Color Blindness and Racism

Abagond blogs:

On the one hand, to hold on to their unfair position and advantages in society, to their white privilege, and feel right and good about it, whites had to believe racist lies. Like that blacks lacked brains or a willingness to work hard.

And yet, on the other hand, they knew that racism was wrong.

So in the 1970s whites reached a fork in the road: either give up racism and its advantages, in pride, position and wealth, or hang onto racism by becoming blind to it.

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Whiteness and Trust

Macon D. blogs:

Unlike a lot of non-white people, most white folks think that the world sees them as trustworthy, reliable, and honest, unless they do something to prove themselves otherwise. White people can dress in a variety of ways or wear a variety of adornments or tattoos that will lower the level of trust other people are likely to place in them. What they rarely realize, though, is that their whiteness itself often provokes mistrust. And that it does so for some good reasons.

[Hat Tip: Not Like Crazy…]

Looking into Ward

Carmen Van Kerckhove blogs:

The latest issue of Ms. Magazine, which hits newsstands today, has an interesting investigative report on Ward Connerly. It’s definitely worth a read.

(Those of you who have been with this blog since the Mixed Media Watch days may remember a regular feature we used to do called Ward Watch, in which we would affectionately refer to him “Moneybags”.)

Who’s Ward Connerly? Well, he’s a self-identified multiracial man who has made millions over the years by helping right-wing interests dismantle affirmative action.

Only he’s managed to do it by pretending to advance the rights of people of color. Like when he tried to fool multiracial organizations into supporting his initiative to do away with all racial classification (which would, not coincidentally, make it impossible to track racial discrimination).

Invisibility of Whiteness

Carlo Montemayor, a blogger at Double Consciousness and fellow Blog Bullet editor, blogs on the invisibility of whiteness and on some comments that Oprah “transcends” race since most of her audience is white:

What the writer here implies is that Oprah’s personality as well as her show are “race neutral” because most of her viewers are white. Likewise, Obama has opted for a more “universal” (meaning white) appeal. “Transcending race”, according to the writer, means tailoring your image and persona so that it appeals to mostly white people — as if whites do not belong to a racial group. Because both Oprah and Obama are now reaching out to blacks, their actions are viewed as racial.If we are truly aspiring to achieve racial justice then we need to look at racism (and by that I mean a system of ideas embedded into our institutions which gives whites unearned advantages over people of color) as a white problem rather than just a problem that people of color face.

Is Blogging Just A Game?

Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez posts an essay (which is making it’s rounds in the blogosphere) about racism in the blogosphere and blogging being an avenue for change, along with many other issues, in his blog The Unapologetic Mexican:

Any black or brown person who becomes political and stands vocally for Brown or Black Pride must become adept at handling the inevitable response. When people’s bedrock views on race and place and culture and national identity are offended, they do not always respond directly. In fact, as we all understand on an intellectual level that it is Wrong to Hate on Minorities for being a Minority (exercising rights that whites expect defaulted to themselves) it is the one motive that is never stated, even when it is involved. I know this because I deal with many of these responses in the course of my writing. To the one dropping the comment—For you, talking about race is a necessity; for us, it is a luxury was a mild but telling one—their words are very cutting and original. But they do not realize how many times we see and hear these familiar hateful shapes dressed loosely in various iterations of transparent garb.

“White” People of Color Bloggers

Donna writes:

I won’t name names, because I am not interested in starting a new flame war. But these white POC bloggers tend to not write about racial issues but say things like, I am glad I can talk about anything, and not race, because my readers are colorblind. Psst, the only reason your readers are colorblind is because you do not talk about race. Or their racial posts boil down to, “Oh my, racism is bad and a problem, what do you (white folks) think?” And then bails from the conversation, does not give any direction or insight, because the white POC has none. They actually sound the same as clueless white liberals who want to start a discussion about race to make themselves sound like they care, but they haven’t done the research, read and/or commented on POC blogs, or have actual relationships with POC in the real world, to know anything because they don’t really care. These white POC don’t care either, they got theirs and that’s all that matters. But they know that their white fans are expecting something and have to throw them a shallow, cursory, post about race that makes everyone feel good and enlightened.

“White” People of Color Bloggers

Donna writes:

I won’t name names, because I am not interested in starting a new flame war. But these white POC bloggers tend to not write about racial issues but say things like, I am glad I can talk about anything, and not race, because my readers are colorblind. Psst, the only reason your readers are colorblind is because you do not talk about race. Or their racial posts boil down to, “Oh my, racism is bad and a problem, what do you (white folks) think?” And then bails from the conversation, does not give any direction or insight, because the white POC has none. They actually sound the same as clueless white liberals who want to start a discussion about race to make themselves sound like they care, but they haven’t done the research, read and/or commented on POC blogs, or have actual relationships with POC in the real world, to know anything because they don’t really care. These white POC don’t care either, they got theirs and that’s all that matters. But they know that their white fans are expecting something and have to throw them a shallow, cursory, post about race that makes everyone feel good and enlightened.

Color-Blindness

Magniloquence writes a three part series on color-blindness, the first part being personal, the second part being more academic, the third part tying it all together, in her blog Feline Formal Shorts:

Part I:

Again. Discussions of privilege and the shameful lack of diversity on our über progressive campus occur. Racism is categorically denied, not just by admissions, but by students at large. Walking down the path to class, I overhear a loudly spoken remark between two girls, vehement: “Well if black people don’t want to come here, we don’t want them here!” Carefully not looking at me, but loud enough that I couldn’t miss it. After all, who wouldn’t want to go there? Our school was wonderful, and if students of color weren’t applying, accepting, or staying, well… that was just because they couldn’t hack it, or weren’t interested in our intellectual culture. It couldn’t possibly be a hostile environment. Nobody said anything about race. “True” diversity is all intellectual, anyway… we shouldn’t be focusing on anything as unimportant (and racist) as race.

Again, and again, and again.

I listened to my friends complain whenever race came up. I listened to my boyfriend gripe about me bringing it up again. Nevermind that I was a sociology student, and it’s kind of a big part of my field. We’d achieved equality. That there were some bad people out there, well.. that sucked, but it didn’t mean we had to keep talking about this race thing. Or that gender thing. We were just being mean to the rich white straight guys. He was being silenced. He was unwelcome. He didn’t see race at all. Why did we have to? Wasn’t that just paving the road for racism?

Part II:

1) It paints “color” as the problem. The problem is coded as race, not that people are racist.

I don’t want to be not black, I want not to be a problem. When you say “I don’t think of you as black,” you are ignoring me, plain and simple. I am black. That’s part of who and what I am. As Nezua (paraphrasing Rafael) said: “if you are COLORBLIND, then you don’t see my struggles.”

It is not my fault that race relations are fucked up. If you cannot simultaneously think about me as being a person of color and a regular person, a friend, a smart person, a potential employee, or what have you, that is your problem and you need to fix it.

2) It doesn’t address the underlying power structures. By pretending everyone is white, it implicitly casts “white” as better than any “race.” It just moves everyone into the same category, without addressing how and why those categories are constructed, or what might be messed up about constructing hierarchies the way they currently are.

3) It relies on the framework of white as the unmarked default. It only really works if you agree that the dominant cultural paradigm here is not a white one, and that white isn’t a racial and cultural framwork at all. Because otherwise, it would be “whitewashing,” and not “colorblindness.” You can only pretend to ignore race as long as you steadfastly deny any racial taint in the system you want everyone to hew to…

Part III:

I would love to see a world where we didn’t have to be blind to anything. Where we weren’t ignoring difference or making it unimportant, but actively celebrating it. Where being brown could be as important to a person as being a dancer or a blogger or a mom, and just as recognized by friends. And yes, as irrelevant to hiring and loan applications and school attendence as being a dancer or a blogger (or a mom, in theory, though we’re not exactly there yet on the motherhood front either). A good thing to be valued and explored, not something to move out of the way so we don’t trip over it. I’d like that.

But we’re not there yet, and I’ll take what I can get. If that’s focusing on individuals to the extent of not caring about race, that’s a start. If that’s pretending that race is as unimportant as eye color, that’s a start. If it helps bring about a world where I don’t have to worry about my children being teased, or held back, or hurt… then it’s a good start.

The Monikor of Race

angry black woman responds to a question of why she calles herself an angry black woman instead of just an angry woman:

If I chose to, I could pretend to be not black. Or, I could choose not to mention my race at all. At which point people would assume whiteness because, as we all know, White is the Default. (ahem) What would the point be in doing such a thing? Well, for some people, knowing that the person they’re interacting with is the ‘other’ makes them defensive. They get nervous that they’ll say the wrong thing, or they see a criticism and automatically assume that they are being personally criticized. Plus, there are lots of assumptions people put on black people. Just knowing my race, some might be inclined to take a guess at my level of education, background, and current financial situation. If I didn’t specify my race, folks might not come here with all these assumptions and associations.

A Dinner Conversation

Debbie, who blogs at Body Impolitic, is reminded of something that Bonilla-Silva wrote about color-blind ideology during a dinner table conversation she had.  Quoting Bonilla-Silva:

One of the most important elements of contemporary racism is the emergence of the “colorblind ideology.” The colorblind ideology asserts that color is not important and should not be the basis for social judgments. The key problem with colorblind ideology is that it is an abstract principle that does not hold true in practice (Bonilla Silva 2001).

There is also a good comment that clarifies this issue at the bottome of the page by Jonathan Korman about the author’s use of the term “racialism.”

Color-Blindness and Racism

The blogger of mnemosyne writes a book review on Doane, Ashley W. and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, eds. White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism. New York: Routledge, 2003.  In it she says:

this book was not going to be like most of the books i’ve read on whiteness. pleasantly, i was not disappointed. not only is ‘White Out’ a book on whiteness that doesn’t center on whites, it exposes the racism of color-blindness, something both whites & poc espouse, although whites are most likely to engage in color-evasive language. “What appears to haunt these color-evasive accounts, then, is the understanding that recognizing race might be construed as racist. But why is it that recognizing one’s culpability in racist practices,…is so difficult to acknowledge?”