The Desire for Color Blindness Regarding Race

I understant the desire to ignore a person's color and just see them as a person. I used to yearn for this and thought of it as the obvious, right path in working to see all people as equal. Generally, this desire not to see color comes from a place of love and kindness. It comes out of a desire for equality. That is a good thing.

The problem with color blindness though is that it is a form of denial. It is a subconscious tactic to maintain the status quo. If I as a white man can look at my black brothers and say "I see you as an equal and just as worthy of success as I am" then I can pat myself on the back. I can go back to work in an office mostly filled with white faces and feel good about my view of equality. I don't feel the need to think about my place in the system and question whether I have advantages that others don't have because of my gender and skin color.

What I need to do is walk into my office and wonder if the racial distribution of my office mirrors the distribution of the racial population in my community or does it skew in advantage to one side? If it does skew then why? Is it simply the way the chips fell and that the qualified people were hired for the positions regardless of skin color? Good question. Is it also possible that there are unidentified areas of management with harmful bias that are keeping certain people out of the office based on skin color? Again, good question. If I see the differences and entertain these thoughts then I can have the conversations that work to find the answers. If I ignore the differences then I stay off that critical path of evaluation and problem solving. Only by owning my place as a white man in the system can I truly look at the place of my black brothers and try to figure out how I can serve them.

If I work not to see my black brothers as different then I also work not to see the current inequalities and problems facing them. Don't work to be color blind. Work to uplift and cherish the differences in others. Work to find ways to serve those that are different. You are not doing them a service by simply saying "We are the same" because we are not.

I implore you to read this book. It covers this topic much better than I can.

White Fragility

Is Calling the Coronavirus a "Chinese Virus" Racist?

My perspective right out of the gate is that calling the coronavirus a “Chinese virus” is tone deaf at best. However, does that mean that Trump should be crucified in the public court for referring to a virus by its origin?

COVID-19 Emergence

My rational mind says no.

Then again I would much rather see a leader who understands the nuance of the situation and focuses on the important matter at hand in that this virus affects us all. “Blaming” China is not productive and neither is a casual mention of the origin of the virus.

“It’s not racist at all,” Mr. Trump said, explaining his rationale. “It comes from China, that’s why.”

I could imagine anyone making that kind of mistake and then graciously accepting responsibility for the perception and offering an apology. Unfortunately that is not the kind of man we have leading our nation and unfortunately too many people lack the empathy to accept responsibility for the perception of what they put out there. A much better bellwether of Trumps racism would be his reference to the belief that “you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides” when talking about white nationalists in Charlottesville, VA.

I see people on the right flabbergasted and the idea that anyone would malign Trump for referring to the origin of the virus. Those groups don’t understand the nuance of grace and those who see it as utterly racist lack some grace themselves. Where does that leave us? Still divided.

In my perfect world those who disagree with Trump inform him that it could be offensive to some that he calls it the “Chinese Virus” and that he graciously accepts the constructive criticism, apologizes, and moves forward without doing it again. I know that world does not exist so where does that leave us? At odds I guess. We have to keep challenging those who think racist references are not a big deal. Especially if they will not listen to constructive criticism. Then again, how much of the criticism has really been constructive? How do we meet in the middle and understand each other?

I don’t know and I worry we are not capable. I just ask that you think about this as we interact with each other in the world. This tragedy is pushing us more and more to online interaction and if we can’t be kind to each other we do nothing more than increase the divide.

Playing for Others