Color Blind

I think I might be a racist. But I don’t want to be.

Perhaps you will permit me to explain.

Over the past few days, I have had the opportunity to examine my own beliefs and attitudes about and toward race and come to the realization that I, like most other (whites) here in the U.S., have been operating under the “sincere fictions” of color-blind liberalist ideology. I grew up with it. As an individual born at the tail end of the Civil Rights “era,” I have been carefully instructed in the pretense and profound uneasiness propagated by this system. I, like most other (whites) here in the U.S., viewed my all-white neighborhood, schools, friends, even co-workers, and “natural” and “normal” effects of personal choice. I have not thought of my circumstances as racialized, despite the distinct lack of diversity I experienced in my early life.


I have been forced to come face-to-face with the way that I have bought in to color-blind ideology through my reading of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s book, Racism without Racists (2003). Via a combination of surveys and personal interviews, Bonilla-Silva’s project focused on “examining how many whites subscribe to an ideology that ultimately helps preserve racial inequality rather than assessing how many hate or love blacks and other minorities” (15). Because I have never subscribed to beliefs that promoted thoughts nor actions of overt racism, I felt relatively secure going in that I would not struggle too much with what Bonilla-Silva had to say. I told myself that, because I try to avoid stereotypes and generalizations about people based on skin color, I wouldn’t find too many similarities between myself and the individual described in the book, those who engaged in discriminatory practices or those contributing to a racist society.

Yeah. So I was dead wrong about that.

Bonilla-Silva says: “Since color-blind racism is the dominant racial ideology, its tentacles have touched us all and thus most readers will subscribe to some—if not most—of its tenets, use its style, and believe many of its racial stories” (15). As you can see from my opening statements, I came to realize just how much I had been affected by this “dominant racial ideology,” and how much I would struggle, as those interviewed did, to explain my personal beliefs while trying to sound “nonracist.” Trying to sound nonracist, not trying to be nonracist. There is a pernicious fallaciousness about that that rankles something awful.

Of course, the rub is that this is something I learned right alongside my alphabet, my mathematics, even my moral and ethical training via formalized religious teachings. Make a good show of it, this ideology whispers. Make sure you don’t say or do anything overtly discriminatory, and everything is just fine. No need to change. Those advantages are available to you because you earned them. Those other folks, they just didn’t work hard enough. Not like you. They could have whatever they want, if only they tried a little harder, got an education, and…what? Buy in to a system that would have them serve as second-class citizens their entire lives? Make it okay to verbally assault someone with racial slurs? Not only formulate but endorse double- or triple-standard business processes that discriminate against people based on their appearance? Refuse to provide quality educations to children who need them most?

So after realization comes the question: what can I do? What can I, one relatively insignificant individual, do, really do? Stop faking it, for one. Bonilla-Silva urges “a personal and political movement away from claiming to be ‘nonracist’ to becoming ‘antiracist.’ Being an antiracist begins with understanding the institutional nature of racial matters and accepting that all actors in a racialized society are affected materially (receive benefits or disadvantages) and ideologically by the racial structure. This stand implies taking responsibility for your unwilling participation in these practices and beginning a new life committed to the goal of achieving real racial equality” (15). Unwilling participation is nice, it gives me some hope that while before I may not have chosen to participate, in an active, all-choices-present-and-equal kind of way, I do have choices now. I am sure that this will not be easy, however; as Bonilla-Silva concludes, “The ride will be rough, but after your eyes have been opened, there is no point in standing still” (15).

Bibliography: Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003. Print.