Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The substance of what you have been saying in the past exchange comes down to:
1. White people do not want to discuss race.
Agreed.
2. White people frequently deflect serious conversations about race by asserting they are colorblind.
Agreed.
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Sure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The sole area of disagreement I had with you, which was not even really a disagreement (and I noted in what I wrote that it was specifically not intended to, and did not, refute any of your points), was in stating the following:
I do not think that all people who profess to be colorblind do so as a dodge. I think a lot of people actually believe that is how they should be behave and try to behave that way for the best of reasons. Is that really controversial? |
You are completely focused on intent. There are times (and I gave you an example with Trump (and Kelly Ann Conway is employing the same approach on her rounds as well as we speak--"The question is racist") when people intentionally use the concept of colorblindness to end any real discussion on race. And they do it because it works with white people.
But--and here's where you get stuck because you have determined already that being colorblind is the best way to be--the problem with the concept of colorblindness is that it is impossible. I gave you the reasons why--namely, we are programmed from very early on which races are supposed to be superior and then we reinforce that hierarchy in absolutely every possible way in this country. Therefore, in reality, one simply cannot be colorblind. Anyone who says they are is lying.
You shift to an argument where we need to
strive for colorblindness. Surely this in not controversial. In theory, in a vacuum, no. But the conditions in which colorblindness can exist will never come about. You then mention some distant future in which there will be no such thing as race. Fun to think about in a freshman-in-college-smoking-weed-after-sociology/anthropology-class sort of way, but beyond that, pointless.
Your underlying point about how it is something to strive for is a common refrain. I challenge you to think about why anyone would focus on the idea of colorblindness when the concept is completely unnecessary if there is no racism. If there is no racism, we wouldn't treat people differently based on race prejudice. Cultural and physical differences wouldn't be deemed negative simply because of who possesses them. So the concept is impossible in our current reality and completely unnecessary in future-world in which racism doesn't exist.
Once it is clear that the concept has no use outside of what people use it for
right now, we need to address
why people use it right now. It sounds good to say, "I don't see color." The inference to be drawn is that you don't (or don't want to) make decisions based on color. That's where we all want to be, right? This is your main point.
But this isn't true for anyone, so it serves to act as a barrier to a genuine conversation and any efforts toward actual change. If someone refuses to acknowledge that their decisions are
always influenced by how they have been conditioned by a lifetime of programming when it comes to race, one cannot have a productive conversation with that person.
And to be clear, I don't exempt myself from that conditioning. I see it in myself all the time. I am extremely light-skinned and I find myself trading on that and expecting better treatment because of it. It disgusts me, but it's there.
The book runs through a number of examples of people applying this good/bad binary through color-blindness to squelch conversation and to shift the focus away from them being a bad person. I don't know if you will read it with an open mind, but it would be interesting to have this conversation again after you have.
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You also said: "I do not agree with the definition of racism having nothing to do with intent."
I never said this. I cannot believe you got this from anything in our conversation. I said it has become almost impossible to discuss or address racism with white people because they have limited racism to something that only bad people do. Once they feel like they are put in the "bad people" box, no conversation about what they did or said can be had because they are so focused on defining themselves as a good person (thus the term "fragility"). Hell, you can't even talk pure numbers and impact because any such discussion is immediately turned back towards how the white person was raised or who their ancestors are or how they came from nothing, etc. Do you see what I'm saying? The goal is to remove "intent" from the conversation when we would like to talk about impact. White people cannot do this because they don't want to be labeled bad and because of that, any practical discussion beyond how that white person is not bad is impossible.
There are surely people who are intentionally racist. I skip over this here because it is not at issue. As we know, implicit bias, confirmation bias, etc. are examples of ways in which how we've been conditioned influences our decisions unintentionally.
Unconsciously. We need to be able to discuss things like that with white people without having every conversation get stuck on how they feel like they are being attacked for being "bad."
TM
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