The Privilege of “Color Blindness”
*** Content Warning *** This piece discusses in detail and examples of acts of violence/sexual violence and other material that may be considered graphic.
Something I’ve seen a lot of this past week is the discussion and argument over the statement “all lives matter” being said in response to the Black Lives Matter Movement. One thing that those who are still pushing this counterargument fail to realize is that no matter what their intentions are, that statement only invalidates the suffering of and the cries for justice by the Black community.
Many people have defended the argument that “all lives matter” by saying that they are “colorblind” and that they see everyone the same—as people. But the ability to say that paints a picture of privilege. For the rest of the country, that is not a luxury people have or are granted. Being “colorblind” is equatable to being neutral on injustice.
I acknowledge that most of these people meant this with good intentions. They are trying to navigate the situation the best they can, though their judgments are unfortunately clouded and presently ignorant. They need to be educated, if possible, before we outright denounce them as being racist. They incorrectly think colorblindness is the goal when it is not.
We as a country need to address the false notion that color blindness is what the goal should be. We NEED to see, and understand, color. Not seeing or acknowledging it is a privilege. It means you are not affected by it or you do understand the traumas people of different races have experienced throughout history, especially in this country.
When we say “Black Lives Matter”, we do not mean other groups of people don’t matter. Black people fall under the concept of “all lives matter”, they are a facet of that ideal. “Black Lives Matter” is a call to address the disproportionate amount of brutality and injustice specifically against Black people, specifically done at the hands of the police and other areas of systemic racism.
This isn’t to say that police and systemic racism is only targeted at Black people. The keyword here is ‘disproportionate’.
For example, Black people only make up about 14% of the population in the United States (2010 US Census), yet according to the NAACP, Black people made up 34% of the correctional population in America in 2014. Mix this with the controversy over the private prison industry, and with prison labor being legal slavery thanks to a clause in the 13th Amendment, this is a topic of grave concern.
Black women are also up to four times more likely to die in childbirth in America and be denied medical attention, often due to the notion that they’re “faking” pain to get drugs or the idea that they have higher pain tolerances and can “handle” it.
I won’t go on to list all the other areas of systemic racism against Black people, but I will throw in one recent example – the current global pandemic.
In many different parts of the country, we’ve seen a disproportionate number of Black people dying by COVID-19 than other races. APM Research Lab reported that “The latest overall COVID-19 mortality rate for Black Americans is 2.4 times as high as the rate for Whites and 2.2 times as high as the rate for Asians and Latinos.”
Reasons that contribute to this include not having adequate access to health care, higher rates of being in poverty, and being more likely to be considered essential workers on the frontlines of the pandemic.
When we see statistics like these, it’s our moral obligation to look deeper and address these issues in a way that is not a “one size fits all” solution, but rather an equitable solution. And there is a difference between equality and equity. Rights need to be equal. But action in responding to different forms of oppression needs to have equity, not equality.
So when I see people say their color blind, I know they probably mean well. But we need to see color. We need to see it and understand the experiences of different cultures and groups of people.
We are all human beings. But not all people have the same histories or traumas. The wrongs done to different groups of people mean there are different areas of their suffering that need to be remedied.
Even more so, we need to understand just how grave an injustice our country carried out against Black people specifically.
Facing Our Racist History
This country has always been racist.
We committed genocide against the native people who were here before us and removed them from their homes. We continue to destroy their cultures and communities to this day. The Vietnam war especially harmed Native American communities and the lives of Native American veterans.
We passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to keep Chinese immigrants from coming to the country looking for work. We put Japanese-Americans into internment camps during WW2. We’re now racially profiling all Asian-looking people as inherent carriers of COVID-19.
We overthrew the sovereign nation of Hawaii in a coup by forcing Queen Liliuokalani to give up her throne.
We completely left Puerto Rico to fend for themselves after a catastrophic hurricane season, which is about to start up again.
We profile Middle Eastern people and those of the Islamic faith as terrorists.
We have exploited the labor of undocumented immigrants in our fields and factories while threatening deportation if they report abuses.
And we’re putting immigrants from Mexico, Central, and South America in concentration camps and are letting them die from malnutrition, lack of medical care, and lack of basic human necessities. We’re psychologically abusing them, sexually assaulting them, letting them starve, live in their own filth, and committing other unknown acts of inhumanity behind closed doors. Right now, we are learning that we are essentially gassing them with chemical agents to “sanitize” for COVID, after creating the situation where COVID is a threat to them in the first place.
All as a result of our country’s actions in other nations, causing the very corruption and violence that these people are fleeing from with their children as they come here for a chance at a better life.
All of these are horrible, inhuman, and racist actions done by our country, and they are all wrongs that need to be righted. These examples are in no way a conclusive list of the wrongs that we’ve committed against these and other groups of people throughout history and to this very day.
And when we look at the sheer magnitude of oppression done by our country against Black people, Black people have experienced an astronomical amount of harm brought to new levels of inhumanity. This country was literally built on the backs of enslaved Black and brown people.
Over 200 years of chattel slavery, which included not only the exploitation of labor that built this country but also included violent family separation, rapes, murders, and other generational traumas. Imagine being in a position where you or your children are subjected to this abuse – and you can’t do a single thing about it, without fear of retaliation against you and your family. You can only warn them about what is coming.
And consider the fact they were more likely to torture you or your family – not kill you. Your potential for labor was too valuable to kill you or them.
When slavery was “abolished,” Black people were then faced with a different beast. No longer considered property, Black people were met with violence and intimidation in every facet of their lives. Beatings and whippings instead became lynchings, segregation, Black Codes, and Jim Crow Laws.
Before abolition, a slave owner would be more reluctant to kill a slave because they were considered property, like a piece of equipment that was purchased. After slavery, the “incentive” to not outright murder a Black person disappeared for White America, especially in the South.
Instead, the goal changed to maintain the imbalance of power between white and Black Americans and exert control over Black lives. If it oppressed others, then it was all the better for those who were/are in power.
Laws were enacted specifically to keep Black people from voting. When women fought for and won the right to vote in the Suffrage movement, Black women were specifically excluded from the movement, as it was believed that including them would harm the movement. White women thought that if they also fought for Black women’s right to vote (when Black men weren’t even allowed to vote in many places), they themselves wouldn’t get their right to vote.
Black people were violently murdered for literally anything. A white woman could cause an innocent Black man to be killed just by saying he made her uncomfortable or lying about something they did. The case of Emmett Till is a prime example of this – where a 14-year-old Black boy was lynched because a white woman said he whistled at her. On her deathbed, that woman admitted that she had lied. A lie that resulted in a child being brutally murdered, all because he was Black.
Families would treat lynchings like a special event, bringing their children out and making a “picnic” out of it – watching a Black man be brutally murdered in public. Which only worked to continue the line of racism and oppressive ideals by making it acceptable in the eyes of those children who watched.
Black women, in particular, were subjected to an additional level of violence – sexual violence.
Rape was an especially strong intimidation tactic. Its power could extend beyond the victim herself – it could extend to her family as well. In the case of Recy Taylor, a woman from Alabama who, in 1994, was raped by six white men. Taylor refused to remain silent and, after the incident, sought justice with the help of Rosa Parks. Taylor’s home was burned in retaliation, and the police refused to do anything about the crime.
This case is not an outlier. The rape of Black women was a common occurrence in the South, with little to no legal action taken. There are even cases where Black women were raped, went to the police to report it, and were then raped by the police. One thing that I learned while studying women’s history and U.S. history is that Black women actually largely refused to be silent on this issue. Which in turn made the targets already on their backs even larger. But still, they spoke up.
Mix in the lynching of Black people, which not only included hangings but also all-out torture methods from burning people alive to dragging them in the street behind cars; being ripped apart by dogs; Black businesses being destroyed as well as Black Wall Street in Tulsa in 1921; the practice of segregation; and the violent retaliation for the Civil Rights Movement, which included being hosed down, attacked by dogs, shot with tear gas, and beaten by police.
White people like to quote Dr. Martin Luther King for their own benefit, yet conveniently forget that our own CIA assassinated him. Even though he was peacefully protesting and strongly advocated for that avenue of protest. They like to share pictures of him peacefully protesting but omit the pictures of what happened right after those images were taken.
And all this violence didn’t end after the Civil Rights Movement.
It’s now common knowledge that the Nixon administration infiltrated Black communities with drugs in order to tear apart and disarm their communities and manufacture probable cause to over-police those communities.
The NRA in California was actually so fearful of Black people, and specifically Black Panthers, exercising their Second Amendment rights that they worked with legislators of that time to take away the open carry laws in the state. The restrictive gun laws in California, therefore, have roots in racism.
To this day, Black people continue to experience institutionalized, systemic racism in just about all areas of life.
Jobs. Housing. Education. Health care. Business. Income inequality. The criminal justice system and unending police brutality. All of it culminates into multiple generations being subjected to ongoing trauma. There has been no room given for healing because the wounds are constantly being stabbed at.
Discussing Reforms to Policing
In the discussion specifically surrounding the police profession, it’s important to remember the history there. Police were originally slave catchers. After abolition, they formed into official departments and became enforcers of the racist laws and codes the South created to continue their oppression of Black people.
To this day, this profession is used for these purposes, but usually in a way that is hidden. They “just so happen” to largely target black people and people of color, or over-police their neighborhoods, or have a higher rate of murdering them or abusing them when arresting them or having them in custody. There “just so happens” to be a higher rate of black people being stopped by police or a higher rate of incarceration of black men, and for harsher sentences than their white counterparts.
And that’s a large part of the issue right now – police aren’t really hiding it anymore. They’re doing it in full view of cameras and the rest of the world. Their departments are continually ignoring reports of abuse and racism by cops.
There may very well be cops that are not racist and are arguably “good cops.” But the problem is that their system is racist, and that system has never been dismantled to expel the racism woven into it. And those “good cops” tend to either remain quiet and complacent about what their colleagues are doing, or they are targeted by those same colleagues and their own departments for speaking out against corruption or excessive use of force or racism among their ranks.
That is why this conversation is so important to have.
Over 400 years of oppression, with no recourse or restitution for the wrongs that were committed and continue to be committed, how can we be surprised at what is happening?
So when I see someone say they’re “color blind” and say “all lives matter”, all I hear is that all of the oppression that was and still is specifically dealt to Black people is insignificant. That the centuries of violence and trauma are on the same level as other groups of people. The fact that it is actively continuing to this day is insignificant and not worth their time or energy to combat or speak out against. They may not realize it, but that is what they are saying. And if that’s not what they mean, then they need to change their tone.
Again, this isn’t to discount the oppression that other people have experienced. Generational trauma is something that all groups of people experience, but the generational trauma that Black people have experienced runs much deeper. The way this country has treated Black people is objectively nothing compared to how it has treated other races. This treatment is the culmination of the absolute worst ideologies and actions that racism brings to the world.
Like the argument for Medicare for All, how a society treats its most vulnerable people is what defines that society – what sets the bar for right and wrong. Black people are arguably the most marginalized, oppressed, and profiled of any group of people, and for a culmination of reasons that different groups are stereotyped or profiled as. Their treatment sets the bar for how badly our society allows racism to become and how much power it holds over minorities.
Therefore, by addressing the grievances and traumas of Black people addresses many of the grievances of other groups. Not all, but many. This is a long road to growth and reconstruction of our society, and focusing on Black people now doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to shift that focus later when we have finally acted on the wrongs of our country’s past and present with Black people specifically.
While those wrongs will never fully be made right, there will come a time when we have acted to fix things and continue to work towards fixing them—as it will be an ongoing endeavor—to a point where we can then allocate our energy to also addressing other wrongs in our history.
The fight against oppression may never go away, but we can beat it, and racism, back into the shadows and depths in which it belongs, and continue to work on never allowing them to creep back into our world. And that is something we ALL must work on, consistently and vigilantly. It is something that must be ingrained in our minds, our children’s minds, and every subsequent generation’s minds. It must be completely abolished and rejected in society if it to be kept at bay. We cannot waiver in this.
Fighting for the rights of Black people is fighting for the rights of others. We are not stopping police brutality only for Black people. We’re not stopping government oppression only for Black people. We’re doing this so no one experiences this treatment.
This movement has fast become the largest civil rights movement in history – spanning all 50 states, Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories, and multiple countries around the world. This means that the power this movement holds to make the changes needed in our country and beyond is a force to be reckoned with. The people of this movement have the power to make changes for this cause and beyond. It is a power that won’t disappear anytime soon. Now that we’ve tasted what this melting-pot of a country is capable of, we’re going to keep stirring this pot.
By gathering together in solidarity around both the death of George Floyd as well as against the overall issues of police brutality, systemic racism, and oppression, we have mobilized in support of our country’s most vulnerable. And raising the bar for them raises it for everyone.
So we need to see color. We need to see the different traumas and histories of different groups of people. We need to understand those experiences and learn how to be better. And, we can’t use cookie-cutter solutions when responding. When we address issues that affect different groups of people, we need to understand that because their histories and traumas are different, solutions need to be adjusted to fit their different needs. There will be no one-size-fits-all solution in addressing the oppression and traumas that other people face.
Right now, we need to specifically see and address the issues that Black people are facing. And we need to understand that in doing so, the solutions we come up with will extend past their community and provide benefits to all groups of people. By addressing the issue of police brutality against Black people will address it for all people who come in contact with police. The same applies for other issues of systemic racism.
It’s not enough to not be racist. We need to be actively and vocally ANTI-RACIST.
Do not be color blind. Be color-aware and color-comprehensive. Learn about people’s histories and traumas, and see how you can support them rather than minimizing their experience. Be aware of the privileges you have, whatever they are, and use them for good by speaking up against racism, police brutality, and other systems of oppression that Black people and all people of color are faced with.
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