Going to have to disagree. I’d likely agree if you said our goal should be for our society to be as color blind as possible. But so long as society is so very un-color-blind (and it very much is), an individual becoming color blind means they can easily fail to see just how differently society treats people of differing colors and then not work to fix that discrepancy because that particular individual just doesn’t see the problem.
Pretending disparities in the treatment of different races don’t exist when they do, or doing nothing about them, or just making yourself blind to them doesn’t help anyone.
Where problems are noticed, they should be addressed by government policies and awareness of the problem, and one thing I’ve actually thought is great about the more recent conversations on race is that a lot of things I was unaware of are coming to my notice. But I don’t agree that the solution is to take race into account more when making decisions. To use an example, it’s better for me to look at a bunch of applications without knowing the race of the applicants than to do so with that information and consciously using it to select applicants. The first makes bias a lot more difficult for me. The latter forces me to embrace bias and somehow make it “good”. I just don’t think it’s possible for people to function well that way. What we’re seeing is people being put into hierarchies because of it, and that is just not going to be very helpful.
For everyone saying it’s not racist, just know that if you use that phrase, especially with a minority, you will likely be perceived as racist. So, if that’s how you want to be perceived, go for it. Or, understand that the message the other person will receive will not be “I’m not racist” but rather “I don’t care about your problems” and adjust your phrasing accordingly.
You won’t have a debate forum where you can go through all the nuance and why you really aren’t racist. What will happen is the other person will check the racist box and that will be the end of it.
People can’t read your mind and word choice matters.
It’s one of those expressions that you don’t hear black, Asian, Indian, Native American, and Hispanic folks say. It’s something only white people say–white people who aren’t hip to notions like privilege and unconscious racism.
It’s not offensive (at least to me). It’s just stupid.
One day, a coworker’s realtor mother was going to pick me up and take me to look at some houses. I told her to look for me–the tall-ish, slender-ish, light-skinned black woman–standing on the corner in front of my office building. Later, I playfully told my coworker that’s how I identified myself to her mother. She totally freaked out on me. WE DON’T TALK ABOUT THINGS LIKE THAT!!! Another coworker cosigned. Very calmly, I explained to them there is nothing wrong with mentioning race in that particular context, but they insisted that there is. Seriously, you would have thought I had described myself as a chinky-eyed nigger or something, the way they were going on.
I later decided I wasn’t ready to buy a house, but I probably would have felt uncomfortable using this woman’s mother as my realtor. Housing discrimination for black folks is real. I don’t know how I’d feel working with a realtor who had instilled in her kid that it is wrong to ever mention the dreadful r-word. I want a realtor (or any professional, for that matter) who knows they probably have shitty unconscious associations they need to work against. That requires being able to speak honestly about reality, even when it makes you uncomfortable.
You’re right, but that’s also silly and wrong. “I don’t care about your problems” is not racist, it’s just not giving a damn. For all you know, the person equally doesn’t give a damn about anybody, his own people included.
Part of the problem is calling being wrong or clueless or insufficiently vigiliant against racism “racist”. Expanding the definition of racism so that we have more racists is also not very helpful. It will not have the effect on people’s behavior that some are hoping for. Unless they actually are trying to piss people off and make them stop trying.
But when the problems in question are specifically ones affecting some racial groups more than others (because that’s the context we’re talking about, right? a white person saying “I don’t see color” with respect to racial issues?), then it does come across as kinda racist.
“I don’t care about your problems [caused by racial prejudice that doesn’t negatively impact me]” implies, at best, an indifference to racism on some level, even if the speaker is sincere about not wanting to be intentionally racist.
I agree it can be confusing to conflate deliberate, intentional racism of the KKK sort with unintentional enabling or condoning of racism due to pervasive racist influences in society rather than conscious prejudice. But what word should we use for that latter kind of thing if we want to reserve “racist” for the former kind?
Personally I find terms like “white-privileged” or “privilege-blind” helpful, but many people get very upset about them.
As a white person myself, I don’t consider those who use the phrase to be racist. I have, however, noticed that the only people who claim not to see color are those privileged to not HAVE to see color. If you can’t see that color DOES matter to some people, and that some people’s skin color DOES cause them problems with other people, then your life has probably not been spent around too many people of color.
I actually like them, when properly used, and with the knowledge that we all enjoy privilege and to a varying extent we all experience discrimination. When discrimination becomes all about power, absolving people on the bottom for their hate, it becomes a problem. A good example is a gay student at a college who recently spoke out against oppression of gays in Muslim countries was disciplined. “No place for that kind of speech here!” But why are Muslims more important than gays? And who gets paid to decide that?
But to get back to the original point, thinking in terms of privilege really helped me to think about race in a way I hadn’t before.
Believe it or not, there are many people who don’t have the luxury of not caring exactly how racist different people in a pervasively racist society may be.
For some people, the question of whether an individual they meet is an outright KKK-white supremacist type versus an ordinary complacent privilege-blind type versus a more self-aware pro-social-justice type can have a major impact on the outcome of their encounter.
Just because nobody in a pervasively racist society can entirely escape racist influences doesn’t mean that the extent and type of individual racism levels is unimportant.
There are contexts where I can relate to that. For one, my wife, who is black, female(obviously), and disabled, faces more discrimination for disability than anything else, by far.
And that quote from Shalmanese above should be a good guidepost. Stop worrying about your self-image and start worrying about racism in our culture. This is not about you. Stop trying to get yourself absolved from racism. We live in a racist society. Putting effort into individually being perceived as non-racist is not helping anyone.
I don’t see color as well as other people. By that I mean that I seem to see a larger percentage of people as racially/ethnically ambiguous than most people do. If someone were to create a test that involved looking at images of different people and identifying their racial/ethnic background, I would score significantly worse than average.
I don’t know whether or how that makes me more racist or less racist than I otherwise would be. But some people don’t react well to “I didn’t know you were X.”
How often do you find yourself saying this and how exactly does the conversation get to this point? I can’t think of many common contexts for which this would be a common result.
“stop trying”? I don’t understand your logic here. Why do you assume that because someone does not want to be labelled racist, they must also have no interest in fighting racism? Or maybe they’ll expend all their energy on protecting their reputation and have none left for being an agent against discrimination.
I think racism is a corrosive and despicable influence in society and actively act against it where I see it. Because I see it as so malign I will also fight against that label being thrown about willy-nilly thus diluting the concept. Lazy, unthinking categorisation is the same mindset that allows prejudice to spread in the first place.
We should all be actively critical of any bullshit accusations and at the same call out the bullshit of racism. Both efforts are important.
How does that work? People should know that at least some of their fellow citizens are not racist and will treat them fairly and without discrimination. The more people that can honestly say that and show that must surely be a net benefit to society? Lazily painting everyone as racist is unhelpful in the extreme and the Kafka-esque “only a racist would say they aren’t racist” only adds fuel to the fire.
If you really mean that “people shouldn’t say that they aren’t racist and therefore have no further obligations on the matter” then I’d agree but you should be clear that that is what you do mean.
I guess I’d rather be perceived by my friends and acquaintances as not racist or racist and recovering. It’s OK with me if you want to present yourself as someone who doesn’t care about other people and their actual problems.
That’s all I’m saying here – whether you’re racist or not, some phraseology will come through as uncaring at best, racist at worst. So, heed the advice to think before you speak or don’t, but there’s an actual reality here and us arguing whether that phrase is actually racist won’t change how it’s perceived.
I have been on the other end of this comment. The last time I heard it, someone finally mustered up the courage to ask about my ethnicity, and when I told them, they responded that they didn’t know. This person figured I was Hispanic. Which is always kind of weird to hear, seeing as there is no “Hispanic” race, but whatever.
FWIW, it didn’t bother me. Being interested in a person’s racial classification doesn’t signify anything bad all by itself. Also, while sometimes it can be awkward to be asked “what” you are, I prefer it better than tip-toeing around the topic. Like when people ask where are you REALLY from after you’ve already given them an acceptable answer. That is way more annoying, IMHO.
It is possible to be unintentionally racist just as it is possible to be an unintentional thief or unintentional rapist.
However if most rape was unintentional rape then the problem would be pretty much solved.