colorblindness
Can someone please explain this to me?
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
68 points (95.9% liked)
GenZedong
4300 readers
209 users here now
This is a Dengist community in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information that can lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This community is not ironic. We are Marxists-Leninists.
This community is for posts about Marxism and geopolitics (including shitposts to some extent). Serious posts can be posted here or in /c/GenZhou. Reactionary or ultra-leftist cringe posts belong in /c/shitreactionariessay or /c/shitultrassay respectively.
We have a Matrix homeserver and a Matrix space. See this thread for more information. If you believe the server may be down, check the status on status.elara.ws.
Rules:
- No bigotry, anti-communism, pro-imperialism or ultra-leftism (anti-AES)
- We support indigenous liberation as the primary contradiction in settler colonies like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel
- If you post an archived link (excluding archive.org), include the URL of the original article as well
- Unless it's an obvious shitpost, include relevant sources
- For articles behind paywalls, try to include the text in the post
- Mark all posts containing NSFW images as NSFW (including things like Nazi imagery)
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Not as literal colorblindness, it's an other way to say "all lives matter".
Not as literal colorblindness
I guessed that part, or at least had a suspicion that was the case
My understanding is this. It's where white liberals who think they're being anti-racist say, 'I don't see colour'. It comes from the right place (trying to treat all people the same) but it's problematic for several reasons.
I'll preface all this by saying race is a difficult concept to discuss. It's material yet it doesn't exist. There's as much skin tone variation within 'races' as between them. It's a 'social construct' (a relatively recent one). It's political economic and can be seen in the division of labour. It exists even if it's hard to define. I like Stuart Hall's definition of the 'floating signifier'. It's nebulous. But it does exist. The colourblind liberal pretends otherwise.
Back to the problem with colourblindness.
CW – race and racism
It erases people who live racialised as black, brown, asian, Indian, hispanic, Irish, minority, indigenous, muslim, Jewish, etc. It can't be turned off. Pretending that race doesn't exist means ignoring the aspects of a person that are directly tied to existing as a particular race. Positively and negatively.
In a negative sense, it's easy for a white liberal to (pretend to) forget it but e.g. an Indian Muslim in France can't just forget the racism they've experienced their whole life. To cut that part out of them to appease the white liberal would mean being a whole different person to who they actually are. A Jew whose relatives were killed by Nazis in WWII can't just live as if that history didn't have a formative effect. It's all right for the white liberal to pretend it didn't happen, but it's not their story to erase.
It's not just forgetting the bad things. It means ignoring culture, language, heritage, etc – those can be positives. The colourblind liberal says, "You fit in to 'my' culture because you 'sound white' or 'dress white', etc." It accepts the premise of race and racism but makes an exception for individual people who are allowed into the 'in-group'.
It's only 'white people' who have the freedom and privilege to say they don't see race. For everyone else, it's (a) part of who they are and (b) something they can't escape. Like, how is a white liberal supposed to support their black friend who can't get a job because employers see the name 'Jamal' on the application form and dismiss the applicant out of hand because they're racist. Colourblind people are starting from the premise that this type of discrimination is impossible because race can be wished away.
By pretending that race doesn't exist, the white liberal disappears the problem. We can't solve racism if white liberals bury their head in the sand and pretend it isn't a problem. (Well, actually we can – it's just going to be more difficult and when we've won, they will be crying that the victors aren't apologising for the methods.) We need to abolish the material basis of racism. We can't do that if people can pretend it doesn't exist just because it doesn't affect them.
It's like when somebody says "I don't see color."
That doesn’t help
That statement is problematic because it claims you can’t see race, which except in the case that you’re totally blind or something very close to that, is false.
Even a monochromat (complete color blindness) can still see skin color through the varying intensity of light.
I was expecting this reference haha.
Also, they would be canceled for 1:02 on today stardards, and the video is only 6 years old
A YouTube link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same video on Invidious, which is a YouTube frontend that protects your privacy:
This wicked ideology has been exported across the entire world, it will take generations to root out and erase the damage even after the source of the disease is dealt with.