We’ve all felt the cringe that comes with liberal “color blindness” rhetoric, or encountered a boomer commenting “I don’t care if you’re white, black, green or purple!” on a Facebook meme that’s a picture of Clint Eastwood quoting pastor Rick Warren but attributed to Dave Chapelle. Generally, these sentiments are expressed in the context of someone dismissing racism’s relevance as a problem in the contemporary United States because we “live in a post-race society”.
If you see the obvious hollowness of these ideas and their foundational aim at avoiding the reality of systemic racism, that’s a good thing. However, I’ve lately been considering how the rejection of color blindness results in its own contradiction. That contradiction is our continued deep-seated investment in racial difference as a substantial (or real) way to categorize humans.
What do we do when an idea is aimed at a practical good, but contains an inner idea which undermines its ultimate goal?
Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, a book by Barbara and Karen Fields, puts forth the thesis that racism - racist acts and racist ideology - is responsible for and ‘creates’ race. Not the other way around. To a certain extent, we understand and acknowledge this idea, often referring to race as something of a “social construct.” However there is, at the same time, a disavowal that race is actually something that was invented in a specific historical context for a specific material purpose.
While ethnicity, cultural background, genealogy, biology, etc. are all existing realities, race (or the categorization of humans based on the color of their skin on a subjective scale of light to dark) was created as a justification to enable racist ideology. The primary example of this is the history of slavery in the United States. Put another way, racism is the origin point - from which race is retroactively conjured up as a legitimate category of people to oppress.
This is fundamentally different than viewing race as an original reality that enables racists to enact their ideology, or the idea that racism grows out of a perceived difference in humans.
This brings us back to the strange contradiction encountered in color blindness and anti-racist discourse. On the one hand, we can acknowledge that race is a “social construct”. On the other hand, certain aims at diversity, representation, and organizing movements around identity inadvertently uphold race as a legitimate means of categorization - which, unfortunately, is the aim of the racist as well. This phenomena is what the Fields sisters coin as Racecraft. Named similarly to witchcraft, Racecraft describes how race is “conjured up” as something visible in society through the rituals, practices, beliefs, and ideology of racism.
A sublime example of Racecraft in action, given again by the Fields’, is the statement: black people in the American south were enslaved because of their skin color. Initially, this statement would nave near unanimous endorsement. However, with further thought, the Why Theory podcast’s Ryan Engley points out that this statement is actually closer to the sentence: The woman was sexually assaulted because of what she was wearing.
In one swift maneuver, Racecraft shifts the emphasis away from the racist act of enslavement, and places it on the skin color, or race, of the enslaved.
Not only does this place the burden of cause on the victim, but it again reifies race as some foundational reality that made the racism possible. In actuality, the classification of black was retroactively applied as a race to a people in order to justify a racist ideology and allow those adhering to it to rationalize enslaving and subjugating an entire portion of the population in the United States.
A more recent example, and one that was promoted primarily by liberals and those who lean left politically, would be: people of color have a higher risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19. While this was not a lie, it was, in reality, due to factors like economic disparities and lack of access to health care in communities with higher black populations. The idea that black people have an inherently higher propensity for catching a virus than white people is to suggest that race is in fact a classification of person rooted in biology. This, I’m sorry to say, is race-realism, a pseudo-scientific practice utilized by racists since the 17th century.
I want to emphasize that the manifestations of racism are assuredly real. Whether it’s mass incarceration, the brutalization of black men by police, economic disparities, or simply prejudice encountered in everyday social existence, racism is an active ideological apparatus thats operation is intrinsically intertwined in American life. The issue with liberal color blindness is precisely its notion that a denial of seeing race translates into an elimination of racism.
To quote an instagram infographic - “color blindness isn’t as anti-racist as you think it is.” This is true, but if the only response one can imagine is “because you should see color,” then I’m afraid we’ve allowed Racecraft to operate undisturbed. This is why anti-racism as a project is much more desirable and effective than calls for diversity and inclusion. The tragic murder of Tyre Nichols is an example of how diversity as a goal misses the mark, as all the cops involved in his beating were black. A more diverse police force does not inherently affect the primary issue of our abusive and racist system of policing. Anti-racism’s aim is just that - working to eliminate racism.
When racism as an ideology ceases to function, race looses its currency as a mode for oppression.
Our societal attachment to living with the implicit idea that race is a substantial reality can make this paradigm shift difficult. Many of us like to think that we don’t hold racist views, but if we define racism as “the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another,” then we quickly see racism operating in a much more saturated form throughout our lives. On a following slide from the same infographic I quoted above, it reads “If you don’t see race you won’t see racism - but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.” Racism is happening - often through Racecraft - even in environments bent on diversifying their workplace and achieving true representation on their C-Level executive team. So, while color blindness won’t get us anywhere, let’s stop essentializing racial difference and pursue an anti-racist effort instead.
Read Racecaft: The Soul of Innequality in American Life and listen to the Why Theory Podcast.
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