{"id":39872,"date":"2015-02-07T19:28:27","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T19:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39872"},"modified":"2017-02-19T23:03:48","modified_gmt":"2017-02-19T23:03:48","slug":"when-you-say-you-dont-see-race-youre-ignoring-racism-not-helping-to-solve-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39872","title":{"rendered":"When you say you ‘don’t see race’, you\u2019re ignoring racism, not helping to solve it"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you say you ‘don’t see race’, you\u2019re ignoring racism, not helping to solve it<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a>
\n2015-01-26<\/p>\n

Zach Stafford<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Race is such an ingrained social construct that even blind people can \u2018see\u2019 it. To pretend it doesn\u2019t exist to you erases the experiences of black people<\/em><\/p>\n

People love to tell me that they often forget that I\u2019m black. They say this with a sort of \u201ca-ha!\u201d look on their faces, as if their dawning ability to see my blackness was a gift to us both.<\/p>\n

When I point out that their eyesight had never left them, that my skin has never changed colors, and that they probably did not really<\/em> forget that I am black, they inevitably get defensive. First, they try to argue that it was a compliment; the smart ones quickly realize that complimenting someone on not being black<\/em> is actually pretty racist, so they switch gears…<\/p>\n

…But that ideology does present a very interesting question: If you were truly unable to see people\u2019s skin color, could you still be racist?<\/p>\n

Dr Osagie Obasogie<\/a>, a professor at the University of California\u2019s Hasting College of Law and the author of Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind<\/em><\/a>, wondered the same thing after seeing the biopic \u201cRay<\/a>,\u201d about legendary blind musician Ray Charles<\/a>. While watching the film, he found that Ray Charles seemed acutely aware of race, despite not having sight. He left the theater thinking about blindness and racism, and then spent the next eight years exploring it in his research.<\/p>\n

What he found is that even people who have never had sight still use visual representations of people \u2013 including a person\u2019s perceived racial or ethnic identity \u2013 as a major marker for how they interact with them…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you say you ‘don’t see race’, you\u2019re ignoring racism, not helping to solve it The Guardian 2015-01-26 Zach Stafford Race is such an ingrained social construct that even blind people can \u2018see\u2019 it. To pretend it doesn\u2019t exist to you erases the experiences of black people People love to tell me that they often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,26,394,20],"tags":[12298,12299,2103,17820],"class_list":["post-39872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-osagie-k-obasogie","tag-osagie-obasogie","tag-the-guardian","tag-zach-stafford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39872"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51711,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39872\/revisions\/51711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}