Colorblindness is the New Racism

“Colorblindness is the New Racism” 

Raising Awareness about Privilege Using Color Insight 

Margalynne J. Armstong and Stephanie M. Wildman 

 

    While reading this article I had to look up a word I had never heard before. Egalitarian, relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities. That was easy to find online. The strange thing was when I searched for “color insight” everything that populated was related to colors used in interior design, or colors describing energy and personalities. When I changed the search to “color blindness is the new racism”, the AI generated search that comes up at the top of the page with an explanation of what you're searching for said, AI overview is not available for this search. It just seems crazy that you can find most anything on the internet in a second, but this topic required extra digging. 

    The two videos I found are about a similar concept called Color-Brave.  The first video is a short explanation of the difference between Color-Blind and Color-Brave. The video defines Color-Blind as “I don’t see race” and Color-Brave as “I see race and I am actively trying to be anti-racist. 

    The concept of Color-Brave was introduced by Mellody Hobson, the president and co-CEO of Ariel Investments, in her TED Talk. She was told by her colleges not to talk about race. She was warned that it was a bad for her career but she felt that to solve a problem you can't hide from it. In the first video the statement was made, “We can’t fix what we won’t acknowledge”. Just as we spoke about in our last class with Johnson’s work, talking about the elephant in the room and having uncomfortable conversations must happen for there to be any change.  

In Johnson’s writing he also referenced Rodney King’s statement, “can’t we all just get along?” Johnson states, “you'd think we could manage to get along with one another....you’d think we could treat one another with decency and respect and appreciate if not support the best we have in us”.  I think most people do truly want the best for others. But going back to my egalitarian search, believing everyone is equal and deserves equal rights isn’t enough. Believing isn’t doing anything to help anyone.