Reflections on race: on (not) being colorblind.

It seems so simple, so very basic: in order to talk about race, we have to name it first.

This may – sometimes – be easier for people of color who are used to claiming their own racial identities, who are used to talking about race because it is a visible, inescapable part of their reality. Here’s the sneaky, insidious thing, though: race is also an inescapable part of reality for white folks. We have simply, for so long, had the privilege of not naming it, or downright ignoring it, because our racial identity is held up as “normal” or “better” or “standard.”

I grew up in West Texas in the ’80s and ’90s; my church, school and family were all “aggressively colorblind,” to borrow Cara Meredith’s helpful phrase. My parents, teachers and pastors insisted that all people were the same: created equal, treated equally under the law, loved equally by God. As a corollary, many of them insisted that racism was a thing of the past: that the Civil Rights movement, desegregation of schools, and affirmative action had helped correct the imbalances that formerly existed in this country for anyone who wasn’t white.

That last sentence is obviously untrue, which I’ll unpack in a future post – but what I’m thinking about today is this: people who are equally worthy are still not exactly the same. Refusing to see or name someone’s race, or be curious about how it affects their life, is tantamount to erasing part of who they are. And as white folks, we do that erasing – so often – because we are so uncomfortable talking about race, because we understand (however dimly) that white people have really screwed this one up.

I don’t mean we should ask intrusive questions, or force people of color to explain their heritage or identities to us. But I mean that naming race, and recognizing different cultural identities, can be an important and basic first step. As a child, I often wondered why it felt like I was committing a faux pas if I named a person’s race, even in casual conversation: she’s Black, he’s East Asian, their family is Mexican-American. In many contexts, white folks have been taught that naming race is racist, when in fact it can be the opposite: a way to honor and recognize people of all races, to say We see you. I see you.

I loved the Baby-Sitters Club books as a preteen, and I remember reading some pointed comments about race in a book narrated by Jessi, the only Black member of the club (and an accomplished ballerina). “My family is Black,” she says bluntly, adding that if she were white, she wouldn’t feel the need to name her race for readers, because “you would probably assume we were white.” This is admittedly a bit heavy-handed (and part of a larger issue with how Jessi’s Blackness was depicted). But it did make me think, as a young person, about how often the books I read assumed everyone was white unless they were named otherwise.

I’m noticing, these days, in both fiction and news stories, that writers are naming race more often: not always as a plot point or part of a discussion, but simply to highlight that part of each person’s identity. It can sometimes, I admit, disrupt the narrative flow if you’re talking about a large group of people – but I think it’s important, when describing characters, to include this part of their identities, and not just for the nonwhite folks. It is also more honest: it’s useless for all of us to pretend we “don’t see color.” We do, and we should, and we should be curious about different racial identities while never using them as an excuse to discriminate.

How has naming race, or learning to recognize it, helped you see more clearly?

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