color blindness

Deconstructing Privilege.

Colorblindness is the new racism.

This week’s article speaks a great deal on the term colorblindness that is being used a lot in mainstream media. The term colorblindness refers to someone that does not see race. The authors describe colorblindness as problematic as well as scientifically unlikely. In order to understand colorblindness, one must first understand that white privilege gives those who are not of a color the option to feel that colorblindness is a thing as opposed to those who are of color who live in color-seeing word daily. In reference to a study done by Fiske and Neuberg that determines that humans quickly place people into categories or schema (category based processes) and that category based classification serves as the default mode for perception. Category based perception can occur automatically and outside of conscious awareness, the study supports a conclusion that the brain makes colorblindness unlikely. The study proves that whether we want to or not or brain uses physical attributes to categorize and relate people to what our perception of race is.  I have attached the video below of a race study that CNN did a couple of years ago that demonstrates the racial bias in children. The study demonstrates that even small children have already begun to put students in categories based on their race, and a good percentage have already begun to have negative connotation towards a darker skin color.

How can colorblindness be hurtful to society?

Colorblindness can be hurtful to society because it invalidates the existence of issues of people of color. Colorblindness is good intent masking “I don’t have to care”. If you are of an oppressed racial makeup you have can’t choose to be colorblind and there are racialized systems in place that work against you and your race. In the classroom to avoid the discussion and to avoid that component of the racial makeup of your student’s is to deny those students their struggles and the challenges that they face in comparison to their white counterparts. I have included a hyperlink that describes race statistics in America to better highlight some of the issues that colorblindness can deny:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30214825

This is not to say that there should be pity involved, or that one should guide discussions based solely on their hardships, but it is to raise a general awareness and to be conscious of a student’s race and the plight that comes with it. To be “colorblind is to ignore the racial biases that are inherent in American society.

The authors of this week’s reading believe that we must us a strategy called color insight in order to properly discuss race and defeat the myth of colorblindness and a post racial society, we must acknowledge that people have privileges or disadvantages based on their race. Color insight refers to a process of thinking about one's own color to discuss race.  There are four steps in engaging in color insight, 

1.     Considering context for any discussions about race

2.     Examining systems of privilege

3.     Unmasking perspectiveness and white normalness.

4.     Combating stereotyping and looking for the "me" in each individual.

The last step in the color insight process really spoke to me. "Looking for the me in the individual" is looking for a commonality between you and someone of another race. I found that looking for the me is a natural process. You tend to care more about an issue when it has to deal with people that look like you. This advocates that one must accept people's differences and to stop assuming that your normal is their normal and that just because their normal is not your normal it does not mean that that their normal is invalid. (WHOA what a run-on sentence, my undergraduate English professors will be disappointed!) thus color insight reminds us to acknowledge our differences and fight for a more equal society.

This week’s reading for some reason, made me think about a young man named Kalief Browder. Kalief Browder was a 16-year-old black male who was accused of stealing a backpack. He was sent to prison without being charged and stayed in prison for 3 years with no charges   and no court date.

No charges and no court date!

While in prison he spent a great deal of time in solitary confinement and he tried to take his own life several times. There was video coverage of him getting assaulted by other prison inmates and correctional officers. He was threatened daily by the correctional officers who were there to guard his man-made cage. When he was finally released Kalief began to have hallucinations he once threw his television out of his window claiming that the television was watching him and lived in constant paranoia that he would be thrown back in jail.  After his release he was quoted saying:

People tell me because I have this case against the city I'm all right," he told the magazine. "But I'm not all right. I'm messed up. I know that I might see some money from this case, but that's not going to help me mentally. I'm mentally scarred right now. That's how I feel. Because there are certain things that changed about me and they might not go back."

The New York times published an article on him and an anonymous donor offered to pay all of his college expenses. He began taking classes at a community college in the Bronx. He even was able to meet Jay-Z and Rosie O’Donnell. The paranoia started again and one day his mother had found that he had committed suicide in his room, a victim of injustice and the prison system.  He was only 22 years old.

In my life I have never had a news story affect me as much as this one. I try not to make everyday things about race but how could I not? I often wonder would this have happened if Kalief was Kyle? Arrested maybe, but three years with no court date, no trial and no charges. Highly unlikely. To be colorblind is to not to be able to have an honest conversation on what people of color determine are the issues that are plaguing their communities. To pretend that this could have happened to anyone, is to pretend that the judicial system is color-blind. To pretend that the judicial system is colorblind is to pretend that African American males don’t account for 60 percent of the us prison population. To pretend that our society is colorblind is to be blind.