Color blindness (sometimes spelled color-blindness; also called race blindness) is a sociological term referring to the disregard of racial characteristics when selecting which individuals will participate in some activity or receive some service.
Put into practice, color-blind operations use no racial data or profiling and make no classifications, categorizations, or distinctions based upon race. An example of this would be a college processing admissions without regard to or knowledge of the racial characteristics of applicants.[1]
This article deals with the United States, although similar phenomena exist in other cultures.
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In the United States of America, the term "color blindness" is one that has stemmed from racial-equality activists, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.. There are two general perspectives of color blindness and this schism in the term's meaning has potentially broken it down into two debated definitions. Especially among liberals, the term "color blindness" may be perceived as a technique that is either positive or negative toward racially marginalized groups: supporters of color blindness tend to perceive it as act of equality in that it involves the beneficial, deliberate avoidance of privileging any one race over others; critics tend to perceive it as an indirect act of oppression in that it involves ignoring and overlooking the privileges already bestowed upon certain races over others.
From an American conservative standpoint, color blindness is generally perceived as an issue of fairness rather than an attempt to provide an advantage to either socially dominant groups or minority groups. This view of color blindness differs from the framework presented by Martin Luther King Jr., whose argument premised on group rights, with recognition of unequal power relations between the majority and minority groups.[2] Conservative color blindness, on the other hand centers on individual rights; that individuals, not groups are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. It idealizes rhetoric and assimilation.[2] Any reference in law is therefore considered discriminatory. It is based on the assumption that racism is not a determining factor in the lives of Americans, and therefore laws passed since the African-American Civil Rights Movement have done their job, and therefore constitute Reverse discrimination against white people.[2]
The neoconservative color blind view calls for the repeal of affirmative action and other race based remedial programs, arguing that they make white people the true victims. Opponents of this view counter that such a repeal would lead to undesirable outcomes that can involve racial injustice[3] and that such policies make no sense in a society where people have been and continue to be treated differently on basis of ethnicity alone.[4]
From both perspectives, color blindness may be perceived as intending to help minorities even if critics claim that it may unintentionally harm them.
The equal opportunity approach of color blindness contrasts with positive discrimination or affirmative action that would actively attempt to favour those people considered to have been disadvantaged by historical racial prejudice, or whose racial group might otherwise be considered under-represented, for example in a university.[5]
Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute, has promoted and won a series of ballot initiatives in the states of California (California Proposition 209 (1996)), Washington (1998 - I-200), and Michigan (the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative - MCRI, or Proposal 2, 2006). California's initiative was co-authored by academics Tom Wood and Glynn Custred in the mid-1990s and was taken up by Connerly after he was appointed in 1994 by Governor Pete Wilson to the University of California Board of Regents. Each of the ballot initiatives have won, and Connerly plans what he calls a "Super-Tuesday" of five additional states in 2008.
Professor Carl Cohen of the University of Michigan, who was a supporter of Michigan's Proposal 2, have argued that the term "affirmative action" should be defined differently than "race preference," and that while socioeconomically based or anti-discrimination types of affirmative action are permissible, those that give preference to individuals solely based on their race or gender should not be permitted. Cohen also helped find evidence in 1996 through the Freedom of Information Act that led to the cases filed by Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter against the University of Michigan for its undergraduate and law admissions policy - cases which were decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 23, 2003.
Some national bloggers and internet resources who favor the "equal opportunity" approach over "positive discrimination" include John Rosenberg's Discriminations, Tim Fay's Adversity.net, and Chetly Zarko's Power, Politics, & Money.
Actor-producer-director Kenneth Branagh frequently uses race-blind casting in his Shakespearean films. In Much Ado About Nothing, he cast Denzel Washington as Don Pedro; in his version of Hamlet, Francisco, one of the sentries in the first scene, was played by an African-American; and in his As You Like It, David Oyelowo portrays Orlando. There are also several Japanese actors in the latter film.[6]
North Americans may also recall the 1997's TV broadcast special Cinderella Musical. This version notably featured a racially diverse cast, with Brandy as Cinderella, Whitney Houston as her fairy godmother, Bernadette Peters as Cinderella's stepmother, Paolo Montalbán as the prince, Whoopi Goldberg as the queen, Victor Garber as the king and Jason Alexander as Lionel, the herald.
In 1997 Leslie G. Carr published "Color-Blind Racism" (Sage Publications) which reviewed the history of racist ideologies in America. He saw "color-blindness" as an ideology being promoted in to undercut the legal and political foundation of integration and affirmative action. Mandatory affirmative action in color-blind operations has been criticised as symptomatic of a fundamentally racist society[7] For example, in her book Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America, Stephanie M. Wildman writes that many Americans who advocate a merit-based, race-free worldview do not acknowledge the systems of privilege which benefit them. For example, many Americans rely on a social and sometimes even financial inheritance from previous generations. She argues that this inheritance is unlikely to be forthcoming if one's ancestors were slaves, and privileges whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality.[8] Although, some critics argue against that notion because of the inheritance tax that is designed to prevent a transfer of wealth from generation to generation which is a tradition started when J. P. Morgan and John D Rockefeller did not leave their children an inheritance.[9]
Critics allege that majority groups use practices of color-blindness as a means of avoiding the topic of racism and accusations of racial discrimination, and thus hide their true racial views,[10] and that color blindness is used as a tool in attacking group legal rights gained exclusively by some minority groups.[2]
Critics assert that color blindness allows people to ignore the racial construction of whiteness, and reinforces its privileged and oppressive position. In colorblind situations, whiteness remains the normal standard, and blackness remains different, or marginal.[11] As a result, white people are able to dominate when a color blind approach is applied because the common experiences are defined in terms which white people can more easily relate to than blacks.[3] Insistence on no reference to race, critics argue, means black people can no longer point out the racism they face.[11]
Sociologists such as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva of Duke University and Ashley Doane of the University of Hartford describe color-blindness as a dominant “racial ideology”, or as Bonilla-Silva explains, “the collective understanding and representation produced by social groups to explain their world”.[12] He also explains that we have this new racial ideology because of events that occurred between the 1940s and 1960s that led to a change in the racial structure of the United States.[13] Thus he stresses that studying the ideologies of color-blindness is not about accusing or blaming individual people, “of finding good and bad people”, but rather looking at the "collective" understanding and representation produced by social groups to explain their world".[12] Bonilla- Silva examines the most salient "frames" of these alternative racial ideaologies and of color-blind racism. They are abstract liberalism (e.g. statements such as "I am all for equal opportunity and that's why I oppose affirmative action"),"biologization of culture" (e.g. "Blacks are poor because they do not have the proper values"), naturalization of matters that reflect the effects of white supremacy (e.g. "Neighborhood segregation is a sad but natural thing since people want to live with people who are like them"), and minimization of racims and discrimination (e.g. statements such as "There are racists out there but they are few and hard to find").[14]
Critics of color-blindness argue that color-blindness operates under the assumption that we are living in a world that is “post-race”,[15] where race no longer matters, when in fact it is still a prevalent issue. While it is true that overt racism is rare today, critics insist that more covert forms have taken its place. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva suggests that racial practices during the Jim Crow Era were typically overt and clearly racial, whereas today they tend to be covert, institutional, and apparently nonracial.[16] Another criticism is that color-blindness views racism at the individual level (e.g. Lines of reasoning such as “I don't own slaves” or “I have very close black friends” to defend oneself) without looking at the larger social mechanisms in which racism operates. In an article in the journal New Directions for Student Services, Nancy Evans and Robert Reason argued that color-blindness fails to see the “structural, institutional, and societal” levels at which inequalities occur.[17]
   | Race-Blind Racism - Dust in the Light - 09/02/2003: "Race-Blind Racism" |
| | Prof. Carl Vohen Defends Race Blind Admissions at Michigan - Prof. Carl Cohen Defends Race Blind Admissions at Michigan |
| | A Look at Color-Blindness - A Look at Color-Blindness - The Tech |
| | Tim Fay's Adversity.net - Adversity.Net Home Page |
| | Mark Halstead on racism - Mark Halstead on racism |
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