Why Colorblindness is Not the Standard

I write briefly to respond to a podcast listener's question. He speaks for many white Americans when he asks, "What's wrong with the colorblind concept?" He asks not just because I mention in my podcast intro that I  believed incorrectly "that the opposite of racism is colorblindness." He asks because I don't address that question in the first episode and don't until episode 17, which I won't publish until the Spring. I don't address this question immediately because I believe the answers become more apparent once we recall our American story more completely.

He also asks because many whites feel bewildered by what seems to them a moving of the ethical goalposts. That feels unfair. They balk at investing more public energy on racism when they and their friends already embrace the colorblind standard.

Our white culture - in South, North, East, and West - taught us that good persons are colorblind concerning race. We've learned to quote Martin Luther King dreaming of a colorblind society, and most of us now share that dream ourselves. We actively cross racial barriers and do our best to treat folks we meet the same without regard to color.

Some of us admit there remains a visceral, emotive response when we encounter unknown persons of color that make us alert to difference. Our brains seem to force the question, "Is this person of color a friend or foe?" But our minds are actively learning to discipline that emotive response with the ethical imperative, "Don't see the difference."Many of us are doing the same mental disciplining in our encounters with different genders, too. "Don't see the difference. Treat all persons as if they are not different." Why? Because we are good citizens and share the hope that we are becoming a society where there is equal justice for everyone.

So, as my friend asked, why is colorblindness no longer the standard? We devote most of a podcast to this in Episode 17, so I will be brief here. My answer is threefold:

1. Colorblindness, as we whites often understand it, has never been the standard.

2. Colorblindness takes our eye off the ball.

3. Not colorblindness, but color vision is the standard

Colorblindness Never Was the Standard

Interpreting Scripture stripped of its context usually impedes understanding. The same is true when we interpret the words of our great leaders. The colorblindness doctrine is commonly grounded in Dr. King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Monument. He said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Context matters. He stood before our memorial to President Lincoln, who led us in our battle to liberate those we enslaved. He referred to a hundred years of our unfulfilled hope of transitioning to a multiracial society. He recalled decades of voter suppression, all-white juries, Jim Crow restrictions on where one could live, work, learn, and play. Given this context, Dr. King imagined a time when federal, state, and local laws and customs would no longer enshrine "Black codes." His topic was the rule of law, particularly unjust laws and deep communal traditions that effectively robbed Blacks of the rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

Our 36th president, LBJ, understood Dr. King's subject matter and context clearly. When he called Congress to approve the Voting Rights Act, he called all Americans to strive to "bring full and equal and exact justice to all of our people." That day, President Johnson named our standard. The calling was never to become a nation blind to each other's race. The vision always was to become a nation in which one's race never is our reason for depriving another of "full and equal and exact justice" through the laws and cultural traditions we support. The standard was and is equal justice, not blindness to difference.

Colorblindness Takes Our Eye Off the Ball

Dr. King was talking about the domain of law and tradition. Still, most white Americans today translate his dream into a standard for the space of interpersonal relations. We name that standard like it's a straightforward amendment to the Golden Rule. "Treat everyone as you want them to treat you, no matter their race."

On the surface, that sounds like a wholesome prescription. One immediate problem, however, is that it subtly changes the subject. Dr. King led us to examine our national, state, and local laws and traditions that have the impact of denying equal justice. By reducing his words to "colorblindness" and interpreting them as a standard for interpersonal relations, we shift the topic from our collective responsibilities for equal justice to responsibilities for our private headspace. We change the focus from the fairness of the laws and traditions we sustain as communities to how we individually feel and behave when we encounter a person of color.

Personal dignity and respect are essential concerns, too. Still, they are not the same concerns as  those voiced in Dr. King's conversation about the legal and extralegal structures we sustain that determine our relative abilities to share fairly, freely, and equally in our participation in the American dream. By re-locating racism concerns to the space of interpersonal relations, we take our eyes off the ball. We swing and miss because we practice hitting a whiffle ball, when it's the hardball that matters.

Not Color Blindness, But Color Vision

The move that elevates color blindness as a value we should cherish concerns me most because it is the opposite of a fundamental Christian claim about our differences.

The benevolent prescription to treat every person the same no matter our differences can harden into an assertion. I hear folks claim not merely that they treat others the same no matter their differences, but that they treat each other the same because there are no differences or, at least, that there are no substantive differences that matter.

But, from a Christian perspective, that's going in the wrong direction. As Christians, we are all called to engage in the struggle to see folks as wholly as possible in their colorful difference. Not to be color blind, but the opposite: to see folks in the fullness of their color, the fullness of their differences from ourselves.

We struggle to avoid the nihilistic move we see so often today, the unhealthy practice of annihilating or suppressing differences. We struggle with this collective  habit of pretending that our cultural differences don't matter, so we can ignore them. That is not loving our neighbor; it's indifference.

The wisdom that commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves is not an endorsement of homogeneity but diversity. It calls us to be alert to and appreciate differences and wrestle within ourselves until we can comprehend how God created those differences as blessings that sustain us.

So, colorblindness is not the standard. Instead, become more color-sensitive, have a more excellent color vision in ways that celebrate how God blesses us through our differences. Pursue a fair and equal and exact justice for all while celebrating our differences as blessings that sustain us. That's a much higher standard. And when we study Dr. King's ministry in-depth, we discover that's what he was saying all along.