I See You, All Of You

Cassandra James, DEI Manager

​Twenty years ago, the goal was to not see color. That made you a good person. It wasn't rare to hear someone say, “I don’t care if you're red, purple, pink or orange". While it may sound good, not seeing color hasn't gotten us very far as a society. Failure to acknowledge how society plays upon our perceived race will have you attributing personal factors to a situation instead of societal factors. Black women still earn 1/3 less than their white male counterparts. Hispanic women fare worse, earning only 65% of what their white male counterparts earn. That’s not because we gravitate towards lower paying jobs. Ethnic sounding names on resumes are 50% less likely to get a call back. It’s not that people don’t want to work. They aren’t even getting called in for an interview.  
 
Not seeing color doesn't allow you to see how rules are not applied equitably. You might not see how all the Black and Brown students are being disproportionately punished when compared to their white counterparts. You may chalk it up to “well those kids are just bad. What can you do?” The studies would prove that a fallacy. This is something I can personally attest to. In elementary school, 6th grade, two friends and I were called to the principal’s office because we had been reported for bullying. The lunch monitor who reported us said “we were excluding the white girls from playing with us, which was a form of bullying.” Never mind that they also didn’t include US in their play.  All the lunch monitor saw was us not opening up our friend circle. The principal never asked us what happened. We were three students who had been in that school since first grade, and never got in trouble before. All of that went out of the window. We were threatened with suspension and being kicked off the cheerleading team. We didn’t get suspended, but can you see how the adults in the situation saw two groups of girls behaving the same way, but attributed malice to only one? Pushout by Monique Couvson details more of this phenomenon.
 
We understand what the intention of saying “I don’t see color is.” You don’t want to reduce a person to just their color, but acknowledging someone’s race is never a bad thing. As columnist Porter Braswell stated “Racial bias is real. Racism is real. The history of racial oppression is real. Blinding yourself to color doesn’t make any of them go away.”  

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