Natalie Tan

Some people may ask, “Isn’t being colour-blind good? Doesn’t that just mean you don’t see race? Everyone is seen as equal?” While it does seem easy to practice the act of being colour-blind when in an attempt to be unproblematic, there is a vast difference in being unable to see colour and being unwilling to see it. Claiming to be colour-blind when it comes to race usually means that not only do you claim to not see the different lives people experience based on their skin colour, but you are also claiming ignorance to your own privilege. For instance, the phrase “All Lives Matter” seems harmless, and even generally supportive at first, until we are reminded of the fact that not all ethnicities are subject to the same level of prejudice.  

The concept of racial colour-blindness becomes more toxic when people start to use it with the intention of defending their own racism. Being able to practice the colour-blind ideology is a privilege in itself. Those who are able to live happily in a colour-blind society are typically those who have not and will probably never be subject to racial discrimination. 

In America, it is usually White Americans who seem to practice the concept of colour-blindness, whether aware or not. I have personally experienced some of my White peers being dismissive of my opinions when I called out their racist remarks. As a university student in Boston, I was surrounded by thousands of other university students, both local and international. I have been exposed to conversations where other international students were being mocked, but for some reason, it was a shock to my peers if I was ever offended. According to them, they would often not consider me as an international student since I could “actually speak English”. I also noticed a running trend that European or White-passing international students were usually labelled as “exotic” when they had an accent while speaking English, but students of other ethnicities would be given a harder time.

A huge issue I had when it came to someone practicing colour-blindness was when I was seeking career advice. One of my first questions to a career advisor was whether it would be more difficult to be hired by an American company since I would need a visa sponsorship. The advisor’s response was, “Well, if you’re going to work at a company that requires you to be fluent in English, and you’re not, you really shouldn’t be applying”. When I reminded them that my question was visa-related, and that English was my first language, they replied with, “Well, if you think you’re fluent enough, you can give it a try”. Almost every interaction I had with that advisor for the next three years was riddled with various race-related comments, followed by the disclaimer that they “didn’t see colour”. Every single time I attempted to question or correct a seemingly racist remark, I would be reminded that it was a misunderstanding. For someone who claimed not to see colour, they had a lot to say about my race (or the multiple, ever-changing ethnicities they mistakenly labelled me as).

From my own experiences, I learnt that for many, practicing the act of being colour-blind is a convenient excuse to be racist towards people of colour. As long as they had another person of colour with them that wasn’t being included in their remark, they were able to claim that the remark was only towards the individual, regardless of their ethnicity.

People of colour are not going to disappear simply because someone chooses not to acknowledge them. The issues people of colour face are not going to disappear simply because they do not seem as “significant” as the issues of the past. It’s 2019, and society as a whole needs to acknowledge the racial issues of the past and present, and has to work together to be able to reduce these issues in the future. One of the first and easiest steps would be to take a look at the world for what it really is — and it isn’t just black and white.