Laissez-faire Racism - Color-blind

Color-blind

Color-blindness refers to the idea that racial differences are unimportant in modern society. Bobo suggests that people who are color-blind claim they don’t acknowledge, or care about, racial differences in people—although those who claim to be color-blind often express extreme color-consciousness when it comes to their choices of personal friends, mates, and areas in which they choose to live. These people refuse to acknowledge these contradictions and often claim that their choices are economical or based upon similarities, not racism.

Color-blind people often oppose affirmative action because it encourages racism against whites; claim that minorities are disadvantaged because of their own volition, accept racial segregation, and minimize racism and discrimination. According to Tarca, a survey, taken on a college campus in 1992, asked students if they agreed with the statement, ""I am colorblind when it comes to race." Seventy-seven percent of the White respondents agreed with the statement. Other studies have found that many Whites who believe in the concept of colorblindness lack an understanding about how race shapes life experiences, mostly because whites often don’t assign themselves to any particular race, choosing to identify themselves instead as being simply "American." The notion of colorblindness ignores the legacy of racial privilege in the United States. Whites are able to partake in the notion of colorblindness because they are largely unaware of how much that principle benefits them and burdens others.

Another one of the principle harms committed through laissez-faire racism has to do with the assertions that discourses dealing with race issues are unnecessary and impolite. The idea that race doesn’t matter, refuses to acknowledge the realities of the lives of minorities in the United States, and ignores the fact that, statistically, race plays an important role in education, incarceration rates and terms, as well as other factors.