If you don't see color, then you don't see me

During a discussion about race and racism at a professional development meeting at my workplace one of my colleagues said, “I don’t see color.” Another of our coworkers responded, “If you don’t see color, then you don’t see me.” She went on to explain that she is black, and that if you claim to not see her skin color then you don’t see her, nor her culture, struggle, and history.

If you take a stance of ‘not seeing color’ so as to not allow the color of people’s skin to affect how you treat them, to instead see them as human beings, not defined by their race or ethnicity, I commend you for taking this noble stance. Unfortunately this perspective ignores the influence of our culture, of the hundreds of years of policies, practices, and ideas that have a direct affect on our biases, our worldviews. ‘Not seeing color’ ultimately originates from an experience of not having to see color — it arises out of the idea that we have a choice to act and experience the world without consideration of skin color or race. Sadly, our culture is steeped in racism and to ignore color is to discount the current racial discrimination found in our country’s institutions; systems that affect people directly everyday of their lives.

The fact is that we do see color. Not seeing color is pretending. It’s there right in front of us every time we look at someone. It would be easier if we didn’t see it, if we didn’t have to deal with it, no? If we didn’t have to be troubled with the messy work of confronting our country’s racist past, present, and future; it’d be easier. I would much rather spend my time on something else — but that’s not a choice I am willing to make. It would be easier if we didn’t have to confront our own biases and prejudices, learned from our families, from society, from the media, from our shared history of racism and violence. But I’m not interested in easy work and I hope you aren’t either. We must educate others about racism and strategies to combat and dismantle it — we must face it head on.

The work of anti-racism requires that we see each other clearly, in all of our beauty, in order to celebrate our differences in skin tone, in hair color and texture, all of our differences, so that we can acknowledge and address the inequalities, injustices, and violence that have been institutionalized and perpetuated based on these differences in appearance. The work of anti-racism requires that we celebrate each other — that we celebrate our unique cultures and honor each other for the struggle and work that our communities have put in making strides toward changing our world — toward ridding our world of racism.

One of the places you can start is with yourself. Do the work to mine your subconscious (and conscious) thoughts and patterns for your biases and prejudices based on race. If you truly believe that you do not see color, do work to truly assess this ability. Root your bias out, find the places where your own ignorance or misconception leads you to make assumptions, misleads your actions down paths you would rather not be on. Where in your family and your experiences have you created road-blocks to making positive connections with people who look and are different than you, people of other cultures and ethnicities? Find these road blocks and do the hard work to remove them.

We have to connect with each other, now more than ever. And it will take every single one of us, no matter what color we are, to step forward and make a stand against racism. One of the first and most important steps is to educate yourself about the history of racism. I like to start with the study of racist policies.

Laws making interracial marriage illegal were some of the first overtly racist laws and were passed in many of the British colonies in the Americas (Virginia and Maryland being the first). These laws were put into place to help quell the unity between white indentured servants and black slaves in the colonies who had intermarried, created cohesive communities, and rose up as part of various rebellions (Bacon’s Rebellion being one of these). There were also many laws giving white indentured servants more rights, benefits toward and after freedom, and preferential treatment compared to black slaves (A People’s History of the United States, Zinn, pages 49, 67). From here we can move through slavery and emancipation, Jim Crow era disenfranchisement, segregation, red lining realty practices, right into the achievement gap, lack of higher education representation, school to prison pipeline, disproportionate police violence and imprisonment of people of color.

(All of this being the trajectory of the policies of racism in regards to primarily African-Americans — not to even mention the history of racist ideologies, practices, policies and events in regards to Native American, Chican@, Latino American@, Asian American, Pacific Island American and Middle Eastern American populations).

All of this can feel very overwhelming. I know. I have a full-time job (work as a high school administrator), have a wife and three children, a part-time job (teach martial arts once a week), and can barely find time for the dishes and laundry. But no matter how much I feel or don’t feel the direct effects of racism today — it is my responsibility to take steps to fight against it everyday. This is real, and it’s not going to go away on its own.

No one can legitimately deny racism’s overt presence in our country and in our institutions after white supremacists marched in Charlottesville Virginia on August 12th, one of them violently driving his car through a crowd of anti-protesters killing one and injury many (especially after president Trump’s statement, “This egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, on many sides,” essentially equating these violent white supremacists to the anti-racist protesters). Trump, with support from Attorney General Sessions, is now calling to militarize our police forces. The militarization of our police forces along with Sessions’ ongoing roll-out of tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs policies sadly means more police violence and more incarceration of American citizens and disproportionately more Americans of color.

You can get directly involved with groups like Showing Up for Racial Justice. You can seek out workshops like the mentioned in the article, “It’s Time for White Parents of White Kids to Bring the Resistance Home.” We all need to talk openly about race and racism, about our culture, our upbringing, and the realities of our shared history and present — about the struggles that have been hard fought and the fight that is still ragging.

Be that person who speaks up any time you hear someone say something that contradicts the reality of racism. Stand up any time you witness an assumption or statement that flies in the face of the reality of present day racism and its historical trajectory.

We each need to take stock of our own privilege and leverage it. It is every single person’s responsibility, your responsibility, to empower diverse groups of people in our lives. At all of the tables where you have a seat — you need to do everything in your power to create a seat for someone who is different than you, who looks different than you, and thinks different than you. Without the inclusion of members of diverse communities in our institutions of all kinds we will not build the base that we need to combat racism.

It is up to every single one of us to make sure our world is a more inclusive world — a world that recognizes and acknowledges color but that does not make those differences the basis for exclusion, violence, and punitive action.

It is up to you to not ignore the beautiful color and diversity that you see — but to acknowledge every person’s fight for their right to humanity. It is up to you to end racism — every day, at every meeting, in every board room, at every table, in every institution.