Sunday, September 25, 2016

Being "Color-Blind" Makes You Blind to Racism

*Author's Note
In the following context, "color-blind" is in regards to those who claim to "not see race" as a factor in anything, not the condition in which one cannot perceive certain colors on the spectrum.


We all have that one person who says "I'm colorblind, I treat everyone equally" and in some cases we would like to be that person. In a perfect world, this is fine, however; we do not live in a perfect world. We still live in a racially discriminatory era under the guise of "equality" simply because we have laws against racism in the workplace, desegregated schools and so on. Laws do not make these prejudices go away and neither will being color-blind.

Being color-blind only excuses the behaviors that we are trying to overcome as a society. Consider the following: you perceive everyone as just gray, human-shaped, flesh creatures and you treat everyone the same way. Then you see a group of these gray, human-shaped, flesh creatures claiming that they are being treated unfairly. How likely is it that you would sympathize with them instead of writing them off as just unfortunate circumstances? So you justify it as "well perhaps it's something they did because it couldn't be anything else." Just because you, yourself do not perceive race as a factor does not mean that it is not a factor for other people.

We are still healing from the scars of slavery and persecution. With a wound as deep as this, you can't just slap a band-aid on it and say it's all better. You need treatment. You need ointment, or stitches, and anti-bacterial or whatever else you can get your hands on to make sure that the wound doesn't get infected. It takes time and attention.

Being "color-blind" is essentially not giving attention to the harmful effects that happen to certain groups of people. This allows the infection of prejudice to run rampant and no amount of laws or band-aids will prevent it from spreading.

No comments:

Post a Comment