OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
February 2, 2015
Volume 25 Number 3
February 2, 2015
ISSN: 1094-9453
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n Marie Lo
Blinded by colorblindness
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n a progressive and liberal city like Portland,
sometimes it is perceived as bad form to point
out race and racial difference. Pointing these
things out seems divisive and possibly racist as it
seems counter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s
famous line about judging people not “by the color of
their skin but by the content of their character.”
King’s powerful vision of racial justice is often
reduced to the shorthand equivalent of being
colorblind, as if being colorblind is both the means to
equality and the result of having achieved it. What
is missing in this reduction of his “I Have A Dream
Speech,” however, is his central message of freedom
from state-sanctioned segregation and racial vio-
lence.
As recent events in Ferguson, Staten Island, and
Cleveland — to name only a few — make evident,
the idea that we live in a post-racial colorblind
society is clearly fiction. Asserting colorblindness as
the path to racial and social justice only reproduces
the very kinds of marginalization and oppression
that animated the civil-rights movement in the first
place. As it operates now, “colorblindness” is not
about overcoming racial inequality so much as it is
blinding us to the realities of how color shapes our
lives and determines whose lives matter and whose
do not.
The problem with our understanding of racism,
according to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva in his book
Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and
the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, is
that we understand it mainly as expressions of
racial hatred or as acts of bigoted individuals who
may have ties to white supremacist organizations.
And given this definition of racism, it would make
sense that to be “colorblind” would mean the
opposite of being racist.
Bonilla-Silva, however, argues that such a
definition blinds us from examining the systemic
and institutional dimensions of racism, which is not
the work of an individual, but a structure that is
built on a long history of conquest, colonization,
slavery, and oppression. It is this house of
inequality that we live in, despite the gains of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of
1965 and despite the fact that Barack Obama is the
President of the United States.
When we talk about colorblindness, we rarely
ask, “colorblind to whom?” Whose perspective is
implied and affirmed in this discourse on color-
blindness?
A colorblind approach, for example, sidesteps a
crucial interrogation of our criminal justice system.
In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the
I
Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
examines the criminal justice system as an instru-
ment of legalized segregation. She argues that the
segregation laws of the Jim Crow era have not been
eradicated by the civil-rights legislation of the
1960s, but rather, they have been merely
“redesigned.”
Alexander examines how the war on drugs in the
1980s led to a vast system of incarceration and
disenfranchisement that has disproportionately
affected African Americans and people of color.
While drug offences committed by whites are often
explained in terms of addiction and treated through
rehabilitation and/or light sentencing, drug
offenses committed by African Americans are often
represented as an inevitable symptom of “black
criminality” and subjected to tough sentencing
laws. (A case in point is the historically lighter
sentencing of cocaine possession, which is
predominantly used by whites, and the harsher
sentences for crack possession, which is
predominantly used by African Americans. In 2010,
the Fair Sentencing Act was introduced to address
this imbalance.)
Once convicted as a felon, one is legally barred
from voting and unprotected from housing dis-
crimination. A past felony conviction can also lead
to the denial of public benefits such as educational
opportunities and food stamps. Currently,
according to the Prison Policy Initiative, there are
about two million people incarcerated at any given
time, and while blacks make up 13 percent of the
U.S. population, they make up 40 percent of the
total prison population.
The emphasis on “criminality” as the explanation
for the higher rates of incarceration of African
Americans is a consequence of colorblindness. In
effect, it has become code for “blackness” such that
we need not mention race at all. Indeed, segregation
has not only been redesigned, but it is enforced
under a different name.
In “Viewpoint: Why Eric Garner was Blamed for
Dying,” Stacey Patton and David J. Leonard take to
task the media focus on Garner’s actions as well as
those who have been killed recently by the police,
such as Tamir Rice and Michael Brown, arguing
that this shifts the focus from examining police
protocols and the persistent representation of black
criminality and leads to victim blaming. According
to Patton and Leonard, we only need to think about
the representation of violence perpetrated by white
men as a contrast:
“Just think about the epidemic of white men who
Continued on page 7
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.
