I have heard people saying the phrase “I don’t see color” for maybe the last ten years or so. I suppose it means something like “I try to see beyond race, see a person as an individual”. (Because it is clear that they are not referring to literal “color-blind” medical condition. Has anyone else noticed this phrase getting used lately?
I’ve heard the phrase many times. Whether I believe the person or not depends on past encounters.
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Yes, I don’t use it (although maybe I have, but not normally) but I don’t presume anything about a person based on skin color other than knowing how other people may treat them because of their skin color. I think people mean something like that when they use the phrase but I don’t always believe them. Also it sounds kind of stupid. I like the sentiment, so it would be nice to have a more sensible phrase to describe that. Maybe something profound about the color of a person’s character instead of the color of their skin.
It was popularized by Stephen Colbert, in his character the blowhard Stephen Colbert. He claimed that he literally could not tell what race a person was by looking at them. He would ask guests to confirm that they were indeed black.
Whether or not you believe them, the phrase is often intended to mean that the individual doesn’t notice the race or ethnicity of the people they encounter. In other words, it doesn’t occur to them to judge someone based on race because they have no awareness of it to begin with.
Yep, and that he assumed he was white because police officers were polite to him.
“I don’t see [insert physical attribute]” is just a way of declaring yourself to be non-judgmental about things other people did not choose to have/be
I’ve got to think it got currency in the satiric or sarcastic sense.
I am not always oblivious about race, but I can be. There have definitely been times when someone has asked me about the race of so-and-so (usually there’s some contextual reason, like Described Behavior X in Scenario A would be more understandable if the person were of this or that race, because of how Scenario A would be likely to resonate with them or how other folks in Scenario A might perceive the person), and I realized I didn’t know.
It’s not always that way, don’t get me wrong, I’m not sufficiently oblivious that I’m perpetually clueless about a person’s race, but there are a lot of people with ethnic physical characteristics that don’t unambiguously fit into the klunky broad categories we call race, and I appear to be at ease with not designating them, which I think is probably a good thing.
I would think “color blind” would be that sort of thing but extended to the point that folks just don’t categorize other folks habitually as being of this or that race – that they just don’t make that designation in their minds.
It is something people say about themselves that I communicates something to me that is the opposite of what they intend. A person says they don’t see color when they believe they aren’t guilty of harboring racial prejudice. But when I hear someone saying something like this, I assume they are likely in denial of their racial prejudice. If you can’t even aknowledge that we look different, then you’ve probably got some issues.
I work with a guy who is in his late 50s/early 60s, born and raised in Virginia. He’s a nice guy, but he’s one of these “I don’t see color” people. I don’t care who you are, if you were born and raised in the South and you’re a Boomer, there’s just no way you can not see race. Sure, you can totally despise racism and bigotry, but I don’t think it’s possible for you to not see race or have it not affect your perceptions, even if it is just in harmless, innocent ways. One day, my coworker and I were eating lunch together and he said to me, “I don’t see you as a African American. I see you as monstro.” I shrugged. It’s not like I see my coworker as only WHITE GUY. But I am not blind to his whiteness. His whiteness doesn’t keep me from liking him as a person. I don’t have to pretend that we look the same for me to get along with him. And that’s what I think people are unintentionally communicating when they say “I don’t see color”. They are sending out the message that for us to live in harmony, we can’t acknowledge our differences, even the most superficial ones. Or worse, that only bad people see race, which means merely talking about the social reality of race means you get painted as “part of the problem”.
I don’t use this phrase but if I did use it, it would probably be for those times when I’m interacting with someone and completely forget their race and/or ethnicity. Not to “brag” but I grew up in a multicultural neighborhood and race never meant a lot to me. There are times when it slips my mind as I’m talking to someone what race they are which isn’t always a good thing. I once worked for an Indian tribe and there were clear politics based on whether a person was Indian or not. I just treated everyone the same and tried to do my job, but that didn’t fly with some people, and I’d forget that the rules applied differently depending on a person’s race.
(Which believe it or not is 100% legal, some rules about racial discrimination, like parts of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, don’t apply to Indian tribes.)
So again, in my case saying “I don’t see race” means “I forgot who I’m dealing with” and was a bad thing.
I can’t remember who it was, but I recently heard a stand-up bit on one of SiriusXM’s comedy channels, where the white (yes, it’s germane) comedian recounted an exchange he supposedly had:
Comic: “Hey, what was the name of the black guy who just left?”
Other Guy: “WHOA! Hey man, I don’t see color!”
C: “It’s okay… I’m black.”
OG: “Uh, no you arent.”
C: “Ah-haaaa!”
I never watched Colbert, but the phrase was popular before him.
Pertinent wiki article: Racial color blindness - Wikipedia
I wasn’t offering him as a data point or suggested that it started with him, this was just the most popular example I knew of. Regardless, your link appears to be about institutional rules that avoid making race a factor, not so much individual humans who claim to be able to ignore someone’s race.
I would never say that I don’t see color, but I am fascinated by how many people can always tell what race someone is.
Certainly, most of the time I can tell – but not always. This seems to particularly come into play when the person is Hispanic. If they don’t speak with an accent, I often don’t know if they are Hispanic or Italian or Greek or – oddly enough and with some regularity – Asian. I remember once while in the San Diego area, I saw a man walking down the street who was fairly short and quite slender with almond-shaped eyes, and dark hair. His skin tone was darker than a white person’s, but that could I thought easily be a suntan. When I passed him i realized he was speaking Spanish on his phone and my immediate reaction was, “Boy, that Asian guy seems fluent in Spanish.” It was only later I realized he was likely Hispanic.
Once one of my nephews made a comment about “that Asian actress on Dollhouse.” I thought a moment and said, “There’s no Asian actress on Dollhouse.” He looked at me like I was nuts.
“Yes, there is. She plays Sierra.”
“Wait a minute. She’s Asian?” Until that moment it never occurred to me that Dichen Lachman is Asian. I just thought she was very pretty in an interesting kind of way.
If I saw Trevor Noah on the street before he started hosting The Daily Show, I’m not sure I would have recognized him as African.
And yet it seems to me that most Americans can tell someone’s race at a glance.
I have a lot of trouble identifying people in general and remembering what they look like, and race certainly enters into that in the sense that when talking about a stranger or someone I don’t know well, I often can’t remember their race, or any of their identifying physical characteristics (skin color, facial features, etc.) I would be an absolutely terrible eyewitness, and am always impressed when I see a story about someone picking a person out of a lineup, or identifying them from an artist’s sketch, which would be very difficult for me.
OTOH, I certainly know the race of people I know well or see on a regular basis.
So I would say that in the literal sense, I often don’t see color, but in the metaphorical sense of having an understanding of race, and having that subconsciously influence my actions, I can’t say that I don’t see color.
Don’t know if you’ve been diagnosed as (or identify as) “face-blind,” but that issue sprang to mind when I read the OP. Prosopagnosia - Wikipedia
(I’m “bad with faces” myself, but not to the degree people with prosopagnosia describe.)
I remember seeing a PBS documentary not too long ago. I’m not sure what the overall theme was, but the particular scene was about the civil rights workers in the early 60s, in particular SNCC, which was both black and white students. One of the white guys started expounding to his black co-worker: “You know, when I’m here with the kids and we’re all working for the cause, I just don’t see color anymore and sometimes I even forget whether I’m white or black.” (That was a paraphrase). His black co-worker looked at him skeptically and just said “You white”. I think that at least part of what he was trying to say (and he communicated volumes with just those two words) was that when you’re really black [in the south, in the early 60s] you don’t forget what color you are.
Ha! I’ve never known a non-white person to say “I don’t see color”. It’s probably happened, but not within my hearing.
Oh, I’ve heard people say it. It sounds to me like some self-congratulating nonsense. I’m so evolved in my consciousness that I don’t even notice what color skin people have. If I really felt like responding, I’d say something like “there must be something wrong with your eyes, then.”