No - and I have occasionally gotten that question myself. That’s asking how someone deals with a device that was engineered without his particular perceptual abilities taken into account, not asking “what color is this”? That’s actually an intelligent question, because it’s a problem any colorblind driver confronts at some point.
I have gotten a similar question about flying - the official “FAA aviation green” actually looks blue to me. As taxi-way lights are also blue I get asked how I distinguish between them and, say, the lights on airplane wings. That’s a reasonable question - the answer is that they are two different colors of blue so I have no problem distinguishing between them. That, by the way, is the FAA standard - not that you perceive colors “correctly” but that you are able to accurately and consistently identify and interpret the lgiht signals regardless of what color you perceive them to be.
A lot of the offensiveness has to do with context - the mere fact you start off making it known that you are aware that there is more than one form of colorblindness means (to me) that you questions will probably be sensible and I’d probably be willing to chat about it.
See post #19 for my definition of offensive in these matters.
From trying to explain color to my niece, I suspect many people are fascinated with colorblindness because it monkeys with their sense of reality. A red ball is a ‘red’ ball, an intrinsic property of the object. The idea that color is not a real property of an object, but is reflected light that can be interpreted in different ways depending on genetics and culture of a person, hasn’t really registered to them.
Well, I’m not colorblind. But I grew up watching only black-and-white TV.
We came to color TV very late, as a result of my parents’ feelings in the matter. So we kids were keenly aware that everything on TV had an actual color…just that we couldn’t see it.
We had very firm opinions about what color things were. Often, dramatically wrong opinions. I remember being very surprised by some of the color choices when I saw my first color Scooby-Doo cartoon, for example. We kids sometimes argued about what color a given thing was.
So I’m marginally familiar with the idea that someone who does not see color might have a guess or wrong impression. Of course, we could see color outside the world of TV, so the concept wasn’t foreign to us.
Like Broomstick, I usually get “But you can’t be colorblind, you’re a girl!” first… To which my anwser is either a brief explaination of the genetics/biology involved for me particularly, or :rolleyes: depending upon the situation.
I do get a lot of 'the question", especially around the christmas holidays… and it does get old, but mostly I just write it off as harmless curosity, and get on with the subject at hand. My most common answer is “I don’t know, I can no more explain to you what color “X” appears to be to me then you can explain to me what red looks like to you.” It makes people stop and think of a more intelligent question if nothing else.
“Can you drive” is usually next, with the standard traffic light questions, but again,this really doesn’t bother me because it’s more about the other person figuring out how something works that they never really considered before then it is about me personally.
I find that I rarely have any need to mention my colorblindness unless it’s causing a problem with a particular task. (For example in the lab I need to use a real digital pH meter, I can’t use pH testing stips because it’s hard for me to discern reliably where the test stip falls on the scale on the box. My coworkers understand why, and if a digital reader isn’t available for some reason, one of them will “read” the test strips for me).
I also get "is anyone else in your family colorblind? Well, for a woman with red/green issues the question is always “yes” - her father would be colorblind, and would have the the same type. (Unless she’s a mutant, which I suppose is possible but would be ever more rare)
Exactly. “Color” is even mentioned in our chemistry textbook as a physical property of a substance. So yeah, I’m curious. I won’t pick up an apple and ask what color it is, but (if I know you, I wouldn’t play with a stranger like this!) I might pick up an apple and a lime and ask if you perceive them as the same color. And if you say no, then I might switch the lime for an olive and ask about the apple and the olive. I’m trying to get an idea of where in the spectrum your eyes (or brain) goes, “nope, that’s the same as this”. My brain has that point too - I have no idea what the difference between ecru and eggshell is - but I want to know where your brain’s distinctions end. 'Cause it’s interesting, and I’m trying to learn more about the universe, which I think is a pretty interesting thing.
I’m like Billdo and brewha – can’t distinguish dark greens and such from browns. Doesn’t get too annoying, only occasional “What color is this?” “… Brown.” exchanges.
Quite a few of my co-workers are colorblind, as well, so we occasionally have a game of pass the pH strip 'till we find someone who can read the damn thing, but rarely any other effect.
Except: once a year, we must have a company physical. Part of that is an eye exam… with the “blotchy circles you’re supposed to see numbers in” bit. Every year – for seven years now – I have the same exchange with the company nurse:
nurse: “Oh! You can’t see them? Are you colorblind?”
Lightray: “Um, yes. It’s written right there on my chart that you are reading.”
nurse: “Oh! It is, I didn’t realize. How long have you been colorblind?”
Lightray: “Um, since birth. Like it says on my chart that you are reading.”
nurse: “Well, let’s just check to see if you’ve gotten any better than last year. We’ll do the colored pencil test.”
Lightray: stabs nurse in eye with colored pencil that looks BROWN damnit!!!
I haven’t run into too many colorblind people that I know of, but I did have a coworker who mentioned his colorblindness in passing. I did ask if he had one of the more common red/green types but no, he’s completely colorblind. My only questions after that had to do with how he chooses his clothes (he has girlfriends and sisters shop for him) and how he keeps it straight what goes with what in his closet (mostly he memorizes individual pieces and tries to keep his pants very neutral.) At that point I just asked him if he minded a suggestion, which he didn’t, so I told him that the cabled sweater he was wearing at the time was a very bright, flat, slightly orange tinted red that did absolutely nothing for his skin tone and that he might want to rotate it out of his closet because it looked like one of those Christmas sweaters that grandma’s give to kids. He thanked me and never wore that sweater again, much to the relief of the rest of us–he was a tall, broadshouldered guy and that much neon red in one place was really headache inducing. Oh, I also asked him if he ever let a girlfriend shop for him when they were fighting and he said he learned a long time ago never to do that!
I was shopping for dress shirts last weekend, and an older gentleman came up to me with a shirt in his hand. “What color is this?”, he asked. “Well, it’s kind of a dark rust brown.” “Do you think my wife will like it?” “Umm, sure, dude, it’s a nice color!”
I’m glad he didn’t ask me if it matched anything else he had, because even though I’m not colorblind, I’m totally clueless about stuff like that.
I’m one of those people. I’m sorry. It is my monkey brain taking over. (“Oooh, different thing! Poke it and see what happens!”) I’ll try to stop.
It’s plain curiosity. I wouldn’t ask it of someone I just met, but if I’ve made their acquaintance, say a FOAF or a coworker, I might want to discuss it, if it’s just in friendly conversation. Sometimes I restrict myself to “Red-green, or one of the other types?” I have been known to ask The Question, though. However, a couple times the color blind person has made a natural segue, for example: him: “Wow, that’s a great color shirt! So bright!” me: “Uh…thank you, but…it’s brown?” him: “Oh, I’m color blind, so it looks bright to me.” me: “Really, that’s interesting…[putting on my coat and holding out my arm]…what color do these stripes look like to you?”
It’s fascinating, trying to imagine what a color blind person is seeing. Don’t mean to annoy.
[QUOTE=Monty]
[ol][li]If you’re colorblind, how do you deal with people asking The Question?[/li][li]If you’re not colorblind, do you succumb to the compulsion to ask The Question?[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
Generally, my response to “I’m colorblind” is, “that would explain your shirt”.
Mrs. WeHaveCookies is a (apparently rare) colorblind woman. I am always asking her “the question” in some form or another, usually when we’re shopping for clothes or when she’s frustrated with some casual game that she playing that relies on color. She finds certain shades of certain colors indistinguishable to others, and I often ask for clarification on those certain shades so that I can better understand where her blindspots are as her partner, and to keep her from leaving REI with something that is actually lime green when she thought it was gray.
I’m just sayin’ that there are benevolent, helpful, and constructive reasons for asking.
I don’t even know what colorblindness IS. I’d definitely ask you if you can tell what color various objects are, because it’s so strange.
So do you just see everything in shades of gray, or what? Can you see colors, but you just can’t tell what they are (sort of like a nearsighted person seeing a vaguely human-shaped object but not knowing who it is?)
In my class last year was a boy that was completely colorblind, and I don’t think most of his classmates ever really bugged him about it. However, we had a foreign exchange student from Germany who was blown away by the whole concept of colorblindness. He really had no idea what it meant, and pestered the poor c.b. boy constantly with versions of The Question. I think for a while he really thought we were pulling some American prank on him. I see by your spelling that several posters are from the UK, but is there is cultural/nationality/racial component to colorblindness? Are some peoples more prone to it??
