On Color Blindness

 

 

Now that we have an African American president, I want to say something that's been bubbling in my liberal head for a few years. Namely, I strenuously object to other white liberals who say that they are "color blind". What is that supposed to mean, exactly? It seems to me that what they're saying is that in some uber-perspective we are all the same color. But I think that's presumptuous,the view from the Throne of God. Of course there is only one human race! But our humanity is instantiated in the particulars of our being, not in some kind of oatmeal aggregate.

 

Also, it seems to me that for a white guy to say to his black neighbor that he's color-blind is at least potentially dishonest. It's as if he's trying to erase a history of suffering and degradation through the sheer force of liberal goodwill.

 
I have to be honest here. I don't know many black people very well. Maybe I'm also wrong-headed in this. But I'm willing to bet that many African-Americans hear the color-blind dodge and roll their eyes. And I wouldn't blame them. A white guy who lays claim to this pecuiar vision impairment, whether he knows it or not, is also saying that he doesn't know anything about the Middle Passage, Jim Crow, lynchings or segregation. And he's also refusing to acknowledge the truth of black genius in art, literature and music. James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Zora Neal Hurston were all brilliantly triumphantly black. I think it's fine to recognize the African American struggle for equality as part of the larger human struggle for liberation from suffering, ignorance and control. But to deny the truth of black experience, black suffering and black genius through some liberal sleight of hand --that's just racism by another name.

 

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