Georgia Tsiabas: Colorblindness and Colormuteness

Colorblindness. I have been hearing this term more and more. It sounds nice, but it does more harm than good. After centuries of giving value to the color of a person’s skin, attempting to push race aside now also pushes aside the struggles that many people have gone through because of the value placed on their skin. Colorblindness is passive. It helps maintain the status quo. The idea of colorblindness is positive when a person is not preferred over another based on race. But this term also carries a connotation of inability or unwillingness to perceive something that has meaning to those who can perceive it. I would like the uniqueness of every single person to be admired, not ignored. Instead of trying to tackle and dismantle the idea of race, it would be more productive to address the racial inequality that prevails. Our society cannot be colorblind right now. I have been taught by my family, by friends, by teachers, and by the media that I am white. Other people have been taught to see me as white. Race does not have a biological basis; it is a social construct. But can we demolish that social construct after centuries of enforcing it? Because I have been taught that I have a race, I have developed a racial identity. Eliminating the discussion on race does not help end racism and can continue racist acts, though these acts may be subtle. For my research paper I discovered a great source; Mica Pollock, an assistant professor at Harvard who wrote a book on the subject, gave an interview for the article “When Race Matters: ‘Colormuteness’ in American Schools.”Pollock claims that sometimes colorblindness is just another word for colormuteness, because it ignores race and racial inequality by not discussing them. Pollock says, “Refusing to talk about racial orders doesn’t make them go away. Indeed, we can actually exacerbate racial orders through colormuteness. The most counterintuitive race talk dilemma…is that while talking in racial terms can make race matter, not talking in racial terms can also make race matter.” I completely agree with her perspective, I feel its spot on in addressing the socially constructed issues we face in todays era. What are your thoughts to this notion of colormuteness? Could we make a correlation to colorblindness?