Uppity Brown Woman wrote an excellent post on how simply being colour-blind (“I don’t see race”) will not end racism but instead keep everything just the way it is:
If, say tomorrow, 20 January 2009, North America suddenly decided that the solution to all of the racial tensions and racism is to ignore that race exists, well, a lot of people are going to be pissed off. Everything will stay the same. Maybe people will hurl less racial epithets at one another (white people will be glad to know they’re no longer crackers), but essentially it will stay the same. Those with white privilege and power can comfort themselves in knowing that they don’t think race matters, and people of colour will be at a loss for how to articulate subtle racism and discriminations they experience on a day to day basis. We can’t ignore what matters. Racism, in all its forms and nuances, exists and has material effects. Race will become irrelevant only after a fundamental change in the way we think and the way our institutions are structured.
Read the whole thing at Uppity Brown Woman.
It should be a must-read for every white person in North America because most of them do not seem to understand this.
I found out about this post from Womanist Musings (Thanks, Renee!).
See also:
- Being “colour blind” is NOT a solution – the post at Uppity Brown Woman
- Black get back red go head yellow stay mellow – a video on the same thing on Siditty’s blog.
- colour-blind racism – the kind of racism that most white North Americans practise, taking the place of the old Jim Crow racism in the 1970s.
- Jim Crow – what most white people seem to think of when you say “racist”.
Abagond 
Race will become irrelevant only after a fundamental change in the way we think and the way our institutions are structured.
Translation: “only when WE are in charge, cracka”. Why should any sane white person acquiesce to that?
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Race cannot become fully irrelevant because it is a biological reality. The most recent fruit of the American obsession with equalizing collective racial outcomes is the current recession.
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Thanks for the article. This needs to be posted on every blog. Just because President Obama is in office doesn’t mean that racial inequality magically disappear.
Steph
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Wow nonserviam, it must be hard to breathe with your head stuck that far into the sand. Changing the system doesn’t mean turning its racial hierarchy upside-down; it means working to level it. As for race being a biological reality, the minute biological differences between the races do not account for gross ongoing racial inequities. Ideology does. There are more biological/genetic variations within races than there are between them. Your white supremacist dreams are just that, phantasmal apparitions.
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Race is a collective phenomenon (hence fuzzy boundaries), and collective traits follow a statistical distribution known as the bell curve.
Genetic variation within the races accounts for their bell curves (normal distributions) overlapping, but that doesn’t render the differences between the races nonexistent or irrelevant.
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Race actually isn’t a biological or scientific reality. It’s a social construct.
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I think you’re confusing the object with the description. It’s the taxonomy of human biodiversity that have been somewhat arbitrary (socially constructed) in the past. The human biodiversity itself is very much real.
One of the proofs of that reality are the consequences of its denial.
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And what do you think those consequences are, nonserviam?
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Wasteful and counter-productive social policies, for one.
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nonserviam: How do you tell the difference between the effects of race as something inborn, like how you are thinking of it, and race as the effect of living in a racist society, the way Blanc2 is thinking of it?
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First, I do not subscribe to your wildly expansive definition of racism.
Second, environmental factors, such as they are only go so far (~30%, in the case of intelligence).
But let’s assume, arguendo, that macon d is right and genetic variation within races makes the concept of race meaningless, an arbitrary “social construct”. Once race is removed from the equation, the idea of human potential and human limitations being partially rooted in biology becomes much less “controversial”, does it not?
Then why such an obsession with “levelling”?
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Once race is removed from the equation, the idea of human potential and human limitations being partially rooted in biology becomes much less “controversial”, does it not?
It does and it doesn’t, depending on whether one is asserting that they’re partially rooted in biology at the individual level, or at the group level. At the individual level, yes, it does become less controversial. But we’re talking groups here.
The obsession is not with “levelling.” It’s with accounting for, fixing, and compensating for oppression. Oppression brought about by supremacist ideology, and not by supposed biological superiority.
So. Are you saying blacks in America generally occupy subordinate positions–as American society defines social positions–relative to whites because they’re genetically inferior to whites? That this supposed genetic inferiority is about 70% responsible for that general social subordination? And that the many examples of brilliant black people, and of brilliant collective black cultural, political, educational and so on achievements are just exceptions to a generally inferior norm among them? And do you also think that the general argument of a book like The Bell Curve makes sense? I’m still trying to figure out just where you’re coming from.
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And do you also think that the general argument of a book like The Bell Curve makes sense?
Short answer: yes.
Why would biological rules suddenly stop to apply at the group level?
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Ah, just as I thought. You’re coming from the ironically simplistic end of the spectrum on these things.
Why would biological rules suddenly stop to apply at the group level?
Because as I said before, there’s more variation within groups than across them. Black people as a group just aren’t as different biologically from whites, Asians, Native Americans and so on as you and other Bell Curve acolytes think they are. Test scores, for instance, vary across groups because they’re a culturally biased measure, as I’m sure you’ve heard. Here, take a look at this cleverly succinct explanation.
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Not as clever as you may think.
Just one possible counter-argument:
The nation of Fiji is dominated by the descendants of slaves brought by the British from India. The Melanesian natives of Fiji were not enslaved; yet they mostly remain today the lowest class. The British also brought Indian slaves into Kenya but never managed to enslave the native Kenyans; yet many descendants of those Indian slaves have remained in Kenya and today they are wealthier than the native Kenyans. In Suriname, black slavery was abolished in the 1800s only to be replaced by the importation of indentured servants from India, and today the Indians essentially run the nation.
Malaysia has a system of “affirmative action” for the Muslim majority. The Chinese minority is socioeconomically hurt by those measures much less than the Indian one. Not coincidentally, the former group has a higher mean IQ than the latter one.
Notice that none of the examples involves the white devils.
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What? Who said anything about “white devils”? I’m not the essentialist, you are.
The examples you cite are more explainable by cultural factors than by biological ones. A “higher mean IQ,” for instance. As measured by what? Oh right, tests. Surely you’re aware of the heightened emphasis placed on formal education and “book learning” in certain cultures?
Anyway, this is a sort of chicken-and-egg argument that’s just going to go round and round in circles if we continue. You’re an essentialist, I’m a social constructionist, with too little common ground between us. From my side of the gap, I’ll borrow from James Baldwin to say to you that if you are socially categorized as white, then as long as you think you “are” white, there’s no hope for you.
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macon d: “white devils”, etc – nonserviam is yanking your chain. He tends to be condescending, sarcastic and inflammatory like that.
On the other hand he does seem to be a scientific racist of sorts like Steve Sailer, an essentialist as you put it: blacks and Mexicans are at the bottom of American society because they just are not as good as white people. They were born that way. It has very little to do with the racist whites who run almost everything.
Where I would say that over 90% of whites are racist – because they view the whole world through racist glasses as a part of their culture – I believe he would put it at less than 10%.
He thinks American society is pretty much a working meritocracy. He is dead serious about that. If you assume that then, yes, of course, there must be something wrong with black people (as a whole)!
That at least is my understanding of his position.
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The examples you cite are more explainable by cultural factors than by biological ones.
That is a false dichotomy.
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What then is the right way of looking at it?
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Physical differences, gender, language, ethnicity and nationality are always subject to become relevant because they exist.
Of course being color blind isn’t solution.
I would distinguish innocent perception from having too much faith in artificial archetypes.
One of the most common and most often mis-guided ideas, for instance are ideas of differences in group behavior.
Visiters to peoples of colder climate (North China, Europe) would note they rarely bathed (in the China case they bathed once a year and with a festival to boot), and in the European case attributed this to them just being an uncouth type as they also according to what was observed gargled in puke/spit bowls, and there were also accounts of ceremonial bestiality in King coronations, warriors who wore hides of men and animals and drank from cups made of their skulls, and warriors who painted themselves blue — this goes from ancient to approaching medeival times.
The writers obviously in one case (Rome) were writing propaganda, and in others (such as Arab and Greek) were simply not considering how or why certain practices came to be. I’m sure in sub-arctic conditions bathing, outside of in hot springs, isn’t going to be a cakewalk.
The ironic thing about tying in group behavior and phenotype (which are most often tied together, perhaps for an intuitive reason) is that social code is probably the most malleable aspect of our species — just contrast Cancun party people with the Puritans of early colonial America. Or contrast many of the cultures in tropical forested Africa (many, analogous to “Christian values”) – to eachother
So yes, we should perceive things without restrictions, because by all means one’s perception is simply one’s perception. We just have to realize that even prejudice can be a restriction (which, unlike racism, may never disappear).
As a non-archetype iconoclaust for a young guy my age and color, i just think perceptions should be sold as perceptions, instead of some sort of abstract law.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_eagle
http://www.murphsplace.com/owen/arthur/celts.html
hit “ctrl + f” and serach “would be nailed to the”
http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Scythians.html
(# 64)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1179576/Child-torturers-A-special-investigation-chilling-modern-phenomenon.html
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Oh, sorry, forgot to clarify: the above was to add to my earlier point, and some of it is “graphic”.
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Race is a social construct, and sooner the world gets rid of it, the better.
However, saying “race doesn’t exist” doesn’t change anything. It looks like some people (mainly white, I guess) think that avoiding words like “black” or “white” will stop racism and make race nonexistent.
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Hi Nonserviam
Sorry everyone again…Perhaps another tautologyha ha ha
Can you work it out from below…
With regard to:
“Not as clever as you may think.
Just one possible counter-argument:
The nation of Fiji is dominated by the descendants of slaves brought by the BRITISH from India. The Melanesian natives of Fiji were not enslaved; yet they mostly remain today the lowest class. The BRITISH also brought Indian slaves into Kenya but never managed to enslave the native Kenyans; yet many descendants of those Indian slaves have remained in Kenya and today they are wealthier than the native Kenyans. In Suriname, black slavery was abolished in the 1800s only to be replaced by the importation of indentured servants from India, and today the Indians essentially run the nation.
Malaysia has a system of “affirmative action” for the Muslim majority [LOOK TO THE BRITISH he he he]. The Chinese minority is socioeconomically hurt by those measures much less than the Indian one. Not coincidentally, the former group has a higher mean IQ than the latter one.
Notice that none of the examples involves the white devils”.
And I come from there too…sorry guys
Back to the subject topic
Being ‘colour-blind’. Some would argue this ‘concept’ has not worked in Latin America.
Perhaps Thaddeaus or Ana may wish to comment here, being in a far better position to do so…
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Colour blindness might not be a solution in America, but I think the American situation is completely different to that in Europe, I grew up in London, in an ethnically mixed community, racism existed but it was a frequently directed ar other Europeans as it was colour based. I haev heard a Black Old Etonian say the most appaulling things about the French. The leader comment on Europe I think was slightly misguided, America is still living in the shadow of segregation, Europe isn’t. Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island’ has a black woman in it owning a pub in southern England, hundreds of years ago. The British being and Island community can be colour blind and prejudice against everyone who is not British, colour mixing seems to be far more prevalent, cultural mixing less. As someone in a mixed marriage I would be far more worried about taking my African wife to America, than to Britain ( I might be wrong, but being British I have a preconceived notion about Americans), i have the impression that a mixed marriage would be more stress full in some parts of the states than in Central London, where these days it seems to be the norm. I am not saying that coulour racism does not exist in the UK . it does, but cultural racism is far more pronounced, a whits skinned Muslim is far more at risk that a black skinned england football suporter
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My white husband and I felt more comfortable traveling together through Europe than we feel at home. The stares we got in NYC were shameless. In Europe, no one cared.
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If it were truly a colorblind society, how would there still be subtle racism? you’re like contradicting yourself, there. being color blind is the solution to racism. as long as people are hung up about “races”, there will be racism. being color blind doesn’t mean that you don’t acknowledge the current reality, that people get mistreated or treated better, because of their looks. it just means that you see each person as the individuals they are, and not what society says they should be like, because of their color
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