Race Blind, Color Blind

For decades now, there has been a concerted effort to enshrine “color blind” into our legal system. The reason has become clear now thanks to the work of many critical race theory scholars: some white Americans want to pretend white supremacy is over and never existed at all really.

The narrative goes like this: bad actors engaged in discriminatory treatment of others based on color and now they can’t legally. The system is set up now to treat us all legally the same under the law. We are moving towards Dr. King’s wonderful world. All is well.

The problem with all of this is it was never about just color or color anyway. It was always about what Toni Morrison calls “the other.” It was about race, an ideal created to establish privilege and status for those of European descent over the “others.”

This is our racial caste system. It exists. It has always existed. The institutions of the nation were founded upon this racial caste system. The colonies, upon which the country came to be, developed their own racial caste systems. And yet, it also makes no sense at all because there is no such thing as a race, in the human sense.

Superior

Methodically, in her book, Superior, science journalist, Angela Saini exposes the depravity of racism by focusing on the creation of race and racial differences. It is known as “eugenics” and is also known as “scientific racism.”

While eugenics is mostly traced to the evil work of European scientists, eugenics has also reared its head in other societies with caste systems. India, for example, used eugenics to create its own caste system. It is truly the lowest of the low of human behavior.

As for America, the crazed assertion is there is more than one race and some races are superior to others. I know you can guess which persons were deemed superior. This was the belief going back to 1619 and even before that. The country was founded with that belief at the center of its founding.

Yet, that belief was just a belief until the late 19th and early 20th century when eugenics came into vogue in the European scientific community. There were many races and the Europeans were superior. The Africans were less than human and savages or beasts. They had nothing to contribute to society.

Saini, in her work, relies upon the great work of Ashley Montagu. Montagu, a British-American anthropologist, destroyed scientific racism with his book, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race.

Here is an early excerpt:

“The Idea of Race” represents one of the greatest errors, if not the greatest error, of our time, and the most tragic. What “race” is everyone seems to know, and is only too eager to tell. All but a very few individuals take it completely for granted that scientists have established the “facts” about “race” and that they have long ago recognized and classified the “races” of mankind.”

Montagu’s work is not well known today. In fact, Francis Galton, one of the movers in the ‘Eugenicist movement is more well known. Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, a racist tome, is far more well known.

Yet, it is Montagu who we should read and know because he destroyed any scientific basis for race and, in turn, exposed racism (without directly trying to) for the evil that it is. Montagu’s work was in vogue in the 1970s in America’s brief tango with integration.

Then it faded and the louder voices of hate rose back up.

Race Madness

This brings us back to the question of race blind and color blind. We have to be race blind because race is fiction. We are all the same human race. One race.

To create a race called “white” is delusional madness. You have to live an outright lie to claim this status. No one is “white” or “black.” Those are class connotations used to oppress, plunder, kill, and exploit. In fact, claiming you are white is something everyone who claims it should reflect upon.

As for the term, Blacks (capitalized); Blacks are a distinct people (as opposed to “blacks,” the opposite of whites in the caste system) but they are a people in the way Italians and Greeks are what they are — by culture, social customs, through traditions, and communal history.

“Black” is not a separte race and even now African American and/or African is used interchangably with Black to make that clear. Black, to me, is more of an ethnic category like African American. Montagu acknowledges these differences are real.

Color

But though we have no reason to see ourselves as separate races and/or treat each other differently for fake, ficticious reasons, it is fine to see and recognize our differences, such as our color, or hair, or eyes, or how tall we are. When I hear people say they are colorblind, I wonder. They are just trying to fit in or sound unoffensive.

Unless you are blind, you are not colorblind and it is okay to notice that. It is not okay to make judgments about people because of that or treat people differently because of that. I see differences in people’s appearances all day long. I do notice. I do my best to not assume anything about them.

When Martin Luther King Jr. said the following in 1963, he was not saying ignore color or be colorblind —

“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.”

Yet, he was saying end the racial caste system. Stop living in the fake, pretend world of race and racism. You are living a lie called “whiteness.”

The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglass digs even deeper into this question when she wrote the following:

“Whiteness is not a benign social-racial construct. It is both the foundation and capital of white supremacy. It is that which white supremacy protects and privileges. Whiteness, therefore, is an inherently oppositional and violent construct — for its very existence depends upon the marginalization, subjugation, if not elimination, of people of color.”

Many are living a lie called race. Race is only real as a social construct. This is where Critical Race Theory has taken it on and exposes its underbelly.

Overall, though, race is an evil lie. Time to be race blind but not color blind. Recognize our shared humanity in all of us human beings.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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