Colorblindness is the New Racism

In their 2013 text Deconstructing Privilege, author’s Armstrong and Wildman argue in their chapter titled: Colorblindness is the New Racism that not acknowledging white privilege’s pervasiveness in American culture perpetuates racial inequality; therefore, “identifying and understanding whiteness should be an essential component of education in the United States.” (p. 65)

Colorblindness was certainly a guiding value in my formative years, as a white female, believing that the goal of society should be equal treatment of everyone, period. The authors argue against practicing colorblindness, which centers whiteness as the societal norm, and instead advocate for a four-step process of color insight to provide the appropriate context in which to upend racism, by “1) considering context for any discussion about race; 2) examining systems of privilege; 3) unmasking perspectivelessness and white normativeness; and 4) combating stereotyping and looking for the me in each individual.” (p.68)

Essentially, practicing colorblindness is a convenient way for white people to ignore the realities of the race-based privileges they perhaps unknowingly enjoy (aka epistemic privilege, as noted in the Alan Johnson reading), while non-whites are assumed to be able to achieve similar outcomes without acknowledgment of the struggles that their lack of privilege generates.

Armstrong and Wildman claim: “If students and faculty can understand the origins for their perceptions of race, they may be more willing consciously to move from endorsing colorblindness to endorsing color insight.” (p. 68) College seems like an ideal setting in which to discuss race, ostensibly because there is more diversity, maturity, and curiosity. However, fewer than half of Americans graduate from college. If we wait until college to discuss race, will we have waited too long for many young Americans to realize the true effects of race on individuals? The trend of college-educated voters preferring candidates other than the current president cannot be ignored when considering how race and elitism infused the discourse surrounding the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

I particularly enjoyed learning about the various classroom exercises Armstrong and Wildman recommend for students to examine their own privilege, or lack thereof. One exercise asks students to speak about their grandmothers. My grandmother and grandfather live on land that my grandmother’s parents purchased over 70 years ago. My mother moved into the home my grandparents previously owned, and my sister now lives in my mother’s previous home in which we grew up. With increasing barriers to home ownership in the U.S., this story exemplifies the privilege of accumulated generational wealth within a white family – a story far more uncommon to families of color. (See image below.) To be clear, colorblindness alone did not lead to the racial gaps in generational wealth. Racist practices like redlining barred families of color from obtaining mortgages.

Ken Williams addresses colorblindness in his 2022 book Ruthless Equity. When discussing grouping students by ability (aka a tracking system), he argues that “standardized tests don’t measure intelligence; [they measure] content knowledge, which requires access. And in a tracking system, access is denied, and the cycle continues.” (p. 7) I loved taking standardized tests as a child, mainly because I did well on them (and I very much enjoy coloring in tiny circles with a sharp pencil). In the 1990s, the common assumption was that a “standardized” test set an equally high bar for all students, without considering what standard it was based within (whiteness).

Both the Armstrong & Wildman and Williams readings led me to revisit Eve Tuck’s Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities in which she argues that “a desire-based framework is an antidote to damage-centered research…. Desire interrupts the binary of reproduction versus resistance.” Tuck is saying that when we examine and measure the impacts of inequality on different communities, we should resist projecting victimhood on those community members, because it’s far more effective to consider the needs, desires, or preferred outcomes of a community than label it as damaged. The perception of damage will lead to the expectation and acceptance of negative outcomes, like low standardized test scores.

https://reparations4slavery.com/the-racial-wealth-gap-understanding-the-economic-basis-for-repair/