THE BS OF "COLORBLIND"

You really have to know that the phrase, "We don't see color; we're colorblind" is ABSOLUTELY offensive and racist. If you're looking at me and don't see color, you are trying to dissolve me down to a "common denominator" that won't make white people uncomfortable. Sometimes it comes out like, "you're not like other blacks" as if that is supposed to be a compliment (it's NOT; that too is an insult).

I see color. I hear accents. I taste the distinct flavors of national and ethnic foods. I touch people's lives and let them touch mine. I enjoy the diversity of my friends from a variety of nations, from vast backgrounds, from the spectrum of the rainbow. SEEING it, HEARING it, TASTING it, TOUCHING it. THAT is the Kin-dom of God, not some fake "I don't see color." And PLEASE quit saying that Martin Luther King, Jr. called for a colorblind society. No. He. Did. NOT. He said he wanted a world where his four children would be judged by their character, not the color of their skin. That is not the same thing as "don't notice that my beautiful children are black." That is: don't let your white supremacist racist notions lead what you think about my children before you even know them.

© Valerie Bridgeman
July 17, 2013

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