#IWasWrongWednesday: Colorblind edition
A friend of a friend of a friend posted the following status update (along with the friend of the friend’s hashtag suggestion):

There’s nothing I love more than some nice self-flagellation,* so here we go. Today’s post brought to you by colorblindness.
When I was training to be a trial public defender in Massachusetts, we did a diversity exercise where white people and people of color separated to have safe and nonjudgmental spaces to talk about race. It made me deeply uncomfortable and I’ll unpack that in another post. I remember joining back together as a large group (50+ attorneys) and listening to feedback about the exercise. One thing struck me: all of the brown people had sat at the same table for the past five weeks of training, with no white people at the table, and I had NO idea.
I grew up in a colorblind kind of household. I don’t think my parents ever used that phrase, and we actually talked a lot about race (my maternal grandfather was very dark-skinned Portuguese, and my maternal great-grandfather was apparently an Albino man from somewhere in Africa)…but we never really talked about racism TODAY. Just in the past.** The only time I remember discussing race in the present tense is when my sister said she wanted to marry Michael Jordan. I was 5 at the time, and said that my sister couldn’t do that because she’s white (note: she’s actually Mexican, which adds another layer of wut) and MJ is Black. My mom was very concerned — I remember her sitting me down and asking why I thought that, and I couldn’t give a good answer.
That brings me to the room in Massachusetts. I wanted the world to be colorblind. I was PROUD of not having noticed that all of the brown-skinned people sat at the same table — it just showed that I couldn’t possibly be racist!
Slowly, very slowly, I realized that being “colorblind,” and raising our children to be colorblind, allows the racial injustice status quo to continue. (I’m not going to give you links to prove that status quo. Look at my previous posts.) Picture a box of only blue and green crayons. Blues outnumber the greens, blues are in front of the greens, blues are used more than the greens, blues are considered better than the greens, blues are taken inside while the greens are allowed to melt in the car. It’s pretty easy for the blues to say that they’re colorblind and think the greens are equal to them. It is another thing entirely for the blues to be color-conscious, to realize that the crayon box itself is not colorblind, to stop the system in its tracks, and to demand equality for the greens.
In other words, it is easy to be colorblind when you already exist in the perfect colorblind world. The problem is that “there are at the very least two worlds in America.” When you deny the existence of the second world — the world that is more impoverished and less educated and more imprisoned and faces a host of environmental and political and economic violence — you deny the existence of the people themselves.
I propose that we remove “colorblind” from our vocabularies and use instead “color-conscious.” This phrase says, “I see you. I hear you. I acknowledge your pain and frustration and happiness and joy and collective history and existence that is equal to my own.”
*This is sarcastic. Guilt as a feeling is bad. Guilt is useless and harmful. Don’t feel guilty. If you are factually guilty, do something about it.
** Mom, if you’re reading this, please don’t take offense. I certainly don’t blame you for what *I* interpreted growing up. You and Dad raised us well and I love you.
