Colorblind…People are just people.” ”I don’t see color.” ”We’re all just human.” Source; Atlanta Black Star
By Anat Shenker-Osorio | Originally Published at Blue Nation Review. August 21, 2014
Among the many more serious horrors of Ferguson telecasting America’s racism, we’re treated to white people’s inability to discuss race. Inevitably, no matter what people of color are facing, cue the white theme song “But I Don’t See Race.”
First, some science: If you possess a human brain, you not only see, but you formulate judgments by race. Not only does race constrain our ability to recall and differentiate among faces and constrain empathy for physical pain, it structures our desired responses to public policies.
Yet, despite these proven effects race has on our reasoning, there’s one situation in which white speakers are right, they don’t see race. When they’re looking at other whites.
When whites walk into an all white setting, it’s just any Tuesday. When people of other races are just among themselves (outside a family gathering), they tend to remark upon it. Spend some time behind the two-way mirror of focus groups like I do as part of my living and one thing becomes clear – white only for whites is so much the default, it’s not even noticeable. For other races, however, to talk just among themselves it’s a rare and remarkable treat.
In a recent series of focus groups on perceptions of race and gender, we showed different groups an all white image and asked them to discuss it. None of the white folks remarked upon the lack of people of color but for the African American, Latino and API groups it was the first thing they said.
Consider, as another example, how we label people of color “minorities” regardless of the proportion they make up in a group. “Majority-minority country”, far from being oxymoronic, is a very clear indicator of just how whites think of ourselves when we’re alone. No matter how many of us there are, we’re the majority.
Enter another image, this one the public relations firm the City of Ferguson has hired to help manage the fallout of its racism. It’s bad enough that the institutional response to state-sanctioned killing of an unarmed team is to have someone write talking points. But look at the crew they’ve brought in for this job.
These look like the headshots for a Lifetime movie casting call. Where’s Olivia Pope in this picture? And it’s not just that no group of professionals in a firm in America ought to look like this one. The job they’re being asked to do specifically concerns the lack of alignment between a population and the people paid to serve it. So, as a solution, you double down on the problem?
Far from continuing the farce that we don’t see and actually judge and condemn by race, it’s time to face some hard truths. The race we don’t see is our own and it keeps us from understanding our privilege and thus others’ lived experience of baked-in, perpetual, harms.
Anat Shenker-Osorio researches language and perception and is the author of Don’t Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense About the Economy Follow @anatosaurus on Twitter
This piece was reprinted by EmpathyEducates with permission or license. We thank the Author, Anat Shenker-Osorio and Blue Nation Review.
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