Colorblind = LOGIC FAIL

[megwrites]

karnythia who is made of ten different types of awesome, discusses the experience of encountering a very obnoxious person who derailed a panel by claiming she was completely colorblind.

This person went on to make one of the most fail-ridden posts I have seen in a while. Let me give you a little sample:

I did get to say that my kids go to schools that could be the poster schools for diversity. There are no two kids of the same color sitting next to each other.

Do you see where her argument of colorblindness has failed? Do you see what she did there?

If not, let me play it slow-mo for you and point it out.

If you notice that none of the kids are the same color at each other and what color they are, you cannot be colorblind. Res ipse loquitor. The thing speaks for itself. Because if you were actually as wonderfully colorblind as you claim to be (which you are not), you wouldn't notice their color enough to make that observation or be so obnoxiously proud of it as if having proximity to people of color somehow automatically means you can't be racist.

I also feel very dubious of her claims that her kids don't notice race. She quotes other examples of people who don't notice race, but never says that they told her they don't notice it. In fact, she never cites anything but her own experiences, observations, and thoughts as her justification.

She talks about an interracial couple, saying:

It was not until they went to Williamsburg on a sight seeing trip that they realized that she was white, and he was Black.

She doesn't say that this couple told her they didn't notice, and I find it hard to credit that this woman turned to her husband in Williamsburg and went, "OMG! You're black! I never knew. Why didn't someone tell me?!?"

I'm pretty sure that her "friends" were aware of the racial situation long before then, just as she was obviously aware of it. This woman is not colorblind by any means. Do the math and you'll find that she cites or mentions a particular race 37 times. 37. She obviously sees race. She's not blind to it. She notices it.

What she is blind to can be clearly demonstrated from this tidy little package of fail (emphasis mine):

We used to have a Korean and White couple as well. No one has ever mentioned a word about this. This doesn’t mean that no one ever slights them, but no one at the pool, in the mom’s groups, etc., has ever so much as mentioned the subject in front of me...even in private.

So far as I can tell, no one cares.

Leaving aside that she says "a" couple, in a way that indicates to me that they may have been the only ones she knew, there are so many things wrong with just that one paragraph.

Notice that her reason for deciding just how much racism SOMEONE ELSE experienced came solely from HER observations as a white person. She denies racism because it hasn't happened "in front of [her]...even in private". Never mind if women of color are coming to her and saying, "We have these experiences, they happened to us". If it didn't happen in front of her, it didn't happen at all.

This post never makes allowances for the limitations of her own viewpoint.

Because she didn't see them, because they didn't happen in front of her they aren't real and they aren't part of her reality. If they aren't part of her reality, they're not part of anyone else's, so anyone who tries to talk about a reality that she doesn't believe in is out of line. Anyone who tries to insist that things she hasn't observed are real and that she needs to start observing them rather than claim they don't exist is a big race-baiting meany-head.

I'm still shaking my head. I mean, seriously? Three-year-olds can figure this crap out. Just because you don't observe something doesn't mean it isn't there. Covering your eyes doesn't make something disappear, it just makes you unable to observe it. It's still there.

But that's not the worst part.

We've established that she sees race, 37 mentions of it later. We've established that she doesn't see racism unless it happens right in front of her.

And the reason she can do all this? Because she's white and she has privilege of creating a life for herself where she is not forced, against her wishes, to see it, experience it, live it. Because she is white, she is given privileges by society that allow her to shield herself from any unpleasantness.

A person of color may well want to choose not to see racism, either. They don't get that option, because they do not have privilege. Because it gets in their face every single day. It follows them home. It's on the TV, in magazines, in books, in the people around them. It's in the past, the present, and sadly, the future. It's in the textbooks and in the way companies choose to advertise and in the way they're treated by law enforcement.

I don't know what it is like to be a person of color, and I wouldn't presume to say I am some expert in racism or race relations. I'm not. I'm a semi-Clueless White Person who is slowly trying to get a clue as best she can.

What I can say is that I know as a queer, fat woman what it is like to have an issue that follows you home, an issue others don't have to think about even when their actions make your life harder than it has to be. And I know what it's like when those people try to claim they don't see it, when they try to claim that gender doesn't matter or weight doesn't matter or sexuality doesn't matter when you know damn well that it matters every single day of your life.

Comments

[irysangel.livejournal.com]

A friend showed me that link and we both commented on how for someone that doesn't 'see' race, every adjective had to do with someone's race or nationality. Sad.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Oh, it really, really is. I hate that she derailed an entire panel that was meant to address and maybe help to come up with solutions for the very problem she is propagating. Ugh.

My hat is off to karnythia, though. Because I would have gone postal by now.