Please Don’t Ask Me What Color Your Shirt Is
The colorblindness conversation
The moment I tell people I’m colorblind, I have some inevitable version of this conversation.
Me: “Oh, I didn’t realize that was green. I’m colorblind.”
Them: “Oh really, what type of colorblindness?”
Me: “I’m red-green colorblind. It’s the most common type”
Them: “Omg!” points to random red or green object “What color is this?”
Me: “Red”
Them: “Omg. How did you know?”
Me: “Well, I typically can’t tell between red and green when it’s a darker or lighter shade”
Them: points to another random object
Me: slowly sinks down into my chair from having the same exact conversation 1000 times in my life
I appreciate your curiosity about my life experience; however these questions are tired. I have had versions of this conversation many times. I’m open to talking about colorblindness and sometimes don’t mind having this conversation. Other times I feel annoyed by it. It feels like you’re asking me to perform some sort of party trick or asking a dog to roll over.
How to learn about colorblindness
If you want to learn about colorblindness, there are many resources available to you. There are even apps that can simulate several types of colorblindness for people with normal color vision. You can see how I see. I have deuteranomaly (green strong red-green color blindness).
What you should do if someone tells you they are colorblind
Every colorblind person is different in what questions they are sensitive to or annoyed by. Some colorblind people are not annoyed by any question. Here are some ways I wish people would interact with me.
On First Discovery
When someone first discovers that I am colorblind, I would prefer they ask before asking me questions about it. Saying something like, “That’s interesting to me. Do you mind if I ask you questions about it?” can go a long way. I am often willing to entertain questions, but do not always have the mental energy.
If you don’t know anything about it and would like to learn, I would love if you asked for resources to learn about it. I would point you to the apps above and look up a few articles online about the basics of colorblindness so I don’t get a barrage of the same questions.
If you’re curious how I see a certain color
I personally don’t like it when people point to things and ask me what color they are or when they ask me what color a stoplight looks. I understand your curiosity, but please download the app or do some research on your own about that one. If you ask me about what kind of questions you can ask, I will happily tell you I don’t like these questions.
I promise you I’m safe to drive — the top or left light is red and the bottom or right light is green. They thought of colorblind people when designing stoplights 😘.
If I’m wearing something that doesn’t match
There’s a rule I heard recently that I think applies really well here. If it can’t be corrected easily on the spot, it’s best not to comment about it. Like, if I am already at an event, what am I going to do if I’m not matching? I could just end up feeling embarrassed and not be able to do anything to correct my clothing.
I would recommend leaving this task to my partner at home who helps me with matching clothes. I also buy clothes that I generally know the color of — I haven’t really had too many problems with this since I was a child.
If you’re my friend
If you’re a close friend, you can ask me most anything — including pointing to things and asking me the color of them. I know what you’re doing comes out a place of genuine interest in me and not from a place of wanting to see a party trick. I would still prefer you ask before doing it so that I can tell you if I have the energy for it or not.
How my colorblindness works
For those curious, here’s some introductory information about how I understand that colorblindness works and how my particular type of color affect me:
Colorblindness occurs in about 6% of people assigned male at birth and 1% of people assigned female at birth. In my understanding, it is carried with the X gene so people who have two X genes have a lower percentage chance of becoming colorblind.
There are two types of sensors in your eyes — rods and cones. Rods sense the difference between light and dark and cones sense color. There are three types of cones that sense distinct colors of light — red, green, and blue. These three combine information together to be able to tell the difference between colors.
In my eyes, the red and the green information are interpreted in a way that they do not in a person’s eye with normal color vision. For me, this makes things that are dark or light shades of red or green look similar. Sometimes I also confuse blue and purple because of the red component of purple being less visible to me. Also, sometimes I confuse things that are grey/beige and green because my mind infers a color that’s not there or infers a lack of color that is there. For example, I didn’t know I had a green couch for like 5 years.
Colorblind People
Thanks so much for learning more about colorblindness and how it affects me. Other colorblind people, do you experience the same types of things? What other things annoy you that we can ask normal color vision people to change?
