Everything about Color Blindness Race totally explained
Color-blind (sometimes called
Race-blind) is a term describing activities undertaken and services provided without regard to the
racial characteristics of those who participate in an activity or receive a service.
In color-blind operations, there's no use of racial data. An example of this would be a college processing admissions without regard to or knowledge of the racial characteristics of applicants. In this case of college screenings, having color-blind operations is fair, not allowing minority groups or others to be discriminated against.
This
equal opportunity approach contrasts with
positive discrimination or affirmative action that would actively attempt to favour those people considered to have been disadvantaged by historical racial prejudice, or whose racial group might otherwise be considered under-represented, for example in a university.
Mandatory
affirmative action in color-blind operations has been criticised as symptomatic of a fundamentally racist society For example, in her book
Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America Stephanie M. Wildman writes that many Americans who advocate a merit-based, race-free worldview don't acknowledge the systems of privilege which benefit them. For example, many Americans rely on a social and sometimes even financial inheritance from previous generations. This inheritance, unlikely to be forthcoming if one's ancestors were slaves, privileges whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality.
White people often adhere to practices of colorblindness as a means to avoid the topic of
racism and accusations of racism, and thus hide their true racial views. Color blindness is the most effective tool of
conservative movements in attacking legal rights gained by minority groups.
Conservative Color blindness
Conservative color blindness differs from the framework presented by
Martin Luther King Jr., whose argument premised on group rights, with recognition of unequal power relations between the majority and minority groups.
Criticism of Color blindness
Critics assert that color blindness allows people to ignore the racial construction of whiteness, and reinforces its
privileged and oppressive position. In colorblind situations, whiteness remains the normal standard, and blackness remains different, or marginal. As a result, white people are able to dominate when a color blind approach is applied because the common experiences are defined in terms which white people can more easily relate to than blacks. Thus he stresses that studying the mechanisms of color-blindness isn't about accusing or blaming individual people, “of finding good and bad people”, but rather looking at the larger framework in which people view and interpret social relationships and interactions. where race no longer matters, when in fact it's still a prevalent issue. While it's true that overt racism is rare today, critics insist that more covert forms have taken its place. Another criticism is that color-blindness views racism at the individual level (for example Lines of reasoning such as “I don't own slaves” or “I have very close black friends” to defend oneself) without looking at the larger social mechanisms in which racism operates. Color-blindness fails to see the “structural, institutional, and societal” levels at which inequalities occur.
While the ideal that race shouldn't “matter”, critics say, is certainly not a bad thing, but the problem lies in asserting that race shouldn't be taken into consideration even when trying to address inequality or remedy past wrongs.
Bonilla-Silva lists four main frameworks in which color-blindness operates: “abstract liberalism, biologization of culture, naturalization of racial matters, and minimization of racism.” themes from political and economic liberalism, such as meritocracy and the free market, to argue against the strong presence of racism. It is also often used in discussions of affirmative action. The principle of laissez-faire emphasizes a “hands off” policy in terms of the government's involvement with economic activity. When applied to issues of race, it results in people being for equality in principle but against government action to implement equality. Unlike Jim Crow racism, which was based on the notion of biological inferiority, laissez faire racism emphasizes cultural inferiority. The rhetoric of the “level playing field” also stems from similar free market ideologies.
The “biologization of culture” explains the inequality among race today in terms of cultural difference. Where disparities were once explained in terms of biology, they're now being discussed in terms of culture. “Culture” in this framework is seen as something fixed and hard to change. In this rhetoric, blacks and other minority groups are blamed themselves for not 'making it', as other groups have. This doesn't take into account the historical context in which certain groups were able to make it.
Similarly, certain frameworks “naturalize” aspects of racism, used commonly in discussions of residential and school segregation. For example, using this framework one would say it's simply natural that people of the same race would tend to live together, that it's “just the way it is”. This viewpoint, however, ignores the possibility of other factors underlying residential segregation such as the attitude of realtors, bankers, buyers and sellers.
In a recent publication of academic journal
Communication Theory, Jennifer Simpson proposed a “more productive dialogue about race” based on her understanding of the elements of dialogue. As a historically situated idea, a new dialogue of race must acknowledge the how racism is currently experienced. In order to be productive rather than reproductive the new dialogue must also take a more complex look at race, openly looking at all different perspectives on race. As dialogue is a means of empowerment, it should take into account how all experiences contribute to our understanding, particularly those experiences very different from our own. Finally, Simpson states that whites must be willing to openly engage with people of color in discussing the ongoing effects of racism today. However, this requires white people to participate in “communicative behavior that may threaten simultaneously their sense of self and their material power in the social order”. It also assumes that white people would be willing to make changes after understanding the consequences of the current dominant colorblindness discourse and the impact of embracing a more productive dialogue.
Notable Supporters of Color-Blindness
Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute, has promoted and won a series of ballot initiatives in the states of California (
California Proposition 209 (1996)), Washington (1998 - I-200), and Michigan (the
Michigan Civil Rights Initiative - MCRI, or Proposal 2, 2006). California's initiative was co-authored by academics Tom Wood and Glynn Custred in the mid-1990s and was taken up by Connerly after he was appointed in 1994 by Governor Pete Wilson to the University of California Board of Regents. Each of the ballot initiatives have won, and Connerly plans what he calls a "Super-Tuesday" of five additional states in 2008.
Professor
Carl Cohen of the University of Michigan, who was a supporter of Michigan's Proposal 2, have argued that the term "affirmative action" should be defined differently than "race preference," and that while socio-economically based or anti-discrimination types of affirmative action are permissible, those that give preference to individuals solely based on their race or gender shouldn't be permitted. Cohen also helped find evidence in 1996 through the Freedom of Information Act that lead to the cases filed by Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter against the University of Michigan for its undergraduate and law admissions policy - cases which were decided by the
U.S. Supreme Court on
June 23, 2003.
Some national bloggers and internet resources who favor the "equal opportunity" approach over "positive discrimination" include
John Rosenberg's Discriminations
,
Tim Fay's Adversity.net, and
Chetly Zarko's Power, Politics, & Money.
Actor-producer-director
Kenneth Branagh frequently uses race-blind casting in his
Shakespearean films. In
Much Ado About Nothing, he cast
Denzel Washington as Don Pedro; in his four-hour
Hamlet, Francisco, one of the sentries in the first scene, was played by an African-American; and in his
As You Like It,
David Oyelowo portrays Orlando. There are also several Japanese actors in this film.
Further Information
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