I follow a lot of people on Facebook and Twitter from all across the political spectrum and over the last year I’ve seen a big rise in the number of POC who consider the phrase ‘I don’t see color’ to be offensive. I am (or rather, I think I am) quite sensitive to racial issues but I must confess to being puzzled about this one. I’ve read some articles written by POC which explain why they find the phrase offensive, but it seems to me that their arguments all hinge on interpreting the phrase in the least charitable way possible.
The least charitable way to interpret the phrase is to take it to mean ”You and I are exactly alike in every respect. There is nothing in your culture or the shared history of your people which makes you different from me in any meaningful way. Therefore, I have no need to do anything to help fix any structural inequalities you, as a person of color, may deal with or acknowledge the role I may have (however small) in perpetuating these inequalities because I don’t see color’.
The most charitable way to interpret the phrase is simply to treat it as shorthand for ”I try to treat everyone as an individual”. And the thing is, I’m convinced that’s what most people mean when they say ‘I don’t see color’. And isn’t that the goal? To treat people as individuals to the best of our ability?
If, as I strongly suspect, most people who say ‘I don’t see color’ simply mean ‘I try to treat everyone as an individual’, is it really right to consider it offensive?
You can’t treat someone as an individual without seeing what makes them an individual and not part of some colorless collective.
People say “I don’t see color” as a way to feel and demonstrate what they think is moral superiority over people who take different cultures and backgrounds into consideration when dealing with people.
Doesn’t that require them to use the uncharitable interpretation? If a person says ‘I don’t see color’, that person is speaking only for themselves. Unless there’s something in the speaker’s history that causes the black person they’re addressing to doubt their sincerity I see no reason for a POC who doesn’t know the speaker to doubt their intentions.
For instance, imagine I went on Colbert tonight and, during the course of the interview, I said “I don’t see color”. I guarantee that thousands of POC who don’t know me from Adam would be excoriating me as a racist (or, at the very least, accusing me of racial obliviousness) on social media within the hour. This, despite the fact that all I would mean is “I try to treat people as individuals”.
MLK said he wanted a future in which people would be judged on the basis of their character, not their skin color. Strangely enough, many who invoke MLK seem to want the opposite.
Anyway - I think the OP’s point about most and least charitable interpretations was good - those who like the phrase will see it as “Let’s treat people as people and have race not be a factor.” Those who are offended will see it as, “Let’s ignore the fact that some races face disadvantages.”
The phrase “I don’t see color” frames racism as an individual issue and posits that all that is required of an ally is that they individually do not perform any racist acts to sufficiently support POC. This framing is morally convenient as it allows white people to feel absolved while not expending any great effort but it’s also selective blindness as it fails to grapple with the true nature of racism in today’s society.
If any of these “I don’t see color” people had bothered to actually seriously engage with a POC on the topic of racism, they would understand that the main form of discrimination is not individual actions but systematic racism and that it requires active dismantling. “Not seeing color” ranges from ineffective to actively harmful in a society where everyone else sees color and that has to be taken into account. As a trivial example: You can compliment a white person by saying they’re articulate and they can take that compliment at face value but you can’t “not see color” and give the same compliment to a black person because you’re failing to engage in the complex legacy that word has in the black community. That’s a relatively clearcut example but most other examples are far more murky and require you to grapple with complex sociology and history.
Whenever I hear someone say “I don’t see color”, at best they’re someone who hasn’t talked to many people who experience racism and have chosen to remain ignorant about the reality of racism. At worst, they’re in active denial and every time someone has pointed out how they do see color, they refuse to see it because their self-image of being “not racist” is more important to them than actively working towards racial equality.
ISTM that a phrase like “I don’t see color”, like “I have lots of black friends”, is objectionable not for its literal meaning but for its connotations of smug obliviousness and arrogance.
Sure, many people genuinely believe that they “don’t see color” in that they “try to treat everyone as an individual” without regard to race. But what they’re really saying, even if they don’t realize it, is “I personally don’t have to worry about racial prejudice in my own life, so I’m not going to go to the trouble of being aware of it when I deal with other people. And I’m going to present this selfish and lazy attitude as a virtuous rejection of racism.”
Likewise, when people say “I have lots of black friends” as a defense against being perceived as racist, what they’re saying is “I shouldn’t be judged on the issue of racial prejudice as long as a few individual black people find me personally likeable. As long as I’m not so virulently anti-black that no black individual would be willing to befriend me, that’s all that should be expected of me on the grounds of racial justice.”
To me, hearing someone say, “I don’t see color” seems to be what I would call “aspirational virtue signalling”.
Do they want to be “colorblind” in the best sense of the word? Maybe, probably. I don’t begrudge them their desire to do better.
But, by making this statement, do they want to signal to others that they are “colorblind” in the best sense of the word? Yah, most definitely.
As we have seen there are people who will make all sorts of claims about themselves that are dubious, thinking that by saying it, it becomes true - saying it doesn’t make it so.
Reminds me of a documentary I saw about the civil rights movement. It was early 1960s, and some white, northerner college students were participating in voter registration drives in the South. One white guy says to his black co-worker something like “When we’re here, working with the families and the kids, I can’t even remember if I’m white or black anymore”. The black coworker looks at him kind of funny and says, simply: “You white”.
As a child and much of this is carried into adulthood*, there was no ‘colored’, it simply did not exist, just people.
*even today I am told by those I help that they didn’t expect a white person to help them and even that i was putting myself in danger for doing so (by those I help). 50% of the time I still don’t recognize their color, as I see them as humans.
I pray that I revert to my childhood where 100% were simply humans and God continues to protect me in that colorblindness in my love for humanity, as I have heard horrible stuff which I wish not to experience.
In my experience the people who deny the existence of racism or sexism are usually among the most racist and sexist. So in that regards, I wouldn’t consider it offensive but it would make me assume they probably have very conservative views on those issues.
I have evolved far beyond not seeing color or even gender. I am enlightened to the point where I don’t see species. People scoff at me when I tell them this. Or maybe they’re crows and that’s just the sound they normally make.
I’d like to notice skin color as casually and innocently as I notice hair color, but everyone talks so much about color and racism that I have become more aware of it. I feel like the world is conspiring to make me stupid.
Yup, recognizing the societal issues that are enmeshed with all the things that in our innocent childhood we thought were just unimportant random differences is part of becoming an adult. As John Mace noted, you can’t un-grow up.
It would indeed be very nice if we lived in a society where racial differences had really receded into social insignificance, the way that, say, left-handedness or red-headedness mostly (though not entirely) have done already. Maybe in a couple hundred years or so future generations will be able to have that experience.
We don’t live in such a world at present, and we won’t get there faster by trying to remain oblivious of racial issues.