[IBARW] Anti-color-blindness 101
Aug. 9th, 2007 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksIt's the second annual International Blog Against Racism Week, and link roundups can be found at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ibarw. My entry from last year is here. You can find interesting and thought-provoking entries this year from, among many others, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oyceter (whose brainchild this is: thank you again, Oyce), kate_nepveu, nojojojo, coffeeandink... and that's things I thought of without looking at the link roundup.
So. This year I've seen a lot of discussion about the concept of 'colorblindness'. One of the things that many people say, sometimes more and sometimes less politely, when the concept of white privilege and of being privileged because of one's race is mentioned, is summarizable as "but going on about how various people are privileged is nonsensical, because emphasizing the ways that people are treated differently detracts from the long-term goal of having everybody be treated the same-- we should all be color-blind, and not see race or ethnicity at all in any way when we're interacting with people and making decisions, that's the goal here, right?"
Well, firstly, if that were the goal, I don't think that discussion of how the concept of colorblindness is failing to work on a day-to-day basis, and how people are treated differently every day because of their skin tones, nationalities, and perceived ethnic groupings would undermine that.
But, and this is the real point of this entry: no, that's not the goal. There are two goals shoved together conceptually in that idea, and they are completely different goals which do not work together.
Let me break it down: the goals I stated in the phrase in quotes above were
1) everybody should be treated the same way, regardless of ethnicity, race, national background, etc.
2) we should not pay any attention to race or ethnicity at all in case doing so skews our judgement, in order to accomplish goal #1.
1) is, in fact, the goal, the point, the entire rationale of anti-racism work and in fact of all anti-discrimination work: treating all human beings equally, because all human beings are equal by virtue of being human.
The problem with 2) can best be summarized by a sentence from Madeleine L'Engle, a sentence that forms the entire point of A Wrinkle In Time: "Like and equal are not the same thing at all."
All human beings are equal. All human beings are different. The problem with 'colorblindness' as a conceptual practice is that when one attempts to practice it, one winds up treating everybody the way that one treats persons who have exactly the same background and react exactly the same ways that one does oneself. And, if one is white middle/upper-class American, this means that one tends to default to white middle/upper-class American, a default that is made even easier by the fact that popular culture considers it 'normal'.
And this 'normal' is not color-blind. It is in fact highly discriminatory. Let us take, for example, dialect. I can't speak it or write it, but I know black English when I hear it. It is a dialect; it has its own vocabulary and it has its own grammar. It can be spoken well or badly. It can be spoken respectfully or insultingly.
And the most grammatical, rhetorically precise, respectful, lyrical, downright gorgeous black English ever written is not going to fly on a job application for a Fortune 500 company, because the white upper/middle-class norm is coded to see this dialect as grammatically incorrect, lower-class, and inappropriate for a job application-- and possibly inappropriate for writing at all.
If you are operating by trying to be color-blind-- let's say the job application form you use to hire does not specify the race of the applicant-- you will still assume that the applicant who is writing in black English is less literate and less educated than the one who is not. You will assume this person cannot write an English sentence, unless you are yourself familiar with the dialect, or unless you are consciously trying not to make this sort of assumption, which can be difficult to do when there are so many people out there who actually can't write an English sentence.
You are just as likely to hire a black person as to hire a white person using this race-not-given form, provided that the black person is writing in the dialect you perceive to be correct and professional.
Now, I grew up speaking the dialect that is considered to be correct and business-professional. I had no trouble learning it; I just had to be told what levels of formality to use at what times. It's my native tongue, and it's easy for me. To a person who is a native speaker of black English-- or of Southern English-- or of the Ozark dialect (just askozarque-- the dialect I grew up speaking may literally be a second language, and is almost certainly a learned behavior, with a level of conscious performativity to it.
The way that 'colorblindness' works in the job market at the moment tells these people: you can be treated just like everyone else, as long as you discard your native dialect.
I've never had to do that personally, but I would think it would be difficult and painful-- and at certain income brackets and in certain environments, how is a person supposed to learn the 'more acceptable' dialect in the first place, even if they want to? For that matter, why is the dialect that is more acceptable more acceptable? Because it's white upper-class academic, that's why.
There are lots and lots of examples like this, everywhere. Every day.
And this is why 'colorblindness' doesn't work. If I am aware that the people I am interacting with speak a different dialect of English than I do, and I accept that that dialect is an interesting, useful, and innately valid form of English, which is equal in every way to mine, and I learn something about how that dialect works, I will be able to tell when people who speak to me in that dialect are literate, intelligent, and rhetorically fluent, and then I can make my hiring decisions based on that. This is what diversity training is supposed to do: teach a person what the likely cultural differences they may run into are so that they do not default to a non-inclusive idea of normal.
The assumption behind 'colorblindness' seems to be that if we notice a difference at all, we will judge against a person based on that difference.
It doesn't have to be that way. Equal does not have to be the same as alike.
It is hard work to fully acknowledge that practices that are completely different and sometimes utterly contradictory to what one's own culture teaches are absolutely equally as valid. We are taught that they are not all the time, and there's also a large set of scenarios which are extremely morally ambiguous and difficult to deal with (female genital mutilation: native cultural practice? Yes. Hideous, discriminatory, and something that ought to stop ASAP? Hell yes. Change that has to come from within the culture that practices it? Oh yeah; if I go and tell people to stop it, they will quite rightly ask me who the hell I think I am-- but, as an equal, I can try as hard as I like to convince people that it is a bad idea).
But that is the goal, right there: to treat everyone equally because of who they are, and not in spite of it, or without acknowledging it. To find any dialect of English as valid as any other, and to judge merit by how well a person uses it, and to apply this principle in all of the thousand other places it needs to be applied. To accept, and not to overlook.
To respect.
That is what needs to be fought for.
ibarw. My entry from last year is here. You can find interesting and thought-provoking entries this year from, among many others, oyceter (whose brainchild this is: thank you again, Oyce), kate_nepveu, nojojojo, coffeeandink... and that's things I thought of without looking at the link roundup.So. This year I've seen a lot of discussion about the concept of 'colorblindness'. One of the things that many people say, sometimes more and sometimes less politely, when the concept of white privilege and of being privileged because of one's race is mentioned, is summarizable as "but going on about how various people are privileged is nonsensical, because emphasizing the ways that people are treated differently detracts from the long-term goal of having everybody be treated the same-- we should all be color-blind, and not see race or ethnicity at all in any way when we're interacting with people and making decisions, that's the goal here, right?"
Well, firstly, if that were the goal, I don't think that discussion of how the concept of colorblindness is failing to work on a day-to-day basis, and how people are treated differently every day because of their skin tones, nationalities, and perceived ethnic groupings would undermine that.
But, and this is the real point of this entry: no, that's not the goal. There are two goals shoved together conceptually in that idea, and they are completely different goals which do not work together.
Let me break it down: the goals I stated in the phrase in quotes above were
1) everybody should be treated the same way, regardless of ethnicity, race, national background, etc.
2) we should not pay any attention to race or ethnicity at all in case doing so skews our judgement, in order to accomplish goal #1.
1) is, in fact, the goal, the point, the entire rationale of anti-racism work and in fact of all anti-discrimination work: treating all human beings equally, because all human beings are equal by virtue of being human.
The problem with 2) can best be summarized by a sentence from Madeleine L'Engle, a sentence that forms the entire point of A Wrinkle In Time: "Like and equal are not the same thing at all."
All human beings are equal. All human beings are different. The problem with 'colorblindness' as a conceptual practice is that when one attempts to practice it, one winds up treating everybody the way that one treats persons who have exactly the same background and react exactly the same ways that one does oneself. And, if one is white middle/upper-class American, this means that one tends to default to white middle/upper-class American, a default that is made even easier by the fact that popular culture considers it 'normal'.
And this 'normal' is not color-blind. It is in fact highly discriminatory. Let us take, for example, dialect. I can't speak it or write it, but I know black English when I hear it. It is a dialect; it has its own vocabulary and it has its own grammar. It can be spoken well or badly. It can be spoken respectfully or insultingly.
And the most grammatical, rhetorically precise, respectful, lyrical, downright gorgeous black English ever written is not going to fly on a job application for a Fortune 500 company, because the white upper/middle-class norm is coded to see this dialect as grammatically incorrect, lower-class, and inappropriate for a job application-- and possibly inappropriate for writing at all.
If you are operating by trying to be color-blind-- let's say the job application form you use to hire does not specify the race of the applicant-- you will still assume that the applicant who is writing in black English is less literate and less educated than the one who is not. You will assume this person cannot write an English sentence, unless you are yourself familiar with the dialect, or unless you are consciously trying not to make this sort of assumption, which can be difficult to do when there are so many people out there who actually can't write an English sentence.
You are just as likely to hire a black person as to hire a white person using this race-not-given form, provided that the black person is writing in the dialect you perceive to be correct and professional.
Now, I grew up speaking the dialect that is considered to be correct and business-professional. I had no trouble learning it; I just had to be told what levels of formality to use at what times. It's my native tongue, and it's easy for me. To a person who is a native speaker of black English-- or of Southern English-- or of the Ozark dialect (just ask
ozarque-- the dialect I grew up speaking may literally be a second language, and is almost certainly a learned behavior, with a level of conscious performativity to it.The way that 'colorblindness' works in the job market at the moment tells these people: you can be treated just like everyone else, as long as you discard your native dialect.
I've never had to do that personally, but I would think it would be difficult and painful-- and at certain income brackets and in certain environments, how is a person supposed to learn the 'more acceptable' dialect in the first place, even if they want to? For that matter, why is the dialect that is more acceptable more acceptable? Because it's white upper-class academic, that's why.
There are lots and lots of examples like this, everywhere. Every day.
And this is why 'colorblindness' doesn't work. If I am aware that the people I am interacting with speak a different dialect of English than I do, and I accept that that dialect is an interesting, useful, and innately valid form of English, which is equal in every way to mine, and I learn something about how that dialect works, I will be able to tell when people who speak to me in that dialect are literate, intelligent, and rhetorically fluent, and then I can make my hiring decisions based on that. This is what diversity training is supposed to do: teach a person what the likely cultural differences they may run into are so that they do not default to a non-inclusive idea of normal.
The assumption behind 'colorblindness' seems to be that if we notice a difference at all, we will judge against a person based on that difference.
It doesn't have to be that way. Equal does not have to be the same as alike.
It is hard work to fully acknowledge that practices that are completely different and sometimes utterly contradictory to what one's own culture teaches are absolutely equally as valid. We are taught that they are not all the time, and there's also a large set of scenarios which are extremely morally ambiguous and difficult to deal with (female genital mutilation: native cultural practice? Yes. Hideous, discriminatory, and something that ought to stop ASAP? Hell yes. Change that has to come from within the culture that practices it? Oh yeah; if I go and tell people to stop it, they will quite rightly ask me who the hell I think I am-- but, as an equal, I can try as hard as I like to convince people that it is a bad idea).
But that is the goal, right there: to treat everyone equally because of who they are, and not in spite of it, or without acknowledging it. To find any dialect of English as valid as any other, and to judge merit by how well a person uses it, and to apply this principle in all of the thousand other places it needs to be applied. To accept, and not to overlook.
To respect.
That is what needs to be fought for.
