That’s Why Colorblindness Is A Problem

Quoting Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream Speech” is a risky move.

King’s words mean an awful lot to an awful lot of people. And opinions are especially strong about how they should be interpreted.

His famous line about judging people by the content of their character, and not the colour of their skin, can be (and has been) misinterpreted to argue that any effort to fix racial disparities is anti-white. Others suggest that any policy that advocates for colour-blindness is anti-black. The truth, as it often does, lies somewhere in between.

In my article, The White People In The Comments, I leaned into Martin Luther King’s words precisely because some people are losing sight of his blueprint for a less racist world. King knew that some problems could only be solved by focusing on racial disparities. But he simultaneously dreamed of a world where those problems had been solved. Where talking about race was no longer necessary.

The goal for any genuine anti-racist, pretty much by definition, is to stop talking about racism. But we can’t get there in a single step. H wanted to make sure I wasn’t jumping the gun.

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H:

“…that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged”

I feel this is the crux of the entire issue with… let’s call it colorblind advocacy. It’s not that it’s a bad idea. I agree with a lot of what you say in this article.

The problem, however, is that white people have weaponized colorblindness against Black people. There is no greater example of this than the I Have a Dream speech, where King talks specifically about his four Black daughters living in a world where they are judged by skin color and that white people since have paraphrased into a universal message of “don’t judge others by skin color but by character.”

And by “judge,” what they mean is “talk.” Don’t talk about skin color, and everything will be fine. That includes talking about racism. Because, logically, if race doesn’t exist, then racism doesn’t exist.

So rather than confront racism, by and large, white people turn to colorblindness as a shield from criticism of racism. “That voting law doesn’t mention skin color! How could it possibly be racist? Unless you’re the real racist.”

That’s why colorblindness is a problem.

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“The problem, however, is that white people have weaponized colorblindness against Black people.”

Elton John famously observed that “sorry” seems to be the hardest word. But given my experience speaking to people about social issues, I could make a compelling argument that the hardest word is “some.”

Black people vs white people. Men vs women. Gay people vs straight people, Christians vs atheists. Wherever you draw the lines, you’ll find at least a few people blaming an entire group for the worst actions of some of its members.

The problem isn’t just that this is inaccurate and unfair. It’s that if you habitually fail to make the distinction, you eventually forget that there’s a distinction to be made. Once that happens, demonising the entire group becomes second nature. This is the foundation of all bigotry.

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Steve QJ:

And by “judge,” what they mean is “talk.”

I can't speak for white people obviously, but I also believe that we shouldn't judge people by the colour of their skin and I'm not using that as code for "don't talk about skin colour".

We've spent decades talking about colour and people still try to deflect attention from important issues which affect black people. I don't think the issue is whether we talk about it so much as whether people are interested in righting wrongs. Some are just concerned with keeping what they have and getting more. They don't care who loses out in the process. Ask 50 Cent why he voted for Trump for example.

My point here is that everybody is capable of this selfishness. Skin colour is still sadly relevant, because many systems disproportionately target one skin colour. But the skin colour of the people who oppose that injustice doesn't matter at all.

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H:

That's a fair point. I didn't believe you were arguing we shouldn't talk about skin color, but that's how I've seen white people interpret colorblindness. It's incredibly frustrating, but I also have a clearer picture of what you were saying now. I also agree that it's largely a problem of sincerity and whether people are actually interested in righting wrongs or not.

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Short and sweet.

To be clear, I completely understand H’s point. The impact of racist laws and systems didn’t vanish once the ink was dry on the Civil Rights Act or the Fair Housing Act. Black people still deal with the hangover of those injustices today.

The only way to talk about those issues accurately, the only way to fix them, is to recognise that they target people based on the colour of their skin. Not ancestry, not class, certainly not the content of their character, but the enduring delusion we call “race”.

Racial discourse is losing its way because too many so-called anti-racists have bought into the very delusion they’re supposed to be fighting. Instead of moving past racism, they want to hold our attention on it forever. They’ve come to see racism as a game where one side is either winning or losing, instead of as a game that we all need to stop playing.

Martin Luther King was saying this 60 years ago, yet some people still haven’t gotten the message. Perhaps it’s naive to think they ever will. But hey, like Martin, I can have a dream.