Recently, I have had people telling me, “You think too much about race” or “You’re overly sensitive when it comes to race,” or my personal favorite, “This whole race thing has just been way overblown.” We tiptoe around the issue, afraid of antagonizing and fearful of opening a proverbial can of worms. This is precisely the problem with how the discussion of race takes place in America.
Oftentimes when we claim to be colorblind. We are swift in reprimanding others when they bring up conversations about race while we hide comfortably behind a veil of blissful ignorance without comprehending what it means to be truly blind to race.
A person who would publicly claim to be “colorblind” could just as easily confide behind closed doors, “I could never date/marry/be close friends with a (insert racial adjective) person. I’m not racist – it’s just how it is.”
Letting things be “just how it is” is the rhetorical plague that effectively stagnates what could have been a frank discussion of the matter.
We prefer to let ourselves be intimidated by the perceived immensity and historical baggage of the discussion, buying into the fallacious illusion that willfully remaining silent in order not to upset the peace is a solution to the problem, as opposed to being symptomatic of it.
In that sense, we become superficially colorblind. We shut ourselves off from the conversation on the grounds that even having one is detrimental to social stability, “because race is clearly not that big of an issue as we’d like it to be since we’ve learned how to get along thus far.”
Race is certainly an issue as racial prejudice occurs every day.
When we claim to be colorblind, we are in fact doing nothing to address these prejudices. Claiming to be colorblind does not endow one with profound insights into the personal experiences of a person of color, nor can it allow one to invalidate or trivialize those experiences.
Choosing to be blissfully colorblind without discussion feeds into the perpetuation of racial prejudice and stereotypes – behind closed doors within private conversations, we still attach racial stereotypes and entire sets of assumptions to the superficiality of appearances.
We need to recognize that the progress this country has made since the emergence of the civil rights movement does not dissociate it from the responsibility of building on that foundation to forge future progress.
We need to recognize the importance of constantly re-evaluating how far we have come and how we can refine the discussion on race based on ever-changing social circumstances. We need to recognize that race is only as significant as you make it and is never an indicator of innate capabilities, skills, potential and behavior. We need to recognize that while race is certainly important for the preservation of distinct cultures, traditions and notions of familial belonging, it does not indicate anything about a person’s moral content and social behavior.
As Ta-Nehisi Coates succinctly puts it, “Our notion of what constitutes ‘white’ and what constitutes ‘black’ is a product of social context.”
Racial identity is assembled from a complicated combination of personal experience, social circumstance and self-identification, as much a synthetic, imagined social construct as it is fluid and elastic.
I am Asian of Singaporean origin. But what can it really tell you about me? Does my racial identity somehow reveal my political beliefs, my ideological predilections, my moral values, the languages I speak or my favorite flavor of pudding?
Being of Asian origin in Mississippi lends itself to a unique experience, but I do not fancy myself vastly different from any other person due to my race. I have called the beautiful state of Mississippi and Ole Miss my home for the past three years.
I am a passionate Rebel fan, and I attend games with religious fervor. I enjoy boating and hiking. I love Sunday afternoon runs at Whirlpool Trails. I still think the ending of “Lost” was a rip-off.
Before we make assumptions based on perceived differences, stop and think.
Reflect.
Develop appreciation and understanding for the differences that we think separate us, but do not allow these perceived differences to deceive us into attaching assumptions to superficial characteristics.
Amir Aziz is a senior international studies major from Singapore.
