Color Blindness versus Color Brave

 

“Colorblindness is the New Racism” 

Raising Awareness about Privilege Using Color Insight

Colorblindness is a relatively new term used to explain the idea of ignoring or overlooking race. It is a learned behavior where people pretend not to notice it (Hobson). Talking about race can be uncomfortable and awkward and choosing to ignore it tends to be an easier way out. This can have lasting effects on everyone but truly has a large impact on people of color. By ignoring the problem we threaten to rob another generation of all the opportunities that all of us want for our children (Hobson).  This week’s reading provides an antidote to colorblindness, it is color insight, recognizing and talking openly about race. It serves to promote equality and to emphasize nondiscrimination among races. We need to notice our race and the race of others around us, speak openly about it, and not be afraid. There are four steps to color insight,

• consider context when talking about race,
• examining systems of privilege,
• unmasking white normativeness,
• and combating stereotyping (Armstrong & Wildman).

Examining Systems of Privilege

This weeks reading gave exercises to do with our students and I liked that about it, incorporating color insight into the classroom is an essential component to begin the step toward racial equality and justice. If students and faculty can understand the origin's for their perspective of race, they may be more willing to move from endorsing colorblindness to supporting color insight (Armstrong & Wildman).The first exercise was the power line chart by Kendall and Ansley, here they asked students to separate themselves into privilege and non privilege categories, the emphasis is on the idea that no person is purely privileged or unprivileged.   

White   educated    home owner    upper/middle class    heterosexual     Christian   able   

English first language     physical appearance      citizen         ideal weight married

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Speaks with accent     homosexual    identifies as neither man/woman     poor     woman

Non-homeowner      illegal alien      different religious views/ atheist    disable    weak     short

Non-white      renter/homeless divorced

Combating Stereotyping by looking at the "Me" in Each Individual

Looking at the "me" is each individual enables us to see the role of privilege and non privilege in all of our lives, no one person is purely privileged or unprivileged. The idea of the next exercise is for students to acknowledge that they belong to multiple identity categories and you may be privileged to some and not privileged as to others. And so, they have asked that everyone speak about their maternal grandmother and how one's ancestors came to be in the United States and what it was like to be asked, "what is your race?" Here is a my example of this exercise.

My maternal grandmother was born in Fall River, Ma. to English immigrants in 1920. They had 7 children, 4 girls and 3 boys. They were very poor, lived in a tenement house down the globe, but her father always made sure to ask what my grandmother wanted for dinner each night. My grandmother was the only one to graduate high school, BMC Durfee HS class of 1938, she was very proud. She was intelligent and athletic, she used to tell us stories about when she was a young girl, her teachers would always call on her to answer questions, Ms. Sherman they’d say. And my grandmother could do calculations faster than a calculator and I can always remember her correcting our English! She played basketball and volleyball and even in her later years she would love to watch the Chicago Bulls on TV, I guess it must have been the Michael Jordan era. I can remember her saying that “black people were good people and that they’re better than the whites.” She obviously saw all the wrong in the world, and didn’t agree with it. My grandmother met my grandfather on a double date, he pulled up in his Ford and she said his beautiful smile was her first attraction. At the time she was working in a factory but when my grandfather learned of the working conditions, he did not find them suitable for her and she left that job. From then on she became a house wife raised 5 children and answered the telephone for my grandfather's business. Every Sunday she went to her sister's house down in Fall River, they would sneak cigarettes', she never admitted to my grandfather that she smoked, (that was always a funny joke for us). On Mondays she would meet her sister-in-law at Nights of Columbus to play bingo and that was the highlight of her week. She passed away in 2003 at 83. 

This authors Armstrong and Wildman argues that, people generally want to see an end to discrimination, but unless people, specifically white people, recognize privilege and take responsibility for it then discrimination will never end. The author urges society unmask colorblindness by speaking openly about race.

Don't put people in boxes

“As long as educators, particularly legal educators, and students fail to question the dynamics of whiteness and privilege in antidiscrimination law, the legal system will reinscribe the privilege and perpetuate discrimination. Identifying and understanding whiteness should be an essential component of education in the US” (Armstrong & Wildman).