“I don’t see colour, I just see a human being” is something racist White Americans say. It sounds high-minded and anti-racist to them and they probably mean well, but it is like saying:

I don’t see a woman, I just see a human being.

I don’t see a Frenchman, I just see a human being.

I don’t see my friend, I just see a human being.

I don’t see a cat, I just see a mammal.

As if there is something wrong with being a woman or a Frenchman or one’s friend or a cat. Or a person of colour. As if there is something so wrong in not being white that white people must somehow overlook that supposed fault to accept others.

The idea is that being different is bad, that to be accepted you have to be seen as the same somehow. That in the end white is right.

At best it is a science fiction statement about another world way in the future (or way back in the time-travel past), a world where colour truly does not matter. But that world is not America in 2011. So to talk like that seems delusional at best.

It is a delusion that people of colour in America cannot afford. If you try to act as if you are white when you cannot pass for white, it leads, at best, to internalized racism, self-doubt and confusion. The only healthy course of action is to own your colour and be proud of it. So your colour becomes part of who you are. It is not something to “not see” as if it were a matter of shame.

In practice, of course, the statement seems to mean the complete opposite: that they do notice colour – why else did they bring it up? – that in fact it is probably the only thing they noticed, so much so that you have become a cardboard stereotype in their minds based on hip hop or kung fu or who knows what.

Even if racism disappeared there would still be African Americans and Asian Americans and so on, just like there are still Irish Americans and Italian Americans. It is just that not being white would no longer be a big deal – just like not being a Wasp is no longer a big deal, even though it was a hundred years ago. There would still be differences and people would notice them but they would not be seen in a bad light, they would not be used to dehumanize.

It is not the differences that cause racism nor does it lie in noticing or not noticing them – it is how we deal with those differences that matters.

Not seeing colour will not make racism go away. Because it leaves untouched the idea that being different, of not being white, is somehow bad. Because by not seeing colour you do not see racism either, which keeps everything just the way it is.

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