“I don’t care if you’re white, Black, brown, yellow, green or purple.” If you’re a person who’s attempted to prove they’re not racist, you’ve probably said something like this. If you’re a person of color who’s heard this, you’ve probably rolled your eyes because you know just how unhelpful this logic is.
Despite what many people may think, being colorblind when it comes to skin color is, in fact, a form of racism. Colorblind racists may not march around in white hoods with a burning cross on display, but their actions uphold systems of white supremacy through ignorance.
Colorblind rhetoric has been harmful since the civil rights era, when Southern conservatives like James Kilpatrick manipulated the language of leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. to say that Americans should be judged based on merit and qualifications rather than race. This rhetoric ignores the fact that people of color may not be able to obtain the same level of qualifications as their white counterparts due to systemic racism.
That being said, the colorblind approach to race does not always manifest itself in explicit language — it may be exercised with no language at all. A lot of white parents avoid talking to their children about race because they believe making space for awareness also makes space for racism. However, not discussing race is problematic because it attempts to make discrimination invisible. Instead of ignoring race — as people who subscribe to this mindset believe they are doing — it disregards racism.
White people will never face inequality based on their race due to their white privilege, so if they avoid talking about race altogether, such racism is essentially invisible to them. And if racism can’t be seen by the oppressor, then racism can’t be addressed.
Colorblind racism also perpetuates an “us-versus-them” mindset. For example, I was once trying to have a conversation about race with one of my white friends. When I shared some of the things I have to think about as a person of color, she said, “I don’t think of you as Black when I’m around you. I just see you as one of us.”
In neglecting to acknowledge that my skin color is different from hers, this individual categorized people of my race as “other.” By attempting to ignore race on an interpersonal level, this person ultimately ignored racism — an issue that contaminates all aspects of our society. Ironically, by thinking she was being non-racist, she was just the opposite.
As Angela Davis once said, “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist.” Anti-racism entails actively resisting and combating the systems that oppress people of color, which is what’s necessary under our current conditions.
As much as we’d like to pretend that the only race is the human race, that’s not the case, and it never will be. Consciously or not, people recognize racial differences. This is best represented by children who, regardless of what they’re taught by adults in their life, notice skin color early on in life. Personally, I remember recognizing my own race before kindergarten because I lived in a predominately white city.
It can be tempting for white people to ignore race because it’s the most comfortable route. But conversations about race need to keep happening. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020, there has been a plethora of resources, new and old, brought to national attention for white people to educate themselves.
I’ve personally read Ijeoma Oluo’s “So You Want to Talk About Race,” which is a great resource for people of all races to understand the racial climate in the United States and have fruitful discussions about the topic. One book that’s on my to-read list is “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism” by Robin DiAngelo. If reading doesn’t sound appealing to you, check out “The 1619 Project” docuseries on Hulu. There’s also a variety of podcasts, like “Pod For The Cause,” which provides guidance on how you can take anti-racist action through conversation and civic engagement.
No one is expecting you to single-handedly dismantle our institutions to end structural racism. No one is asking you to take drastic measures to atone for the sins of your ancestors. At the very least, people of color are asking you to not be passivists in an actively racist society, and giving up colorblind racism is a great first step.
