How to be Colourblind: A Blind Person’s Perspective

"I do not even know what shade of black I am."

“Of course, it is literally impossible not to see colour.” - Glenn Loury

Listen to the article.

Questioner: “Are you racist?” 

Blind person: “No.”

Questioner: “Why?”

Blind person: “Because I can’t see.”

When I look at someone, most of the time, I cannot see their colour. Sometimes, I can guess. Voices, however, are not always accurate in giving away someone’s racial background. So, there are many people that I know in my life whom I have no idea what colour they are. But it is not the only thing that I do not know about them; I do not know their height nor their weight but that does not matter to me. 

For example, there is a Colombian woman whom I speak to a few times a week to help me with my Spanish. I have no idea what she looks like. I could not tell you her height, weight nor the colour of her skin. She could be white, black or something in the middle. I do not know nor do I care. 

There is also the writer Mario Vargas Llosa. I know he is from Peru but that does not tell me anything about what he looks like. However, I still know that La Guerra del Fin del Mundo is one of my favourite novels of all time. There are other writers that I admire, such as David Diop, Camille Dawood, Naguib Mahfooz; two of these men are Arab, but I have no idea what an Arab looks like. Again, it does not matter to me what they look like. They have produced great novels that I enjoy a lot. 

If I were to find out the colour of these people, it would not matter to me. All that matters to me is how great their work is. My friendships and art I enjoy are not dependent on the colour of the people who make it. My French tutor is a Moroccan man, and I have no idea what he looks like. Again, he is an Arab but it does not tell me anything. Therefore, he could be white, black, light-skinned or something completely different. 

It does not matter to me because skin colour does not matter to me. And it should not matter to you either. 

This is the colourblind principle. That is the principle that Dr Martin Luther King was affirming in his I Have a Dream speech made in 1963, when he said those famous words that you should “judge people by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin”. This speech and the colourblind humanist vision that it spawned has created tremendous gains for African Americans, like me, and for blacks across the West.

However, we are in a new age now, where a new form of antiracism is competing against the colourblind racism that has taken us very far. This form of antiracism proposes that colour ‘consciousness’ is the way to go, and that in this way, we will be able to close all the gaps that persist today among minority groups and majority groups. 

I think this vision of the world is misguided. I believe that the only way that we are going to make our diverse societies work is to keep the colourblind vision alive for it is the reason that our societies are so diverse to begin with. 

Let us take this on a micro-level: If I wanted to apply race consciousness in my life, I could. For example, I could ask all the people I described above what their race is or what colour they are, it would be weird but I bet they would oblige. However, I do not want to do that. It seems very strange to me and it would not change my opinion of them. If I found out what my Moroccan French tutor looks like, it would not change my view of him. This man has been a very great friend to me and has helped me get to where I am in French. I would not ask my Spanish teacher what her race is. I could do that but I will not. It just seems very weird for me to do that. Even if I did know what her race was, it would not change anything about our dynamic. She has been a good friend to me as well. 

And, again, that’s all that matters.

The way I treat my friends and the way I treat other people is not determined by the race of the people that I encounter. 90% of the time- probably 95%- I have no idea of the race of the people with whom I am speaking to. Sometimes, as I have said, voices can give you a clue, but it is not 100% accurate. 

But, again, this is just me and this is just at a micro-level. The critic would say, ‘what about everyone else who can see colour and make judgements and assumptions based on colour and prefer to be around those who resemble them- not just in interest or personality but physically as well?’

To the critic I would respond: this is why the colourblind vision is the best way forward for humanity because the colourblind principle teaches us not to give credence to the primitive instinct to regard people more favourably based on colour. 

Colourblindness exhorts you to aspire to something greater; to be your best self and understand our common humanity and that colour has no real value, not just extrinsically but intrinsically too. If we truly believe that race is just a social construct, then we need to not just say it as a cliché but enact it in policy. Race should not be a component into the decision of who gets what and why. That is how things were done during the bad days prior to the civil rights movement in America and in all of the previous backward civilisations that we deplore when we talk about history. 

Another objection that is made about colourblindness is that by not acknowledging colour, you are not acknowledging the consequences of colour, and therefore, you are not acknowledging the full being of that individual. To me, this is where a huge disagreement is created between the two visions. Colourblindness doesn’t see significance in colour or worth in colour, but the vision of colour consciousness does. To me, ‘black’ is just a description of what I look like. In fact, I do not even know what shade of black I am. However, it does not mean anything more. My colour does not determine politics nor my interests and tastes. My family upbringing and the culture that I live in are more determinative of who I am than my colour could ever be. 

Does it really matter what shade of black that I am?

Does it matter if I am light-skinned or dark-skinned?

To me, it does not.  It does not change anything about my attitude, my being, the ideas that I have and the way that I think about the world.

In the humanist vision, colour is only an external description of what a person looks like and nothing more. You can say, correctly, that people face problems because of their colour, but that is exactly why colourblindness is the best remedy for this. It is the best thing we can do to ensure the stability of our multi-racial democracies. To ensure the flourishing of humanity as a whole is to ensure that race does not matter and to ensure that people do not suffer negatively because of their race. This is a hard thing to ask of humanity given our biological predilections, but it is the only way out of the things that bedevil us today. 

For me, it is easy to do. I do it all the time. But for the sighted people who are reading this article, it will be a challenge. You might fail and you might stumble but I know that this principle is the only foundation upon which a good, true and noble antiracism can be built upon.

We are more similar than we are different. Our skin colour differences are not so massive that they cannot be transcended and overcome. After all, we humans live on the same rock and we have to share it amongst ourselves. To grant colour any more status and credence than it deserves is just to embolden tribalism and the darker demons of our nature.