What is wrong with color blindness?
January 22, 2008
Around Martin Luther King, Jr. day we tend to get a spate of articles from conservatives trying to claim Dr. King as their own. And there’s also a lot of at-best misguided talk about color blindness. “I don’t even see color, I’m color-blind.” “It doesn’t matter to me whether you are white or black.” And so forth.
The problem with this is pretty simple: black people are black. Why do you want to ignore the fact that they are black? Is there a problem with them being black? When you choose to ignore cultural identity or race rather than acknowledging it, what you’re subtly suggesting is that race is somehow something embarrassing you’re too polite to bring up. Here’s an example that might be a little more clear. Cartman apologizes to Kenny for calling Kenny a Jew:
When you “don’t see race,” what you’re really doing is not acknowledging something that’s central to a person’s identity. You’re denying that person the right to be proud of their cultural heritage. Bill Moyers and James Cone spoke about this on the Bill Moyers Journal:
BILL MOYERS: And I have sympathy on this score– for Condoleezza Rice. Her policies are another thing. But part of what the civil rights movement– was all about. We thought a black man or a black woman should get to be Secretary of State or President of the United States and not have to– be anything but a powerful person doing what that person needs to do.
JAMES CONE: No. I think that’s a little off there. I– now– see, I– how I would put it is, a black person should be Secretary of State without having to deny their racial heritage and actually put it up front.
BILL MOYERS: Up front?
JAMES CONE: Yes, up front. Because we are a part of America. [ Bill Moyers Journal, November 23 ]
The law is supposed to be color blind, but then justice is supposed to be blind anyway. We are not supposed to be color blind. That’s not the only alternative to racial prejudice. The real goal is to respect people for who they are and what they do.
Posted in Race
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January 22nd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Your point is well taken, but the Jewish example isn’t quite the same. “Jewish” isn’t a race, it’s a religious belief.
http://www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm
http://judaism.about.com/od/abcsofjudaism/a/beingjewish.htm
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:14 am
It isn’t a perfect analogy, no; few things are. But Jewish people have certainly often been treated as a separate race in many different contexts and points in time, and Cartman certainly treats “jewishness” as biological. Not only that, but he believes calling someone “jewish” is an insult. That’s more of what I’m trying to illustrate — that non-white heritage is often treated as a handicap that polite people don’t acknowledge.
Perhaps a better example of this would have been to point again to the trolls of World of Warcraft and the race discussions surrounding them.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:26 am
Jewish people aren’t white?
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:41 am
Well, obviously people who are religiously Jewish can be any race. But otherwise it depends on who you ask. Anti-semetic groups like to draw divisions there, other people don’t see a distinction.
A modern-day biologist is likely to tell you that the concept of “race” is an imposted cultural division and the actual biological / structural differences between races are so minimal that it really makes no difference, at least from a biological standpoint. But yes, often Jewish people have been considered distinct from white people.
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Judiasm is definitely more than just a belief system. It is a cultural heritage that many of us hold onto even when we no longer follow the religion. I still call myself Jewish even though my spirituality leans much more towards Wicca. Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post is an atheist, but he still identifies as a Jew.
Jews come in all colors. And blacks don’t all share the same cultural background.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I’m not quite sure a biologist would agree with your assessment. They live to draw distinctions and categorize. 99% percent of every human’s DNA is the same, it’s finding out what’s different, and why, about that one percent that makes biologists that study genetics get up in the morning. I don’t think they are saying, eh, one percent, one per-schment (no pun intended). I think probably anthropologists are more into cultural distinctions.
Anti-”fill in the blank” groups will always draw distinctions to suit their needs. The KKK doesn’t consider Italians to be “white”, but that certainly doesn’t mean anything.
I understand the point of heritage, but that goes for almost all religions to some extent. I’m not involved in any religion, but I’m still identified as a WASP. Good, bad, or indifferent, it doesn’t change my racial categorization.
My point is that, Jusdaism, or being a Jew, does not fit the classic definition of a race, which is a group of persons related by common descent or heredity. However, I do agree that it has taken on more characteristics of a race than most other religions have. Also, no matter how hard I (or Michael Jackson tries), I cannot be black or asian. However, I could convert to Judaism.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:10 am
I think the “color blindness” point is that we shouldn’t treat people differently because of color. Everyone ought to be the same under the law, obviously. But it’s more than that: Whites should refrain, not only from discriminating against blacks, but they should also stop expecting less out of people because they’re black … which they do all the time. The paternalistic left has made this a point of dogma. In effect, leftists say, “We know ‘you people’ can’t compete with everyone else, so we’re going to make things easier for you.” So we end up with racial set-asides and affirmative action, which are fundamentally unjust and send a profoundly negative message to African Americans.
On top of it all, you guys are loathe to speak against any of the miserable anti-achievement values, the culture of violence and the fatherless households that are so common in the inner city. (That, after all, would be “racism.”) The left also withholds criticism of miscreants like Sharpton and Jackson, whose color acts as an impenetrable political shield. The shield comes down, though, for conservative blacks, whom the left deems the most vile of traitors. Hence, we get tasteless “black Sambo” and “watermelon eating” cartoon images of Condi Rice and Justice Thomas from the sensitive left, without apology.
We also get phony comments from people like John Kerry, who intones seriously about the important messages inherent within rap and hip-hop music. (Why doesn’t he just say, “Some of my best friends are black?”)
So when we on the right and libertarian side speak of color blindness, it’s because we’re sick of all this divisive, self-righteous garbage. We want to treat people as Americans, not as member of this group or that group.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:51 am
SteveJ, a lot of your criticisms here sound like right-wing caricatures of actual liberal positions.
Some cultures start with significant disadvantages not because of biological incapability but as the result of systematic oppression and depravation. We recognize what many conservatives refuse to acknowledge: people’s success or failure depends in large part from their sociological starting point. A child of literate parents is more likely to be literate; a child of rich parents has more opportunity for education and business success. Black people in America *do* have a more difficult time competing, but it is because of sociological, not biological, factors. Affirmative action programs are attempts to correct those sociological factors. As a solution it’s probably flawed, but it’s better than refusing to acknowledge that those problems exist. “Color blindness” in that sense is refusing to acknowledge the existence of that problem, therefore perpetuating the oppressive structures still present in our economic system as well as the effects of those oppressive structures already addressed.
And in general, I find the argument that affirmative action programs “send a profoundly negative message to African Americans” to be an extraordinary paternalistic argument for someone who complains about left-wing paternalism.
To the contrary, we speak of it often and attempt to address it. The difference is we these as being the result of poverty and the concomitant cultural/class isolation that brings. (We suspect it’s the result of poverty because we can also see “miserable anti-achievement values, the culture of violence and the fatherless households” in below-poverty-level white communities.)
Again, lecturing people about the qualities of their values and attitudes is certainly paternalistic and condescending. What liberals have tried to do is address the root causes of these problems, but conservatives (both in the Republican party and within our own) have resisted our policies as well as the idea that the economic injustice plays any significant role. Instead they’ve preferred lectures about values and personal responsibility.
As far as whether we’ve distanced ourselves enough from extremists and racism in our own party, I don’t see any reason why we should address that with any seriousness. I suspect if I denounced Sharpton with every breath it still wouldn’t be enough for some. I sometimes think people like Sharpton are more important to conservatives than they are liberals.
January 27th, 2008 at 9:57 am
[...] a comments thread of the previous post, SteveJ characterizes liberal policies as racist because they privilege black people and insist [...]
February 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Hey,
In the spirit of black history month and your post on colorblindness I thought I’d share a link to a short film I made about a group of young activists who use a person of color for selfish propoganda. It sound harsh, but it’s a comedy. It’s appropriately called “Color Me Blind”. Hope you enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bALpBCwvHWM
Will