out the possibility or appearance of racism -- whether intentional, subconscious, or systemic -- is treated as "injecting race" into the discussion. This assertion, of course, presumes the discussion had previously been free of the issue of race and racism. The white person can say, "But I didn't even notice your race!" This is intended to refute any possible suggestion of racism on the part of the white person, and generally serves to dismiss any discussion of racism at all, including systemic racism.

One example: Dawn Butler, a Black female MP from South Brent in the UK Parliament, noted that a white male MP, on meeting her for the first time, had tried to prevent her from entering a MP-only space, and then when corrected, told a colleague, "They're letting anybody in nowadays." She correctly observed that racism and sexism informed his comments and expectations. He countered, not by disputing the facts of the situation, but by conflating politeness with non-racism:

But we are exaggeratedly courteous to anyone with a different skin colour, so the idea that anything I have said is racist is absurd.'

This assertion is responsive only to a charge of intentional, conscious racism that manifests through rudeness. It is wholly non-responsive to other manifestations of racism, or to aspects of systemic racism or even subconscious racism. "[T]hey are quite sensitive about this kind of thing, they think that any kind of reprimand from anyone is racially motivated." Framed this way, asserting the existence of racism is the problem -- not the possible or actual presence of racism.

The following arguments frequently follow: People of color are just too sensitive; they bring it on themselves by constantly charging racism; this is a type of reverse racism; you are simply trying to be politically correct and police my language.

If we all pretend race and racism don't exist, white people can finally lay the ugly past to rest

The end result is effectively a type of "whitewashing". A TV show that worked in a color-blind way might, for example, include black and white characters who interact as if there is no racism, and as if they have a shared and identical cultural and political experience. This erases a significant portion of the experience of people of color, who do experience racism. White people have white privilege: in part, the ability to ignore race when they choose. Thus, when a white person says "they don't even see race", their "color-blindness" is an exercise in white privilege.

Relation to *-blindness

The notion of *-blindness can be applied to many, perhaps most or all, forms of oppression. In each case, it is presented as a goal that all should strive to achieve; while in practice, it serves to (a) establish the oppressor's class as the default, and mark the oppressed class as standing out; (b) shift the focus from the oppressive acts and attitudes, and the oppressor's acts and attitudes; and (c) finally permit shifting the blame, or at least equalizing it, from the oppressing class to the oppressed class.

See, for example, gender-blindness and heteronormativity. For an amazing SFnal take on a type of gender-blindness, see Raphael Carter, "Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation" (1998).

References

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