I'M COLOR-BLIND BUT, WHAT ARE YOU, ANYWAY?

I'm Color-blind but, what are you, anyway?

I'm Color-blind but, what are you, anyway?

Believers in color-blindness argue that “race should not and does not matter. They say that blacks and whites should be viewed, described, and treated simply as individuals rather than members of particular races. Following this line of reasoning, proponents of color-blindness argue that social science has not caught up to the changing times. In fact, many say that social scientists, by studying issues of race, actually perpetuate racism by giving credence to the notion that race matters.3 Conference panellists discussing their research on racial issues are sometimes accused by some audience members of worsening racial problems through their work.

Using primary data from interviews conducted with close black-white friends and biracial Americans, we examine the relationship between the traditional fixation on racial categorizations and the current emphasis on color-blindness. In doing so, we reveal that, instead of indicating a decline in the importance of race, the color-blind ideology acts as both a cover for the obsession with race in U.S. society and a subtle but effective reinforcement for it (www.sociology.org).

Racism in the United States exists under a relatively new guise. Where once the “one drop rule” supported overt racial discrimination, a “color-blind” racial ideology now supports a more covert system of racial inequality. A dominant ideology is a belief system that supports and rationalizes current social arrangements. Those who maintain a color-blind perspective on race 1) maintain that success in life is primarily based on individual effort rather than group membership and 2) refuse to acknowledge racial differences or talk about racial issues (for fear of appearing racist). Color-blind Americans make “efforts to 'not see' race differences despite [race's] continued salience in society.

This new racial ideology in the United States (from about the mid-1980s to the present) is connected to what refers to as color-blind racism. He outlines four main “frames” of color-blind racism: abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization of racism. Abstract liberalism uses the language of equal opportunity and free choice for all as a basis for opposing many concrete policies of anti-discrimination. The assumption is that if we all just believe in these ideals, no particular policies or interventions will be necessary to combat the centuries of legal racial discrimination, disenfranchisement and exclusion (www.sociology.org).

Naturalization explains away patterns such as racial segregation in housing and endogamous social ...